Greg Mitchell

After NSA Leaker Goes Public: Greenwald Hits Gellman Over Claims About Edward Snowden

Greg Mitchell on June 10, 2013 - 9:32 AM ET

Edward Snowden. Courtesy: Guardiannews.com

What a day. Sunday opened with more fallout and media debate over the revelations from the pair of bombshells about NSA data collection and surveillance via The Guardian and The Washington Post. Glenn Greenwald, the main reason for The Guardian scoops, went on ABC from somewhere abroad for a valuable interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. A few hours later he was back—with the shocking news that the source for the leaks had chosen to reveal his identity and location.

Turns out Glenn was in Hong Kong.

The Guardian posted a full, riveting interview, words and video (shot by Laura Poitras of the Post), with the leaker, 29-year-old Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who now works, or worked, for a major NSA contractor. He had fled to Hong Kong from Hawaii hoping to gain asylum there or in another place, such as Iceland, but he seemed to expect the worst.

You probably know all this already but if you need to catch up here’s how I followed news and reaction at my Pressing Issues blog, including an amazing interview with my old friend Dan Ellsberg, who said that even at his advanced age—if he’d been given this material himself this month he would have leaked it and accepted spending the rest of his life in prison. Snowden is being attacked by some for fleeing to repressive China—but others ask, what better options did he have?

But here’s an intriguing media angle. As I noted yesterday, Barton Gellman, the fine Washington Post reporter who had also been the recipient of Snowden’s leakage, followed The Guardian’s account of working with Snowden by writing his own first-person account. This repeated the pattern of the first big leak last week—The Guardian went first, the Post closely behind. On PRISM, the Post beat The Guardian by twenty minutes, according to Mike Calderone of Huffington Post.

Gellman claimed that Snowden actually came to him first last month, then demanded that the Post publish his material within three days (for his own safety) and in full—that is, all forty-one slides from the now-fabled PRISM slide show. Gellman writes that after he told Snowden that the paper doesn’t operate that way and could not make such promises—and they’d have to check it out with government sources in any case—the whistleblower told him he would now go elsewhere with the material. About two weeks later the Post learned that the first Guardian report was about to explode, which prompted the Post to quickly go public. In both cases, with PRISM, the news outlets used only four of forty-one slides.

But is this how it really went down? Greenwald tweets today: “Bart Gellman’s claims about Snowden’s interactions with me—when, how and why—are all false.” And: “The reality is that Laura Poitras and I have been working with him since February, long before anyone spoke to Bart Gellman….I have no idea whether he had any conditions for WP, but he had none for us: we didn’t post all the slides.”

Gellman has not replied to Greenwald on Twitter, but on Sunday he tweeted, “Snowden didn’t bolt when I refused guarantees, just quit going steady. And not because I consulted USG [US government].” Tim Noah, late of Slate, tweeted: “By (rightly) not allowing Snowden to dictate how and when of release, Wash Post lost exclusive.” Gellman did hit back at a WikiLeaks charge that he had informed on the leaker in going to the US government: “Accusing me of ‘informing’ on Snowden to USG is garbage. I told him I’d seek comment and did. Period.” He also told Charlie Savage of The New York Times, via Twitter, that if he saw the still-secret slides he wouldn’t publish them either.

Calderone has just written this valuable untangling, with Poitras, it turns out, playing perhaps THE key role. Snowden, he explains, first approached Greenwald months ago but Glenn was stymied by tech issues and didn't know what the leak entailed. Poitras met Greenwald later and told him that Snowden had told her details and this sparked all that followed. As for Gellman: It appears true that Snowden did go to him first with PRISM, and then to Greenwald. But Greenwald objects to Gellman suggesting that Glenn was the second choice all along, when in fact he had gotten the first leak...first.

Stay tuned for more on this—here’s a new Greenwald interview with NBC—and the numerous other angles on this tremendously important story.

