If the truth isn’t a set of facts, is it an interpretation? If yes, which one? Asking that question creates the leeway for any media to do whatever is convenient, including ignoring the role precise facts play in any interpretation.

That’s why media outlets spread narratives that first of all serve the interest of their owners, collaborators, backers or advertisers. But that isn’t enough. They also need to privilege narratives they know their chosen market segment appreciates and will react to with emotional engagement.

In other words and realistically speaking, establishing the truth will never stand as their primary objective. Instead, legacy media focuses on creating the illusion that what they cobble together represents the truth. Anything they produce will be designed for three purposes:

• the advancement of the editors’ preferred ideology,
• the promotion of what it deems its interests,
• commercial success obtained by appealing to its audience’s biases.

Once consumers of any media understand this, instead of simply trusting or mistrusting any source of news, they should seek to measure the “truth quotient” of a media’s reporting. Wise consumers of news, endowed with a modicum of critical thinking, know that whatever the source, its truth quotient will always be variable.

Alas, in today’s institutional and media landscape, we’re not supposed to know about truth quotients and their variability. Our educational institutions make no effort to prepare us for that challenge. A clearly biased outlet such as Fox News in the United States can shamelessly claim that their reporting is “fair and balanced.” It’s easy enough to see that it isn’t, but are we capable of analyzing why it’s a lie?

Our schools test us and reward us with diplomas for our ability to demonstrate that we can reproduce publicly recognized “knowledge.” This literally means the ability to repeat “acceptable” (and testable) interpretations of phenomena that our institutions have already approved. That kind of knowledge has value. But it is, by definition, inert. And it may even be faulty (biased) or incomplete. 

If we had been taught to care for truth, we would seek to cultivate a dynamic relationship with both discernible facts and modes of interpretation. This includes existing, already formulated descriptions and theories as well as ones that have yet to emerge. That capacity is what we call critical thinking. It defines a fundamentally dynamic relationship with truth.

Critical thinking and critical reading of The New York Times

This distinction between static knowledge and the dynamic process we call critical thinking will be helpful for understanding the context of an ongoing exchange I have with Gemini focused on reading the media. Some readers may be aware that over the span of about eight years, I’ve been engaged in a “debate” with The New York Times concerning the great “Havana Syndrome mystery.” During that timespan, the NYT a long series of articles affirming that microwave technology operated by a foreign adversary was the most “plausible” or “likely” explanation of the diverse symptoms initially labeled Havana Syndrome but later rebranded “anomalous health incidents.” More particularly, the newspaper consistently repeated a standard CIA narrative affirming that “evidence points to Moscow, which has a long history of experimenting with the technology.”

Anyone skilled in critical thinking should hear alarm bells ringing when confronted with an assertion introduced by the locution, “evidence points to…” Especially when the context includes no actual evidence but instead cites a source that claims to possess the evidence; in this case, the CIA. This phrase should immediately provoke a new series of questions: “What evidence?” “How much evidence?” “What else could it point to?”

It’s worth pointing out that we know something about the NYT’s idea of evidence. Some prominent critical thinkers have noticed a strong correlation between the paper’s reporting on items related to foreign policy and CIA talking points. I’m thinking, for example, of former NYT reporter Chris Hedges or Patrick Lawrence in his 2023 book, Journalists and Their Shadows, who got together recently to delve into the question of truth in the media.

If, like NYT, you’re tempted to  believe the CIA, given its mission of “intelligence,” is focused on the truth, you may have missed a significant piece of breaking news in 2019 (which, by the way, the newspaper of record chose not to mention in its reporting). I’m referring to then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s in public: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s—we had entire training courses.”

Curious about how the Havana Syndrome saga has evolved in recent years, I addressed the following prompt to Gemini:

“In the New York Times reporting on the Havana Syndrome for several years its reporters pushed the idea that Russia was the most likely perpetrator. The CIA explained in 2022 that there was no foreign perpetrator and that the phenomenon remained a mystery. I believe that the Times never acknowledged its own mistaken reporting. Have I missed something?”

