Not on the front page: NYT’s David Sanger ‘presumes’ we’re conducting covert hostilities against North Korea

I’m confused by David Sanger, the New York Times correspondent and author of the important new book on Obama’s covert war policy. Sanger is a complete insider and sometimes sounds like more of a columnist than an investigative reporter. He hung out with Senator Dianne Feinstein at the Aspen Institute. He characterizes Iran as a “direct threat” to U.S. national security in an assumptive manner, as if we should accept this at face value. He was a speaker at the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies just two years ago. 

I heard Sanger on Leonard Lopate’s show on WNYC last week and was struck by two critical vaguenesses in his claims.

1. On Stuxnet, the American-Israeli worm that attacked the Iranian nuclear program, Sanger is very vague about how much damage it caused. He talks excitedly about “rubble” created by the virus that was brought to the White House. “The program was operating away inside these computer systems in Natanz…. wiping out a certain group of centrifuges deep under ground,” he enthuses.

But as Sanger himself concedes, no one knows if Stuxnet did much damage. “It did work?” Lopate asks (at about 15:00)

It slowed the program. Now there is debate, there’s a very vibrant debate about how long. And many say in the CIA and elsewehre, I think their internal estimate is 18 monthes to two years. Others say it was shorter. The fact of the matter is you’ll never know…

As Rehmat Qadir reported on our site a year back, Sanger’s work at the Times relied on data from international agencies that contradicts his enthusiasm about “wiping out” centrifuges.

“[The Times],” Qadir said, “has excluded the likelihood that the Stuxnet operation was a failed or only minimally-successful experiment that did next to nothing in terms of setting back Iran’s nuclear program, as demonstrated by Stuxnet’s inconsequential effect on the production of low-enriched uranium– an effect documented in the graph below from the very report that The New York Times cites as the authoritative record for the timeline it puts forward, but a graph it failed to report to readers.”

leugraph
If Stuxnet did so much damage, how come LEU at Natanz kept increasing?

2. Lopate asked Sanger “how many other [covert military] operations” the U.S. has going around the world. And Sanger spoke with great sweep.  

“If you look around the world– certainly in Pakistan, certainly in Yemen, certainly in Somalia– this book describes the sort of low level of conflict with Iran. You have to presume that there is a similar kind of operation though probably not as intense with North Korea. It’s a pretty good list right there. that is an effort to just sort of beat back what the US perceives as its greatest, most urgent threats.”

If the U.S. is conducting a covert war with North Korea of nearly the intensity of the one it is conducting against Iran, why isn’t that in the news? Why isn’t the Times uncovering that with anything like the vigor it has put into exposing Saddam’s fearsome weapons of mass destruction, and now Iran’s ambitions? Is North Korea really a great and urgent threat to our national security? Is Iran? Don’t count on Sanger to open up these questions to any real scrutiny.

And yes, this is a story about the Israel lobby. If North Korea is a real threat to us, and we’re conducting secret hostilities against it, you’d think it would be a big story. The governing factor here is that Iran is thought to threaten Israel.

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“Is North Korea really a great and urgent threat to our national security? Is Iran? Don’t count on Sanger to open up these questions to any real scrutiny. ”

Sanger’s role is a mystery. He really objects to this Dept of Justice focus on the leaker. I think this Stuxnet “leaker” issue is a volcano that is going to erupt. During that interview with Jake Tapper Sanger tried to steer away from the idea that Israeli’s purposely released the worm onto “others” computer systems. That interview with Jake is worth listening to a few times.

This is interesting over at Camera’s Cspan website:
“According to C-SPAN’s Web site, more than 28 million viewers tune in each week – making it an information source of potential significance. Among its most popular programs is the Washington Journal despite its persistent failure to adhere to journalistic standards. The 3-hour daily public affairs and call-in show has been given a free pass for too many years from its major patrons such as Comcast, the largest cable television provider in the country. Neil_Smit@cable.comcast.com is the e-mail address of Neil Smit, President of Comcast Cable and most prominent member of C-SPAN’s five-member Board of Directors executive committee. Courteous, concise e-mails should urge Comcast to make clear to C-SPAN executives that Washington Journal must not continue providing an open platform to anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli bigots. A few seconds tape-delay, like those used by most call-in radio shows, should be sufficient. C-SPAN chief executives are at sswain@c-span.org, rkennedy@c-span.org.”

David Singer reports in NY Times after gleaning information from party insider in the executive and legislative branches. The report is seized as evidence by the same branches.It is rerouted to wider English speaking media across the world and gets retold .It then attains an aura of authenticty in Nigeria,South Africa,Turkey,India and in scores of other countries. A mind set is created that is akin to the amoprphous hateful attitude to any Islamic protests against any western dynamics in those parts of the world. Local conflicts in those countries then get thrown in the same potboiler mixes of vague information with active polarized foregone conclusions who to ascribe blame to. The understanding of the local problems in Burma,Inida,Thailand are interred into under the big umbrella of muslim conspiracies and obscurantism.The politics take a deathly turn. This exactly happened for 20 odd years in India from 1987 to 2002 and continuing.Even the veteran intellectuals from India with root in lefti movement started spouting the same narrative in most shrill laguages against mulsim quoting the lines off the most hateful Islamophobes ,cleverly forgetting his own school of thought’s relevance to the socio-economic issues.Today a similar problem is developing in Nigeria and in Burma. If North Korea were a muslim country or Nepal were , we would have been hearinga different story and we would be watching a worse horror story of drones and misssiles. Same goes for Venezuela. This war on terror has robbed mulsim of airing their grievances in Inida, Nigeria,Thailand,and in Burma..NYTimes has a lot to expalin for this situation.

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Steve Walt has a new one up that I think you might be interested in. Great clear read
On ‘The Crisis of Zionism’: Why you should read Peter Beinart
Posted By Stephen M. Walt Sunday, June 24, 2012

The attention given respectively to North Korea and Iran really does let the cat out of the bag. North Korea is a far more dangerous critter than Iran. Iran is…different. North Korea is crazy. It’s like the difference between discovering that a family of fundamentalist Mormons who believe in ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ have moved in next door and discovering that’s actually the Manson family living over there.

So why are we going nuts about the Mormons and ignoring the Manson family?

Only one answer comes back. Israel.