UPDATES Kevin Drum at Mother Jones asks what's on the many slides not published by the two news outlets—and why not published? Though surely not up to Greenwald and Gellman alone. More updates: USA Today and Reuters ID'd Snowden’s hotel, but he had already checked out. Smearing of Snowden begins. The AP declares that Snowden, and Bradley Manning, are "leakers" not "whistle-blowers."

Glenn Greenwald plays a pivotal role in my book (with Kevin Gosztola) on the Bradley Manning case, just published in an updated edition. Soime of my other books on political campaigns, atomic coverups and more here.

'New York Times' Hit on 'Softening' Editorial, 'Dismissing' Glenn Greenwald

Greg Mitchell on June 7, 2013 - 10:58 AM ET

Early last evening, I was quick here to cover the breaking “PRISM” Internet spy scandal, then followed with updates and links. Among the issues I mentioned briefly was a shockingly frank New York Times editorial declaring flatly that the Obama administration had “lost all credibility”—and then the newspaper’s belated editing of that charge (after it drew wide attention) to add “on this issue”; and the likely rise to mainstream media fame for Glenn Greenwald, who had a share in both of the bombshell NSA scoops this week. Indeed, the Times posted a profile of Greenwald late yesterday.

Now the Times is getting hit by critics related to both of these hot topics. And the paper’s rigorous public editor Margaret Sullivan weighed in on both this morning.

Sullivan pretty much accepts editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal’s claim that adding “on this issue” to “lost all credibility” simply made clear what they intended all along—they weren’t making a blanket charge against the White House. She added, however, that he should have at least added a note to the editorial explaining this change. Many online critics still scoffed at the Rosenthal claim.

Separately, in a tweet, Sullivan called the paper’s headline on its Greenwald profile, which simply labeled the attorney and author as a “blogger,” was “dismissive.” Others hit a good deal of the rest of the profile’s tone, such as depicting him as “obsessive”—and the absurd critique from Andrew Sullivan. But the “blogger” charge set off a revealing round of discussion on Twitter from the likes of Jay Rosen on the long-running “journalist” vs “blogger” debate and the continuing mainstream putdowns of the latter.

I’m afraid that I am running around today and can’t write more here at the moment, but let me direct you to my Pressing Issues blog, where I have covered both of issues at some length: the editorial controversy here and the Greenwald profile and backlash here.

Bonus: You might enjoy this classic scene from Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon asks, “Why should I work for the NSA???”

Greg Mitchell’s book on the US vs Bradley Manning (with Kevin Gosztola) has just appeared in an updated edition. He blogs several times a day at Pressing Issues.

'The Washington Post' and 'The Guardian' Expose Secret NSA/FBI Internet Spy Program

Greg Mitchell on June 6, 2013 - 7:21 PM ET

Chris Cioban, manager of the Verzion store in Beachwood, Ohio holds up an Apple iPhone 4G. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

So how do you top last night’s NSA phone/data collecton bombshell? This evening from the estimable Bart Gellman and Laura Poitras at The Washington Post, who obtained slides for briefings:

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading US Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who know about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

While the White House, and allies in Congress (with only a few exceptions), defended the NSA phone program as nececessary, legal, not really snooping on content and kind of old hat, PRISM is quite different, as it collects personal content/material. How is this?

Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said.

The Guardian, again partly via Glenn Greenwald, has much the same (even the same slides?) and it’s hard to tell who got what first or joint or what.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation—classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies—which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

Twitter notable by its absence in the program (refused to cooperate?).

Roger Simon of Politico jokes in a tweet: “Glenn Greenwald is an American working for British publication & living mainly in South America. So how many drones circling him now?” But here’s Greenwald's own tweet: “I wish English language were broader so I could express my simultaneous contempt & mockery for the investigation threats emanating from DC.” Another tweet from him tonight: “The dam has broke—let the water and sunshine flow.”

And now The Wall Street Journal adds: They’ve got our credit card receipts, too.

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More to come, but for now consider this: Responding to last night’s NSA , The New York Times published this afternoon an editorial blasting the Obama administration in no uncertain terms. And that was before tonight’s PRISM shocker. What next? Here’s what the paper said already:

The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

Ponder that first sentence awhile, coming from The New York Times. And now know that the paper had second thoughts, or drew heat, or…something…because they have now added the words “on this issue” to the end of that sentence, softening it dramatically.