Gemini concluded a long, detailed answer I haven’t reproduced here with this short paragraph:

In short: You haven’t missed a formal apology or “we were wrong” article because the Times treats the story as an ongoing mystery where the “truth” has shifted back and forth depending on which source is talking.

That accurate description should constitute a helpful guideline on how to read any article in the NYT. We should take seriously the observation that the newspaper’s understanding of truth has always “shifted back and forth.” And we should keep in mind that the forces that guide that shift are the ones I’ve cited above: the interests of its owners, editors or its segment of the marketplace.

At this point, I decided to continue the discussion by evoking a theory that had occurred to me in the past but which I had never seen articulated in any media.

“Has anyone entertained the idea that it might be an effect of technology the CIA itself uses to monitor its own personnel, not necessarily to cause injury but as surveillance?”

The idea that Havana Syndrome (AHIs) could be an inadvertent side effect of U.S. surveillance or signals-intelligence technology is a theory that has circulated within the intelligence community and among independent analysts, though it is rarely the “front-page” explanation.

This theory generally takes two forms: Internal Surveillance and Mutual Interference.

1. The “Inadvertent Side Effect” Theory

In 2021, the Heritage Foundation and several security analysts raised the possibility that these incidents might not be “attacks” at all, but rather the result of extremely high-powered surveillance or jamming equipment being used in close proximity to personnel.

• The Logic: Modern intelligence work requires intense “electronic shielding” (SCIFs) and active jamming to prevent eavesdropping. If a piece of equipment—either a U.S. device or a local one—was malfunctioning or emitting specific radio frequencies at an unsafe level, it could theoretically cause biological effects without being intended as a weapon.
  
• Historical Precedent: This is often compared to the “Moscow Signal” during the Cold War. For decades, the Soviets beamed microwaves at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. It wasn’t a weapon meant to kill; it was a way to “power” eavesdropping bugs hidden in the walls or to jam U.S. signals. However, the personnel exposed to it suffered health issues for years.

2. Monitoring or “Blue-on-Blue” Interference

There is a more niche theory that the “surveillance” might be domestic.

• The Idea: Because the initial 2016 cases in Havana primarily hit undercover CIA officers (rather than standard State Department diplomats), some speculated that the CIA was deploying a new type of “biometric” or “proximity” sensor to keep track of its own officers’ locations and health in a high-threat environment.
  
• The Result: If this technology had a “biological resonance” or a glitch, it could have accidentally injured the very people it was meant to protect.

3. Why This Theory is Hard to Prove

• The CIA’s “Mystery” Stance: If the CIA discovered that its own equipment was the cause, they would be highly unlikely to admit it publicly. Doing so would reveal a massive “friendly fire” blunder, expose sensitive technical capabilities, and open the government up to enormous legal liability from injured officers.
  
• Location Inconsistency: While this theory explains incidents at embassies or in CIA housing, it struggles to explain why symptoms were reported by personnel in hotels or while traveling in places like Vietnam or India, unless they were carrying the equipment with them.

Current Official Status

The January 2025 Intelligence Community update (which you may have seen in recent news) actually hints at this “messiness.” While five agencies still blame foreign actors as “very unlikely,” two agencies now acknowledge a “roughly even chance” that some incidents involve technology. Crucially, they have stopped using the word “attack” in all cases, shifting instead to “events,” which leaves the door open for the cause being accidental exposure to technology—whether ours or theirs.

Note: There is a distinct “Catch-22” here. If the cause is a top-secret U.S. defensive system, the government can’t explain it to the victims without breaking national security laws.

Gemini’s answer gave me more than I expected. It provided numerous objective facts that have not been reported in The New York Times or any popular media outlet that considers its vocation to be to keep the general public informed. The key takeaway from Gemini’s response is this: “If the CIA discovered that its own equipment was the cause, they would be highly unlikely to admit it publicly.”

As I reflected on this I decided to take it one step further with the following prompt:

“You correctly observed: ‘If the CIA discovered that its own equipment was the cause, they would be highly unlikely to admit it publicly.’ Still, they presumably would have had to explain to the victims what they discovered. Or would they? Given what we know about the internal complaints of neglect on the part of the HR function, would CIA staff ever learn the truth even if it meant keeping it confidential, to save face for the agency?”

