Vectors of Disinformation

Sometimes the best disinformation is buried deeply enough to pass through sceptical filters. In the July 25th issue of The New Yorker, William Finnegan has an article about anti-terrorist efforts by the New York City Police Department. Lots of interesting information there along with the disinfo, including the clear CIA/Mossad connections of NYPD “terrorism” experts. One of these experts, David Cohen, the department’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence who is a thirty-five year veteran of the CIA and was Director of Operations (I guess it’s no longer a club for Yale-educated Anglo-Saxons and Notre Dame-educated Catholics), relates a “typical” incident deep in the article (p. 63):

“Transit cops on the 7 train caught two guys camcording infrastructure,” Cohen said. “Most of the video was tourist stuff. Two minutes was train track. Two minutes of train track? Turns out those guys worked for Iranian state intelligence. We turned them over to the FBI. They were deported two days later.”

Lots of questions here. First, why in the world would Iran attack the United States and give an excuse for Bush to blow them to pieces? Especially by sending some guys to videotape train tracks. Second, why would anyone ever take anything a “thrity-five year veteran of the CIA” at face value? They are the best liars in the world. You don’t get in the door there otherwise. But the seed has been planted so that if anything happens in NYC, “Iranian State Intelligence” can be blamed.

The New Yorker with its dense, fact-based reporting, and its fake “hard hitting” exposes by people like Seymour Hirsh, is a great place to plant such obvious disinfo. Now, Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch is getting into the act:

Iran may have the weapons-grade uranium out of three nuclear warheads dumped out of a B-52 back in 1991. Or so at least the US government might have some reason to believe, according to a seemingly well-informed person talking to CounterPunch last week.

You can just picture the trenchcoats and foggy streets. Jeez.