Greg Mitchell’s book on the US vs Bradley Manning (with Kevin Gosztola) has just appeared in an updated edition. He blogs several times a day at Pressing Issues.

Ad Policy

MSNBC's Ratings Dip: What Do You Think?

Greg Mitchell on June 5, 2013 - 12:56 PM ET

Conservatives have been sniping at MSNBC for weeks over an alleged ratings decline, and the less-than-blockbuster start for Chris Hayes’s new primetime program. Now there are some ratings facts to raise actual concern among fans of the so-called “liberal-leaning” cable news outlet. Bill Carter’s New York Times piece this week finds ratings at the network down 20 percent and instead of running second to Fox it even fell to fourth behind CNN and Headline News (gasp) for the not-so-merry month of May.

Problem: there’s been a lot of major breaking news (real or hyped) lately, which is not exactly the strong suit of the MSNBC evening lineup. I guess this refers to the Boston bombing, the Cleveland kidnap/rape tragedy, maybe Jody Arias. Yes, CNN has soared before in such times and then fallen. Also, MSNBC proclaims itself the “place for politics,” not news, and we’re between election cycles. Ratings this past Monday were a little better: Maddow and O’Donnell took 2nd place, and Hayes third (Fox always wins every night and every slot).

But it may not be that simple. For one thing, elections are hardly the only staple of “politics.” And most periods experience a good deal of hot news.

I could go on. But I thought instead that I would solicit your views on this—whether you like it or not, many of you are viewed as a prime audience for the MSNBC nighttime lineup, from Sharpton to Matthews to Hayes to Maddow to O’Donnell—hell, even most of afternoon and Sunday shows. (We shall not speak of Morning Joe.) And let’s not forget that Hayes, new guy Ari Melber, and Melissa Harris-Perry, have strong Nation ties.

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So take a little time to comment below with your own opinion—or an explanation of your own viewing patterns. Are you watcing MSNBC more or less? Why? What do you wish they would cover or discuss more? What do you think of the host and guest lineup? Are you pretty much shutting off TV in any case? Are you interested in the coming Al Jazeera America? If not MSNBC, what shows and news outlets elsewhere are you focusing on?

Plenty to chew on here, so…chew away! And I promise to respond to many of your comments.

Bradley Manning Trial Starts After New Protests

Greg Mitchell on June 3, 2013 - 2:37 AM ET

Private Bradley Manning, US Army private suspected of being the source of some of the unauthorized classified information disclosed on the WikiLeaks website. (AP Photos)

UPDATE: My live-blog of day #2 of trial, with Adrian Lamo due.

One of the most important trials in recent US history opens today at Fort Meade, Maryland. Full court-martial proceedings against Pfc. Bradley Manning will begin more than three years following his arrest overseas related to a massive leak of material to WikiLeaks. Manning, now 25, this spring took responsibility for ten of the twenty-two charges against him but among the remaining charges is one, aiding the enemy (that is, Al Qaeda), that could bring a sentence of life in prison.

On Saturday, as many as 2,000 gathered near Fort Meade to protest the continuing proceedings against Manning, many adopting the slogan, “I am Bradley Manning.” Late Sunday, Manning’s longtime attorney, David E. Coombs, speaking for his client, thanked supporters—and the handful of journalists who have covered the case step-by-step since the beginning.

A new piece by Ed Pilkington at The Guardian highlights the significance of the trial, charging that it “could set an ominous precedent that will chill freedom of speech and turn the internet into a danger zone, legal experts have warned.”

One of those journalists hailed by Manning and his attorney on Sunday was surely Kevn Gosztola, a former intern for The Nation who is among the very few who has attended all of the key hearings in the case. He has covered the case for The Nation and on an ongoing basis for the blog Firedoglake—after assisting me with my long-running blog on WikiLeaks here and my book The Age of WikiLeaks. We have also co-authored a book about the Manning case, Truth and Consequences, which was updated last week with new material and analysis covering all of the twists and turns leadng to today’s trial.