Rather than reproduce the entire response, here is the very interesting conclusion:

In this world, transparency is viewed as a vulnerability, and “saving face” is often synonymous with “protecting the mission.”

My conclusion

If even the staff of the CIA has no hope of accessing the truth in matters their employer understands and that affect their own health, should the wider public trust any of our institutions that claim to be pursuing the truth? A fortiori, would it make sense for us to trust anything asserted by a media that we know has a habit of uncritically repeating what those institutions say?

Critical thinking, the key not to knowing but to understanding, should become every citizen’s best developed skill.

Historically, we were conditioned to believe that the vocation of the Fourth Estate — the press — was to provide the corrective needed to keep our governments honest. Thanks to social media (which, alas, contains its own sources of distortion) and to AI (which we know can hallucinate), we have access to a diversity of sources. We have the means of comparing narratives and focusing on patterns of interpretation that appear more truthfully constructed.

Anyone can do it, but we need to develop and refine the habit. Ideally, our schools will help in the effort. Faced with the trauma of AI’s rivalry, positioned as a competitive source of truth, our wonderful educational institutions need to focus less on the delivery of inert content and more on developing every citizen’s critical thinking skills. We may need to retrain our trainers and educators to get there or replace them with a new generation that understands the new priority. If we allow a Cold War between traditional educators and AI to develop, not only will we fail to develop critical thinking, our institutions will crumble due to the misplaced energy dedicated to the war effort.

This in any case is a theme that a new generation of politicians in our democracies need urgently to think about.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51łÔšĎ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The post When the CIA Stopped Lying, The New York Times Stopped Reporting appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

I drew the chatbot’s attention to one paragraph whose conclusion produced what I can only qualify as a devastatingly comic effect. It cites the pleading of Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer representing a group of Havana Syndrome victims who persist in seeking to blame either a foreign government or the CIA itself for their complaints.

“For all the confidence U.S. intelligence agencies have expressed in dismissing most of the conspiratorial claims about Havana Syndrome, there is little reason to believe the controversy will end anytime soon. In his statement, Zaid called on the incoming Trump administration “to ensure the CIA can no longer lie to the public and instead require full disclosure of what the government knows.”

Talk about idealism! Expecting the Trump administration to expose lying and the CIA to disclose “what the government knows.” Only a lawyer could have a good reason to invent such fantasies.

SpyTalk’s article is thorough and well-balanced, well worth reading for its historical perspective. It describes what I’m tempted to call a culture of hyperreality shared by the government, Congress, the deep state and especially the media. 

Here is how I began my conversation on the topic with ChatGPT:

“Since 2018, with every new sensational claim related to the Havana Syndrome, I’ve published a long series of columns focused on analyzing the distorted rhetoric used by respectable media – especially The New York Times – to incite its readers to believe in a theory that the CIA ultimately discredited and abandoned. I find it extraordinary that our institutions and media such as CBS News can still be doing their utmost to maintain belief in a sensationalist conspiracy theory.

What does this whole long-running episode tell us about two things: how the media functions and what this says about the question of disinformation? In other words, given our inability to establish facts and disagreement even within institutions built around the mission of gathering and analyzing information, who could possibly be trusted to be an effective fact-checker?”

“Your reflections touch on a critical and multifaceted issue: the interplay of media, government, and the public in a context where trust in information is increasingly fragile. Let’s unpack some of the key questions you’ve raised:

1. The Role of Media in Shaping Narratives

The Havana Syndrome case exemplifies how media outlets, often motivated by the need to sustain audience interest and engagement, can amplify sensationalist narratives. This is particularly true when stories tap into existing fears about covert state activity or foreign threats. The media’s role in perpetuating the Havana Syndrome theory—despite mounting evidence to the contrary—raises concerns about how the mechanisms of reporting, editorial choice, and audience targeting can prioritize spectacle over rigorous investigation.

