Additionally, we can advocate strongly for mainstream media
to invest in democracy by supporting investigative reporting on
key issues. The Director of the Chicago Office of the FBI, Tom
Kneir, admitted on August 17 at the American Sociological meetings
that the FBI conducted an investigation into the pre-9-11 stock
options, but he refused to disclose who bought the stock. Mainstream
media needs to pursue this issue using our freedom of information
laws to put the conspiracy questions to rest.
I think your call for open government and open media is admirable,
but naive. Investigative reporting and freedom of information
can seriously threaten power elites (e.g., Watergate, Iran-Contra,
etc.); so as long as those elites have the power they will do
their utmost to thwart such activities. Media corporations are
now clearly working actively against true investigative reporting
on topics of significance (see Kristina Borjesson, "Into the Buzzsaw").
George W. Bush and John Ashcroft are taking proactive steps to
make the FOIA as ineffective and difficult to use as possible
within the CURRENT constraints of the law.
The American people don't need to know who was firing from the
Grassy Knoll on 11/22/1963 to know that their governmental INSTITUTIONS
concealed, destroyed, distorted, altered, and fabricated evidence
in the JFK case (as well as the RFK & MLK cases). The record is
there for anyone with an open mind and the necessary interest
to examine. These are not the actions of an open, honest government
with nothing to hide. Maybe it's enough for most of us to know
that we don't know who else was firing rifles that day - that
if our government and media have their way, we never will - that
after 15+ years, when our government finally could admit to a
probable conspiracy, they and their compliant media never cared
enough to find out and tell us who else was shooting and why.
The American people don't need to know who bought the pre-911
stock options to know that the FBI is not revealing the results
of its investigations. That's clear enough from the incident you
cite in your article. For many, it is enough to know that of all
the "huge public and private bureaucracies" "interlinked in a
macro way" or not, none of them are coming forward with the true
facts of 9/11, the JFK assassination, or SOME of the other events
that you lump together at the beginning of your article. And now
with the "Homeland Security" bill, an independent investigation
into 9/11 failures is prevented by law.
Maybe it was just a coincidence that Life magazine locked away
the Zapruder film for so many years as our governmental agencies
were actively trying to perpetuate a truly ridiculous explanation
of this momentous event in our history. However, after looking
at who was sitting at the top of Life magazine at the time, I
tend to find "interlinked" conspiracies a more reasonable explanation.
As Gore Vidal put it, "Apparently 'conspiracy stuff' is now
shorthand for unspeakable truth." Perhaps what we need, now that
we know the news is censored, is a "Project Unspeakable Truth".
Copyright 2002 Wayne Stewart