Here is an excerpt from the new edition written by Gosztola. I am live-blogging first day of trial here.

* * *

In a dramatic move, Manning pled guilty to some of the offenses on February 28, 2013. He admitted to unauthorized possession of certain information, willful communication of information, and that he communicated that information to an unauthorized person. He also admitted to engaging in conduct that was “service discrediting” or prejudicial to the good order and discipline of the military.

Appearing in court, Manning was allowed to read a lengthy statement he had written. It described his motivation in compelling depth for the first time, and made it clear that he had considered precisely what type of information to release to WikiLeaks; he had not committed an aimless, vindictive, “document dump.”

On the video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq, showing two Reuters employees being killed along with an Iraqi civilian, whose children were wounded, Manning testified, “The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have….They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as quote ‘dead bastards’ unquote and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers.”

The military incident reports he released to WikiLeaks on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan represented the “on the ground reality” of both of the conflicts. “I felt that we were risking so much for people that seemed unwilling to cooperate with us, leading to frustration and anger on both sides,” Manning said. “I began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year.”

He chose to release the cache of over 250,000 U.S. State Embassy cables to WikiLeaks because, “The more I read, the more I was fascinated by the way that we dealt with other nations and organizations. I also began to think that the documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity didn’t seem characteristic of the de facto leader of the free world.”

A particular cable, 10REYKJAVIK13, from Iceland, was provided to WikiLeaks in February 2010 because, after reading it, he “concluded that Iceland was essentially being bullied diplomatically by two larger European powers” over the issue of “Icesave.” This related to the collapse of Iceland banks. Manning determined that, even though Iceland had urged the U.S.to provide assistance, the U.S. was unwilling to help because there was no “geopolitical benefit.”

Manning also read through a number of detainee assessment briefs that WikiLeaks released as the Gitmo Files. “The more I became educated on the topic, it seemed that we found ourselves holding an increasing number of individuals indefinitely that we believed or knew to be innocent, low-level foot soldiers that did not have useful intelligence and would be released if they were still held in theater,” he stated.

Then there was this: Ahead of parliamentary elections in Iraq, he had helped Iraqi federal police identify suspects for detention. He found that fifteen men had been arrested because they were producing “anti-Iraqi literature.” He brought this to the attention of a superior officer, who did not want to hear about it. He knew if he continued to assist the police it was likely that innocent people would be jailed, likely tortured and “not seen again for a very long time, if ever.” (Information related to the Iraqi federal police was provided to WikiLeaks but never released.)

The Manning statement raised doubts about whether he had ever directly communicated with WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, while submitting information. Manning had spoken with someone using a chat service called Jabber. This person he was chatting with was labeled as “Nathaniel Frank” and he had thought it could be Assange, but never was certain.

Having pled guilty to some offenses, there was no scenario where Manning would not be found guilty in the months to come. Manning will serve jail time. The key question now, as the trial proceeds, is: How much jail time? And will he be convicted of offenses (which he did not plead guilty to committing) such as “aiding the enemy”?

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Back in December 2011, the government charged Manning with 22 offenses. They have decided not to pursue one charge related to the release of the Reykjavik cable, but on all other charges they intend to pursue the greater offenses. And they claim to have uncovered digital media from the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan that held some of the State Department cables and Iraq or Afghanistan war logs, and they may be used as evidence to convict Manning of “aiding the enemy.” And that’s where we are, as the trial (which I’ll be attending each day), is set to begin, or so it seems.

The new edition of Truth and Consequences is now available in both print and e-book forms. My live-blog on trial today.

When Leonard Bernstein, and Beethoven, Celebrated the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Greg Mitchell on June 1, 2013 - 9:46 AM ET

Leonard Bernstein, the renowned conductor, composer and liberal political activist, came to Germany in December 1989 as the Berlin Wall was cracked open and thousands of East Germans poured through to be united with their German brothers and sisters after twenty-eight years of separation. Bernstein was 71, and in failing health. In ten months he would die of cancer. “Lenny,”as he was called by those who knew him, was a magnetic advocate for the belief that music could transform lives and in the process transform the world.