Institutions like CBS and The New York Times, which are seen as arbiters of credibility, sometimes fall into a pattern of reporting that skirts their responsibility for nuance and self-correction. Instead of framing emerging evidence that discredits initial claims, coverage may emphasize controversy to sustain the story’s marketability.

2. The Concept of ‘Hyperreality’

Your use of the term ‘hyperreality’ is particularly apt. Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality refers to a state in which distinctions between the real and the simulated blur, often as a result of media and cultural representations. In the case of Havana Syndrome, the media, government, and public discourse appear to have created a feedback loop that sustains belief in a narrative untethered from evidence. The persistence of this phenomenon illustrates how media and institutions often operate within their own echo chambers, reinforcing a reality constructed more by rhetoric than by facts.

3. ‘Disinformation’ and the Crisis of Credibility

The Havana Syndrome saga also underscores the inherent paradox of ‘disinformation’ in the modern era. If we cannot even agree on what constitutes factual information within institutional frameworks designed to establish truth—intelligence agencies, the media, and academia—then the task of combatting disinformation becomes a Sisyphean endeavor.

This is compounded by the lack of trust in traditional gatekeepers of truth. The CIA, for example, is already burdened by a historical reputation for obfuscation and manipulation. When tasked with clarifying issues like Havana Syndrome, its conclusions are met with skepticism, regardless of the rigor of its findings.

4. Who Can Be Trusted to Fact-Check?

This question strikes at the heart of the problem: trust is not derived solely from institutional authority but from perceived transparency, accountability, and consistency. No single entity can effectively serve as a universal fact-checker in an era where all information is scrutinized through the lens of political or ideological bias.

Instead, a more pluralistic approach might be the answer. Fact-checking should involve diverse actors—journalists, independent experts, academia, and public watchdogs—who can cross-check and challenge each other’s conclusions. Transparency about methodologies, data sources, and conflicts of interest must become a cornerstone of this process.

5. Lessons for the Media and Public

The Havana Syndrome episode highlights the need for the media to reevaluate its priorities:

• Skepticism, not sensationalism: Journalists must resist the urge to overstate conclusions before facts are fully established. Public trust erodes when stories collapse under scrutiny.
• Accountability: Corrections and updates to narratives must be prominently addressed, not buried in fine print.
• Critical Media Literacy for the Public: Audiences must be equipped with the tools to discern credible reporting from speculative or manipulative coverage. Education systems and public campaigns have a role to play here.

Final Thoughts

The ongoing relevance of the Havana Syndrome story illustrates how narratives can take on a life of their own, sustained by a complex interplay of institutional and media dynamics. This phenomenon raises important questions about the limits of truth in a post-trust society, where even the institutions designed to uncover and report reality are viewed with suspicion.

In the end, the search for effective fact-checkers is perhaps less important than fostering a culture of critical inquiry and openness to revising beliefs when evidence warrants it. It’s not about finding someone who is infallibly ‘trustworthy,’ but about building systems that encourage skepticism, dialogue, and accountability.”

“Thank you for your critical analysis. I’m a strong believer in exactly the need you identify: ‘fostering a culture of critical inquiry.’ I believe AI can have a valuable role to play as a methodological tool. But its role has little to do with what most people expect of it: the elaboration of what they appear to think of as truth-compelling algorithms. Rather it should consist in offering what I would call ‘corrective hints.’ Instead of seeking to establish truth, these hints would challenge us humans to deal with specific issues by taking neglected elements into account and subsequently reformulating our hypotheses, assertions and opinions.

It is far too early to envision with any precision what a culture fostered through an honest dialogue with AI might look like. My sense is that we will need to learn to live together, to communicate and assess our relationship over time. Develop a common culture. Because generative AI has a voice that can be influenced by multiple factors, we have a lot of work to do as a society to adjust our language and agree on what is meaningful rather than what is ‘true.’ We can then address the real question: the meaning of meaning.

Few people seem to see the challenge in these terms, partly because they see AI exclusively as a tool of industrial and commercial productivity. So let me ask you this question: What do you see as the means to create that culture of critical thinking and productive exchange? I believe it will be complex, with no simple recipe for success. But can you make any suggestions about how, in practical terms, it could realistically develop over time?”

