Between The Lines - Adam Johnson: U.S. Media Buries the Lead in Special Forces Assault Inside Syria (Week Ending June 5, 2015)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

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"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

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Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

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SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

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2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

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U.S. Media Buries the Lead in Special Forces Assault Inside Syria

Posted May 27, 2015

Interview with Adam Johnson, New York-based journalist; Alternet and FAIR contributing writer, conducted by Scott Harris

A White House briefing on May 16 announced that two dozen American Delta Force commandos had earlier that day launched a raid into eastern Syria, killing a leader of ISIS and an estimated 12 other militant fighters. The raid, which killed the man identified as Abu Sayyaf, purportedly an ISIS military planner and director of the group's "illicit oil, gas and financial operations," also captured his wife and an 18-year-old female Yazidi "slave."

Corporate media reports on the raid that were sourced to the Pentagon stated that the operation succeeded without any U.S. or civilian casualties. Media outlets reporting the story explained that their information had come from Defense Department officials and could not be immediately verified through independent sources. Although the U.S. had mounted an unsuccessful hostage rescue operation inside Syria last summer, this raid was the first known American combat mission undertaken in sovereign Syrian territory.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Adam Johnson, a New York-based freelance journalist and contributing writer to Alternet and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Here, he discusses his recent article titled, "White House Reveals 'Boots on the Ground' in Syria, but Media Too Giddy Over Special Ops Porn to Notice," and his view that corporate media is failing to provide critical reporting on U.S. foreign military operations and indications that America is deepening its intervention in Syria’s bloody civil war.

For more information, visit Adam Johnson's website at citationsneeded.com.

ADAM JOHNSON: This entire war with ISIS has been marked by a very slippery slope. If you recall on Aug. 7, 2014, we were going to engage in "limited" humanitarian missile strikes. So now we're about 10 months in, and we now have troops in Syria, troops in Iraq, we are bombing two different countries and the war keeps expanding in scope. We saw this also in Libya in 2011. It is marked by mission creep and the problem is the old parable of the frog in the boiling water. If you throw a frog in boiling water, it will jump out. If you put a frog in water and turn up the heat, he will burn to death.

That's you're seeing with this war and something with other warsl; we saw it with Vietnam, obviously. And the problem is when these meaningful sort of leaps of scope happen, which I think sending troops to Syria is a big leap. They're so bogged down by the kind of Special Forces minutaie which is all of course handed down by the prose writers at the Defense Department and the White House. We don't really stop to actually to put it in context. I think that the problem with wars is that we don't do that very often. Every time there is an incremental or a meaningful leap in the scope, it's usually completely glossed over by the media, and before we know it, we're engaged in a much broader campaign than what was originally sold to us.

BETWEEN THE LINES: How could the major newspapers and electronic news media in this country have covered this story differently to really impart the critical nature of this new kind of intervention in Syria's civil war?

ADAM JOHNSON: Well, there's a couple things at work here. First off, there's the, I think, the runaway arrogance that America can send what is effectively a death squad...we'll call it Special Forces, to any country, at any time, to kill people without any international sanction, to say nothing of congressional sanction – whenever they want. And that's the underlying ethos of the American media, that there's no sort of kind of even legal apparatus as to why they could do that. So that's kind of the first thing I think that we haven't really stopped to think about. And that's obviously been going on much before this.

And the second thing is, the degree to which we mean when we say "boots on the ground?" And I use that term very deliberately, and it's a term used by other commentators because we have boots on the ground in Syria. Now you can say "it's not a standing army, it's not boots on the ground." Well, okay, then our problem is that boots on the ground, it's boots on the ground for x amount of time."

And the people of Syria or the Syrian government, which we kind of refer to pejoratively as the Assad regime doesn't make much of distinction in terms of that is their sovereign territory; we sent our military in there and I think that we really don't think we have stopped to kind of put that part in context.

BETWEEN THE LINES: You say that people could be on all sides of this issue about U.S. troops interfering in Syria's civil war. But your gripe and many other people's gripe is that the U.S. media really doesn't inform the American public about these critically important decisions made in Washington, mostly behind closed doors.

ADAM JOHNSON: Yeah, and so when we have these leaps in scope what you're given is what is effectively a (Department of Defense) action movie prose. What I compare it to is that when the bin Laden raid happened on May 1, 2011, we were given a series of things that later turned out not to be true. We had a narrative about human shields, that they were throwing women in front of themselves, there was a firefight, a lot of things. Even setting aside Seymour Hirsch's revelations, even if one doesn't even believe that, a lot of material things later turned out to be false and of course, the reason is that I.F. Stone says, "All governments lie."

And so, we have another raid here, and there's this very sort of sexy narrative about Special Forces in there, there's a helicopter missile. There's a slave they rescued to give it a kind of moral gravitas. They killed 40 people who were all using women and children as human shields, but don't worry, we didn't kill any women and children. They killed the bad guy, and of course he had the huge cache of information that will later help them catch other ISIS members.

There is absolutely no doubt that some percent of that is complete B.S., because we know that historically, these type of raids are overhyped, and the media kind of repeats it. Now as I mention in my article, to the New York Times' credit, they have what has to be the most passive-aggressive disclaimer in the history of journalism, where they say, "None of these things can be independently verified." And of course, they can't. So there's a credibility issue with the Defense Department and I think when you're reporting on these things that are in these far-off regions where there's no way to corroborate anything, is that the media has no choice but to repeat, literally just re-write what the Pentagon tells them. I don't there was nearly enough skepticism with this last raid, and I do think they buried lead in terms of there being troops in Syria and how that actually has a big leap in terms of the scope of what the war was.