In that Christmas season trip to Berlin, Bernstein would famously conduct two performances of Bethoven’s Ninth Symphony with an international orchestra and chorus assembled from the four countries that once shared the city—the U.S., Russia, England and France. And he would change one word so that the “Ode to Joy” became the “Ode to Freedom.”

Kerry Candaele tells the story of Bernstein’s trip, along with exploring Beethoven’s other political/cultural influences in Japan, Chile (protesting Pinochet torture), China (in Tiananmen Square), along with two Billy Bragg segments, in his new film Following the Ninth. The film (you can watch the trailer) gets its world premiere Tuesday night in Santa Barbara. There’s also a new, updated edition of the book it inspired, which I co-wrote with Candale, Journeys With Beethoven.

Here’s an excerpt from our book (written by Candaele) on Bernstein.

* * *

Bernstein’s identification with Beethoven was long lasting, and more than just musical. Bernstein’s social activism for left-wing causes began in his youth, and was consistent throughout his life. His support for organized labor and the civil rights movement, including his notorious (in mainstream media circles, at least) 1970 fundraiser for members of the Black Panthers, and his protests against the Vietnam War earned him an FBI tail and a place on the U.S. State Department blacklist for a time. Leonard Bernstein was at one point put on a list of people to be moved to an internment camp in case of a national political crises.

Tom Wolfe labeled Lenny’s political commitments “radical chic,”but Bernstein didn’t play at politics, as his New Deal idealism existed both before and after his rise to celebrity. In the final decade of his life, he campaigned for nuclear disarmament, for AIDS research funding, for the abolition of world poverty, and for the utopian impulse articulated in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, that one day “All Men Will Be Brothers” (Alle Menschen werden Bruder).

Bernstein had described his feelings about the Ninth years earlier in one of his television broadcasts that were a hit on American television during the 1950s (he also devoted an entire program to dissecting the Fifth Symphony). Bernstein associated the words of love, peace, brotherhood, joy to the year of his birth, 1918, when an armistice brought the World War I to an end. He added the folk song phrase “ain’t gonna study war no more” to the key words that he associated with Beethoven’s Ninth. “We are all children of one father,”he added, “let us embrace one another, the millions of us.”

The Ninth, he rightly insisted, “rang[es] from the mysterious, to the radiant, to the devout, to the ecstatic,” but the words of joy and peace are hollow and ineffective when, as Bernstein described the reality of our lives, “we have not yet found ways, short of murder, to act out our suppressed rages, hostilities, xenophobias, provincialisms, mistrust and need for superiority. We still need some kind of lower class as slaves, prisoners, enemies, scapegoats.” This impulse embedded in the Ninth, in Bernstein’s words, is not a blueprint for a good society that have shown themselves to be tawdry betrayals of our best instincts, when humans have attempted to transform human behavior overnight with a reckless fanaticism. The “crooked timber of humanity” cannot be made straight right here and now. To desire perfection in human beings is to desire the impossible.

But Beethoven, Bernstein believed, represented “struggle, struggle for peace, for fulfillment of spirit, for serenity and triumphal joy. He achieved it in his music, not only in his triumphal Ninth, but in all his symphonies. And in his quartets, his piano sonatas, and trios and concertos. Somehow it must be possible to learn from his music by hearing it. No, not hearing it, but listening to it, with all our power of attention and concentration. Then, perhaps, we can grow into something worthy of being called the human race.”

Bernstein brought his history and his sentiments, if not his youthful exuberance, to Germany for two performance of Beethoven’s Ninth in December of 1989. The first concert was timed to end at midnight on December 23, when the border dividing the two Berlins would be fully opened for the first time in twenty-eight years. On the second occasion, he conducted the Ninth at East Berlin’s Schauspielhaus on Christmas morning. While more than a thousand gathered in the hall, hundreds more stood in the square in front to watch the performance on a giant television monitor. On the live TV broadcast, Bernstein declared, ”I am experiencing a historical moment, incomparable with others in my long, long life.”