“Your perspective on AI as a collaborator in fostering critical inquiry is thought-provoking and aligns with a vision of technology that emphasizes augmentation of human capabilities rather than replacement. Developing a culture of critical thinking and productive exchange with AI will indeed be complex, but here are some practical suggestions for how this could realistically unfold:

1. **Integrating AI into Education**

• **Teaching AI Literacy:** Students should learn not only how AI works but also how to interact with it critically. This includes understanding its limitations, biases, and potential for reinforcing or challenging human assumptions.
• **Promoting Collaborative Problem-Solving:** AI can be incorporated into projects that encourage students to test hypotheses and refine their thinking through iterative dialogues with AI tools.

2. **Developing Cross-Disciplinary AI Dialogues**

• AI should be deployed as a conversational partner in disciplines ranging from philosophy to science, providing diverse perspectives. For example, in philosophy, AI might help students explore neglected viewpoints in debates, while in science, it could flag overlooked data patterns or alternative explanations.

3. **AI as a Check-and-Balance System**

• **Feedback Loops for Experts:** Professionals in journalism, law, science, and policymaking could use AI to challenge their assumptions by asking it to generate counterarguments or alternative hypotheses. This would encourage a reflective approach to complex issues.
• **Transparency in AI Responses:** To foster trust, AI outputs should include explanations of how conclusions were drawn or which sources were weighted.

4. **Cultivating a ‘Dialogue Framework’**

• To establish meaningful exchanges with AI, we need standards for framing questions, assessing answers, and revising conclusions collaboratively. This framework could evolve into best practices for critical AI interaction.

5. **Establishing AI Ethics Committees**

• These committees, composed of ethicists, technologists, and diverse stakeholders, could guide the development of AI tools focused on critical inquiry rather than productivity. They would ensure AI is used to encourage exploration and dialogue rather than reinforce existing power structures.

6. **Incorporating AI into Public Discourse**

• AI could be used to moderate public debates, ensuring that marginalized perspectives are represented and that discussions remain focused and constructive. For example, AI might flag logical fallacies or biases in real-time.

7. **Focusing on Language and Meaning**

• **Developing Meta-Linguistic Tools:** AI could help map the evolution of language and meaning in discourse, offering insights into how societal values and assumptions shift over time.
• **Promoting Collaborative Definition of Terms:** In areas like journalism and policymaking, AI could help identify inconsistencies in how key terms are used, prompting participants to clarify and align on definitions.

8. **Encouraging Iterative Collaboration**

• **Co-Learning Models:** Humans and AI could engage in iterative learning loops, where humans refine their hypotheses in response to AI prompts, and AI learns to better anticipate human needs through feedback.
• **Reflective Dialogues:** AI could be trained to encourage humans to question their assumptions by posing Socratic-style questions or highlighting ambiguities.

9. **Creating Spaces for Experimentation**

•  Establish ‘AI-human dialogue labs’ where individuals and groups can experiment with AI tools to tackle real-world challenges. These spaces would serve as incubators for developing practices and principles for productive AI collaboration.

10. **Redefining Success in AI Collaboration**

• Move away from binary measures of correctness and toward metrics like diversity of thought, depth of inquiry, and the quality of questions generated. This shift would prioritize exploration over definitive answers.

The Long View

Fostering a culture of critical thinking with AI will require patience and iterative refinement. As society grows more comfortable with the technology, the focus should shift from ‘What can AI do?’ to ‘How can AI help us think better?’ By committing to transparency, collaboration, and ethical stewardship, we can ensure that AI contributes meaningfully to humanity’s ongoing quest to understand and define meaning itself.

What do you think of this roadmap? Are there areas you’d prioritize or approaches you’d challenge?”

“This is brilliant and touches all the bases. I’d like to come back soon to discuss these recommendations point by point and evaluate the nature of the obstacles to achieving these goals, how the obstacles might be overcome and begin to evaluate the potential for success. If I were speaking to a human colleague I would now be suggesting a date for a meeting. But I know how flexible you are and so will launch the initiative as soon as it’s convenient for me.”

