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Jerome's avatar

Great piece, Sam. When these false flag attempts fall apart, we have no choice but to demand exposure of the plotters. You have articulated this very well. Thank you.

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Coleen Rowley's avatar

Exactly! There are numerous parallels between AP and most other Big Media's self-serving practice and insistence on excessive secrecy to protect ALL of their anonymous sources, including the deceitful ones, with the FBI's long-standing secrecy granted in the operation of its criminal informants, even when these sources are caught lying and even when these sources commit serious crimes of their own as, for example, "top echelon" FBI informants Bulger and Scarpa's ongoing murders over nearly two decades. The arguments for expansive secrecy to protect sources that lie and/or commit crimes would also probably be the same: that it's too hard for a reporter (or an FBI agent) to discern truth from lies (especially since people who sometimes tell the truth also sometimes lie); that promises of secrecy must be unequivocal so that sources will not be chilled in any way from providing information (so sources don't have to worry about being careful). Basically, both FBI and the Press want the excessive secrecy to make it easiest and best for their own more narrow purposes, not the wider public purpose of reporting the truth.

It's actually not been even three decades since prosecutors began being forced (under Brady-Giglio court precedents) to notify defense attorneys when their own agents scheduled to testify in a trial had a prior track record for "lack of candor."

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