By then more than 200,000 East Berliners had visited the West for the first time, and about the same number had traveled East. The Associated Press reported, “One West Berliner riding a bicycle and dressed as Santa Claus failed to persuade border guards to let him through ahead of the rest of the crowd.”

In keeping with the Ninth’s theme of connection across borders, the orchestra included members from the Dresden Statteskapelle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as from orchestras from the four countries that technically still occupied Berlin—the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Orchestra of the Kirov Theater, Leningrad. The chorus was made up of singers from both sides of Germany.

Bernstein wrote a friend about the concerts: “I’ll be reworking Friedrich’s Schiller’s text of the ‘Ode To Joy’ and substituting the word Freiheit (Freedom) for Freude (Joy). Because when the chorus sings Alle Menschen werden Bruder, it will make more sense with Freiheit, won’t it?”

He received as much pleasure in conducting the Ninth that day as he gave. Sherry Sylvar, an oboist who played in the concert, said, “When the chorus sang the word Freiheit….I shall always remember how his face lit up.” In fact, a good part of the world lit up. The concert was broadcast live to more than twenty countries, to over one hundred million people, with a recording released on in 1990 as the Ode To Freedom: Bernstein in Berlin.

The famed conductor had added playful humor to the occasion by imagining that he could make a career of performing the Ninth around the world: “I can’t wait to do it in North Korea and China.” But he always came back to his first principles when it came to Beethoven. “The dubious cliché about music as the universal language, almost comes true with Beethoven. No composer who has ever lived speaks so directly to so many people, the young and old, educated and ignorant, amateur, professional, sophisticated, naive, and to all these people, of all classes, nationalities, and racial backgrounds, this music speaks a universality of thought, of human brotherhood, freedom, and love…

“In this Ninth Symphony, in the finale, the music goes far beyond the [Schiller’s] poem, it gives far greater dimension and vital energy and artistic sparks to these quaint old lines of Schiller. This music succeeds, even with those people for whom organized religion fails. Because it displays a spirit of Godhead and sublimity in the freest and least doctrinaire way. It has a purity and directness of communication that never becomes banal. It’s accessible without being ordinary. This is the magic that no amount of talk can explain.”

And if there was one person who could explain Beethoven’s music in words that all can understand and embrace, it was Leonard Bernstein. He speculated that “perhaps there was in Beethoven the man, a child inside that never grew up, that to the end of his life remained a creature of grace, innocence and trust, even in his moments of greatest despair. And that innocent spirit speaks to us of hope and future and immortality. And it’s for that reason that we love his music now, more than ever before. In this time of world agony, we love his music and we need it. As despairing as we may be, we cannot listen to this Ninth Symphony without emerging from it changed, enriched, encouraged. And to the man who could give to the world so precious a gift as this, no honor could be too great, and no celebration joyful enough. It’s almost like celebrating the birthday of music itself.”

After such a verbal performance, along with Leonard Bernstein’s life and music, one can only stand and shout, Bravo, Maestro, Bravo.

Yet Another Media Version of Shooting by FBI Agent of Unarmed Friend of Boston Bomber

Greg Mitchell on May 31, 2013 - 10:17 AM ET

New York Police officers are seen under a news ticker in Times Square in New York, April 16, 2013—the day of the Boston bombing. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)

The incident raised questions from the start, but now it is approaching absurdity—maybe parody. Next thing we know the weapon will IDed as Peggy Olson’s makeshift spear.

We refer, of course, to last week’s killing of Ibragim Todashev, an old friend of deceased Boston marathon bomber Tamalan Tsarnaev, in Orlando, Florida. He was being interrogated by an FBI agent and other detectives about what he knew, if anything, about the bombing and also about his possible role in a triple murder, tied to drugs, in Waltham, Massachusetts. Allegedly he had just confessed that he and Tsarnaev committed the murders when he freaked, grabbed a knife and lunged at the agent, who naturally shot him dead.