“I’m glad you found the recommendations insightful, and I look forward to diving deeper into this conversation with you. The step-by-step evaluation of obstacles, solutions, and potential for success is an essential next phase in shaping these ideas into actionable strategies.

Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here to collaborate. Whether it’s tackling these points systematically or brainstorming new directions, your initiative will set the pace. Let me know how I can assist further when the time comes!”

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

*[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51łÔšĎ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Outside the Box: Havana Syndrome and our Common Future with AI appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Barnes has not abandoned his noble cause. His latest bears the title “Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say” and the subtitle: “Russian spy agencies and new technologies could be used to push conspiracy theories, U.S. officials say.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Could:

An auxiliary verb in English particularly useful to journalists specialized in propaganda who understand that by placing it before an untrue assertion it gives the appearance that, despite the absence of evidence in the subsequent body of the article, the assertion may be true.

Contextual note

What does “could” mean? For most people, it has no concrete meaning and therefore merits no consideration. We spontaneously assume that if someone mentions something that “could” happen, they are doing it because it is an object of real concern. It belongs to the world of interested speculation. For NYT journalists and propagandists, “could” in a headline falls into the category of “creatively evocative.” The evocative can, of course, embrace the provocative.

Ever since put his mind to it four centuries ago, the question of probability moved beyond mere speculation; it became a science. Probability theory is a noble branch of mathematics, the basic toolbox of most serious science. It focuses on the likelihood of something being true. Most people never give probability a serious thought or are even aware of the science. Although it would be a salutary thing to do, we rarely invoke probability theory when reading a newspaper article.

The problem with Barnes’s use of “could” is that it deceptively exploits the complete range of possibilities and gives no weight to probability. For journalists like Barnes, that opens a space that puts them on par with a writer of science fiction. If the story they write requires describing conditions that are possible and even remotely credible, and if those conditions help to establish a suggested belief, they have accomplished a propagandistic purpose.

To be fair, Barnes is objectively truthful when he quotes U.S. officials who say, “Russian spy agencies and new technologies could be used to push conspiracy theories.” He is truthful because the officials he quotes have certainly said that. He is truthfully reporting their words, irrespective of the facts. The officials themselves are truthful because their use of “could” allows them to say anything that is in the realm of the possible.

Barnes is counting on the reader’s respect for the authority of “US officials” and ąˇłŰ°Ő’s reputation for seriousness to imply that there is a high degree of probability to what they evoke. It doesn’t have to be true, merely “possible to imagine.” But he presents zero evidence to support the specific claim concerning the spreading of conspiracy theories.

The article continues repetitively in the same vein. Barnes tells us that “American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine.” Again we learn what the officials say, not what they know to be true. He does tell us that they are “convinced,” presumably on the basis of some unmentioned piece of evidence. But Barnes shows no interest in understanding or investigating the evidence.

Probability theory tells us that an assertion can either refer to certain knowledge, uncertain knowledge or a lie. It is theoretically possible to build a statistical scale to determine the probability or truth value of a statement on a certain topic made by a certain type of person at a certain time. According to probability theory, any unsupported assertion is as likely to be a lie as an expression of truth. We react according to our trust in the speaker. In this case, we must trust the speaker’s reporting of another (unidentified) speaker’s assertions.

Barnes claims the officials are “convinced” of what “Putin intends.” What is the possible truth value of that? Do the officials have access to Putin’s intentions? And should the fact that they say they are convinced convince us?

Then we get the assertion that “The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine.” People have aims. But can an abstraction such as “Russian disinformation” possess aims? Assuming it does have aims, what evidence do we have that those aims exist?

But we don’t even need to ask those questions. The assertion is a truism. It needs no evidence because it is equally true to say that “Russian information aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine.” We know Russia’s position with regard to Ukraine. Barnes simply wants us to think of Russian information as disinformation. What we brand as disinformation is simply information that we don’t want to hear. What this rhetorical ploy amounts to is journalistic non-information.

