From: WhoWhatWhy
by Russ Baker
Most of the
national and international media have left Boston – and essentially
moved on from the Marathon bombing story. But at WhoWhatWhy, we’re
just getting started.
Why? Because
we see a lot of problems with what we’ve been told so far. We’ve
been disappointed that the media have failed to demonstrate healthy
skepticism while passing along, unchallenged, the (self-serving)
assertions of “the authorities.”
It is the job
of journalism not only to report what authorities say, but also
to confirm their claims, and address anomalies, errors, inconsistencies,
outright lies, and cover-ups, large and small.
When it comes
to falsehoods of all types, we’ve seen plenty of doozies, and you
don’t have to go all the way back to the Tonkin
Gulf incident – which helped pave the way for the escalation
of the Vietnam conflict. Most people now understand that circa 2002-2003,
the George W. Bush Administration knowingly
exaggerated and deceived in order to justify a desired invasion
of Iraq.
Things have
not markedly improved with the Obama Administration. The 2011 “raid
that killed Bin Laden” at Abbottabad, Pakistan, went a long way
toward bolstering Obama’s “toughness cred,” and was probably a factor
in his being re-elected. Yet staggering
inconsistencies in official accounts of the raid have never
been properly reconciled. The current scandal du jour is over the
Obama Administration’s putting out fake story lines on Benghazi
to divert attention from how it handled facility security in that
troubled location.
Yet even partisans
on the attack in each of these cases typically fail to get at the
real story – which, in the case of Benghazi, has to do with how
the entire “humanitarian intervention” in Libya was, as
we reported, a cover for a deadly geo-strategic gamble that
has opened a can of worms from which have sprung untold Al Qaeda
types.
***
So what about
the Boston Marathon bombing, in which innocent people died seemingly
at the hands of anti-American monsters? While some insist that under
these circumstances everyone, including the media, should prove
their patriotism by shutting their eyes and ears, we hope you agree
that especially
at such times it’s important to ask the tough, even unpopular questions.
The Boston story, as
we previously noted, is full of question marks and high-stakes
implications – all the more reason to dig beneath the screen
of official handouts. And, in the coming weeks, that’s just what
WhoWhatWhy plans to do.
For now, here
are some examples of the things we wish to better understand:
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Race Security
We have been
told – and see evidence – of a security presence unprecedented
at such athletic events. This includes the claims by Alastair Stevenson,
a college cross-country coach and frequent marathoner, that he heard
announcements of security
drills that day and saw beefed up security. It also includes
the presence of personnel from the private contractor Craft International,
first in the crowd watching the runners, then, after the bombs went
off, actively involved in the crime scene investigation. Is there
an explanation for this? What exactly were these security people
deployed against?
The JFK
Library Fire
We’re told
that a fire broke out at almost exactly the same time as the Marathon
bombing, a short distance away at the JFK library. Although initial
reports indicated a possible explosion, we have since been told
that it was just an “accident.” We’ve had very few details since
then, though the museum did reopen after a number of days.
MIT Cop
We originally
heard from reporters that a police officer from MIT was killed during
a confrontation with the Tsarnaev brothers. Later, around the time
of a highly publicized funeral for the “hero cop,” the authorities
quietly revised their story; in the new account, the officer was
shot while sitting in his car, perhaps during an attempt to take
his gun, though we’ve seen no evidence of this. No explanation of
why the Tsarnaev brothers would even have been on the campus, or
wanted or needed his gun, nor has hard proof been produced that
the brothers were in fact the cop killers.
7-11
In the midst
of the manhunt, we were told that the suspects robbed
a 7-11 convenience store to obtain cash for a getaway. But later,
that scenario vaporized. How did the initial wrong story come about?
How Tamerlan
Died
On the night
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was reportedly shot by police, then accidentally
run over by his fleeing younger brother, CNN broadcast a video showing
a crime scene teeming with police, in which a handcuffed man who
looks quite a bit like Tamerlan – having been made to strip
naked – is being hustled into a patrol car. The reporters speculated
at the time that it might indeed be the bombing suspect.
Later on, the
police issued a statement saying it was someone else, a case of
mistaken identity. Fine. But who was it? Surely by now we can be
told the name of that person – and presumably that person would
have no problem recounting his harrowing evening. Perhaps the police
are withholding his identity at his request – but given all
the wild online speculation that the man in the video might have
been Tamerlan himself, why not make more of an effort to clear up
the matter? (While the original CNN video does not appear to be
available online, numerous people copied and posted versions onto
YouTube – and can be found there with a search on “naked man
Watertown CNN.”)
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