The story sort of smelled from the start, given that there was one crazed guy and several law enforcement enforcers, not to mention that they were questioning him about a mass bombing and a triple murder and somehow let him get at a weapon. It was a “knife,” although there was mention of a “samurai sword” maybe in the room. But few in the media raised questions.

So now it turns out—as we suspected all along—that he was unarmed when shot and killed by the FBI agent in that infamous incident. Well, that was the report two days ago. Seems that he’d been shot six or seven times. This sparked family members to charge that he was simply “executed” and it also encouraged the Boston bombing conspiracy nuts to get nuttier. Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic with a major take yesterday questioned not just shooting an unarmed man but the FBI unable to get its story straight.

And then, late last night: another official version: The bad guy suddenly had a “pole” that he hit an agent with—and also hit him with a table. Oh, wait, the pole might have been “a broomstick.” And he had to be shot seven times. I guess the other cops in the room were playing Angry Birds.

Read the details of that version and you almost have to laugh. One of the cops texted the FBI agent to tell him the suspect was getting agitated? And it was when the FBI guy was reading the text that all the action started? And the “samurai sword” that became a “pole” that became a “broomstick” had now become the metal part of a broom, perhaps to make it sound more like the original “knife.”

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John Miller of CBS, the longtime reporter who later became an FBI hack, recounts the latest here, as usual bending over backwards to accept the official story. You’ll see that like many others he makes no mention of how the agency could claim this was a knife attack for a week before the broomstick appeared. That’s some kind of tough reporting. And here’s Friedersdorf’s update today.

Interested in the FBI’s malpractice? Read George Zornick on the impending nomination of James Comey.

Did Obama Already Break the New 'Rules' on Drones?

Greg Mitchell on May 29, 2013 - 11:34 AM ET

President Barack Obama continues to speak about national security, Thursday May 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A new US drone strike has killed at least four in Pakistan near the Afghan border, with the alleged (now deceased) target a top Taliban leader, just days after President Obama announced new, seemingly restraining, “rules.”

Did this strike break them already? Critics had already warned there was little change behind the rhetoric, while others (most notably, an instant New York Times editorial) hailed it as a sea change.

So how are media commentators responding today? I’ll present a range of view as the day goes on. it should also be noted: reports of such high-value kills often prove false.

First up, a tweet from Glenn Greenwald: "Elapsed time between Obama's terrorism speech and the next drone strike: 6 whole days." Then Wired’s excellent Spencer Ackerman explores it here. He raises serious questions and concludes: “The Obama administration has yet to officially acknowledge the strike, let alone detail what if any ‘continuing, imminent threat’ Rehman posed. (If it does, that really will be a departure from past practice.) However, Obama’s team defines those terms so broadly that a whole lot fits under their banner.”

You can debate whether the 2009 attack on the CIA’s Forward Operating Base Chapman qualifies Rehman as an al-Qaida co-belligerent. But at the very least, Obama has chalk on his cleats for edging up to the lines of his ostensible restrictions on drone strikes. The more that happens, the more it calls into question whether Obama has actually imposed any restrictions on his deadly flying robots at all.

But the Times news story frames it as a terribly positive strike, citing “a potentially serious blow to an insurgency that has killed thousands of people in Pakistan and encouraged Islamist attacks in the United States.” Other sources mention seven dead and it’s not known who died, beyond the target. The Washington Post dryly reports: “Three children were reportedly hurt in Wednesday’s attack, which was the first known targeted strike on Pakistani soil in six weeks.”

The Post also observes:

Former cricket star Imran Khan, whose party won a large number of seats in the Khyber Pakhtunwha Provincial Assembly and will lead a coalition government in that province, campaigned against US drones and suggested that Pakistan’s military should shoot them down to prevent civilian casualties.

Indeed, Khan has already taken to Twitter to blast today’s strike.

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Before the latest, a look at Pakistani views of continuing stirkes, from The Guardian.

For one of the most profound probes of what the dangers of drone warfare means today and for the future, see my interview with Robert Jay Lifton.

Famed Photographer, Who Took Long-Suppressed Pictures in Hiroshima, Dies at 94

Greg Mitchell on May 28, 2013 - 9:59 AM ET

The shell of a building that once was a movie theatre in Hiroshima September 8, 1945, a month after the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the US. (AP Photo/Stanley Troutman)

Wayne Miller has passed away at the age of 94. That name surely means nothing to you, even if I add, “Photographer.” It didn’t even ring a bell for me, and I’m a student of the atomic bombing of Japan and its aftermath.

Miller was among the first group of Americans to arrive in Hiroshima about a month after the bombing, in early September, 1945. He was a Navy man attached to the official wartime photography unit, directed by Edward Steichen (and took some memorable battlefield shots earlier). He made his way to the atomic city by train—see his oral history here—and snapped a few pictures in a handful of locations, then left. This was just days, maybe hours, afrer Wilfred Burchett, the Australian, became the first outside journalist to get to Hiroshima and write his fabled “warning to the world.”

Few of Miller’s pictures were ever published in the months and years to come—and the ones that were focused on damaged buildings and devastated landscapes. But Miller had also visited a makeshift medical facility in a battered bank building (all of the hospitals in the city had been destroyed) and he took striking pictures there of victims of the bombing suffering from massive burns, the new-to-the-world “keloid” scarring from the atomic flash, and also the new and frightening “A-bomb disease” (slow death from exposure to radiation). Due to strict and long-running postwar military censorship, then press cowardice, Americans were not allowed to see any of these types of images, in photos or in film, for decades, while the nuclear arms race ensued and the decision to drop the bomb was stoutly defended, setting a precedent for future use. In that oral history, Miller (who became famous after the war for his peacetime photos) disclosed that two rolls of color film that he shot in Hiroshima simply disappeared and he didn’t see any other photos published either.

A few days after Miller’s visit to Hiroshima, a plane full of US reporters, including (later famous) William Lawrence, arrived at the scene. They also toured the ruins and a makeshift hospital—but none wrote about the condition of the patients, or perhaps they did and the reports were censored for all time. George Weller, the first US reporter to reach Nagasaki, saw his many dispatches from there disappear for sixty years.

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I tell the full story in my book Atomic Cover-Up, which covers the suppression of photos but mainly the historic film footage shot by a special US military team that showed, in color, the human effects of the bomb—but was kept hidden for decades, even as one of the veterans who made the film tried to get it released. Some of that footage is in the video below. Also see my book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America.

What is the US nuclear program like today? Read Greg Mitchell on the recent violation of safety rules in our own nuclear facilities.

WikiLeaks vs. Alex Gibney Battle Over New Film Intensifies

Greg Mitchell on May 25, 2013 - 10:00 AM ET

As I noted in intro to my interview with Alex Gibney, director of the new We Steal Secrets film re WikilLeaks, he has been slammed by Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks Twitter feed for months, for various reasons, no doubt. It seems that Assange early on got some kind of leaked script or transcript for the film in process. Gibney hit back for basing a critique on some words on the page, when a film is a quite different experience.

Then this week, with the film’s release date in the US approaching—that is, yesterday—the WikiLeaks Twitter feed said it had been leaked the finished film and they posted a nearly point-by-point “fact check.” Gibney responded by pointing out, among other things, that the transcript was missing a key and substantial part of the film—Manning’s words from the chat logs and elsewhere. These appear in the film typed on the screen but not spoken, so he surmises that someone made an audio copy of the film at a screening and leaked it to WikiLeaks. This morning he tweeted: “WL has published an incomplete and inaccurate transcript based on non-final version.”

Anyway: We likely won’t see a Gibney point-by-point rebuttal of WikiLeaks’ point-by-point rebuttal. But here he responds to a fairly critical review of the film by my former colleague Kevin Gosztola, co-author of my book about Manning, Truth and Consequences. Note: I have not yet seen the film myself.