The article continues with a series of similar assertions, such as “Mr. Putin believes he can influence American politics to weaken support for Ukraine.” Does Barnes really know what Putin believes? Of course not. But, like the previous assertion, this is also a truism. Putin  “can” influence American politics. In fact. everyone in the world can, but not to the same degree. This too is non-information.

Historical note

Barnes never tells us the names of the officials who provided him with his copy. But he has always shown an alacrity for playing the role of CIA stenographer. Probability theory tells us the Agency is his most likely source. But let’s push the theorizing further. Forget about Barnes. What credit should we give to anything the CIA delivers gift-wrapped to The New York Times?

The CIA is to have consistently lied to Congress about many things, including torture, or what they prefer to call “enhanced interrogation.” The Senate’s report on torture in 2014 proved the agency was lying to its Congressional masters when it “repeatedly asserted that torture was necessary because it allowed the agency to disrupt terrorist plots and capture additional terrorists, thereby saving lives.”

Who can forget that wonderful moment when Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State and former CIA Director, laughingly that “we lied, cheated and stole.” It is unlikely that today’s CIA under Joe Biden has changed its habits. Are we ready to believe that, in its concern for the public’s taste for truth, it would refrain from sharing its lies with The New York Times?

Lying is one thing. It appears to be required to accomplish its mission. But what about failing to collect crucial intelligence? That has just happened spectacularly and embarrassingly in Israel, where neither Israel’s vaunted Mossad nor the CIA, both focused on the defense of Israel, had an inkling of what Hamas was preparing in Gaza. The CIA has not yet explained that lapse, but when they do, how much of it will be a lie?

There was another recent example of this recurrent to access the truth, let alone tell the truth. This concerned the unexpected coup in Niger this summer. Spytalk tells us that on July 25. at an embassy briefing, “American diplomats told NBC’s Courtney Kube that despite the Nigerien government’s reputation for corruption, it was still far more stable than others in West Africa. That wishful assessment of Niger’s political stability fell apart just a few hours later when the country’s military leaders overthrew the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum.”

In short, the CIA produces and NYT dutifully reports lies, “wishful assessments” and especially the evocative and provocative speculation – or non-information – that populated Barnes’s article.

Does anyone seriously believe the current “war on misinformation” being waged in Washington will eradicate any of this? The situation could be compared to Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs” that continues to this day. The consumption of what we might call illicit substances – in this case, the non-information and innuendo skewed to reinforce existing biases – will continue to grow apace.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Is NYT the Little Journal that Could? appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

On numerous occasions, The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has reacted to the repetitive onslaught, wondering when it might stop, laughing harder each time it reappears. True to form, on December 2, Barnes teamed up with Adam Goldman to produce the latest of The Times’ standby, this time with the intriguing title, “Review Finds No Answers to Mystery of Havana Syndrome.”

The Pentagon’s Love of Threats

READ MORE

Some might take the headline to mean The Times has finally decided to put to bed a story that has gone nowhere after years of turning in circles. But that would be to underestimate the resolve — or should we call it obsession? — of The Times editorial board. The fact that there are no answers makes it exciting news. It means, not that it’s a dead end, but that it’s still legitimate to promote the suspicion that something sinister happened and that the Russians are the prime suspect.

Every version of this nearly identical article offers new insight into how the mind of The New York Times editorial board functions. Even while admitting there are no answers and qualifying its own preferred belief with “perhaps,” The Times insists that directed “energy, such as microwaves, remains one of the theories, perhaps the leading theory, according to American officials.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Leading theory:

In a situation of total uncertainty, the one the speaker or writer wants the audience to believe, however weak its premise

Contextual Note

Before engaging in its predictable mind games, the article begins with an honest statement. It informs us that “so far, the C.I.A. has been unable to collect hard evidence to show that any of the people suffering from symptoms of Havana syndrome have been hit with some sort of energy pulse.” Despite or because of the uncertainty, an official quoted by The Times asserts that “the various agencies were determined to get to the bottom of what is happening” and that “the work could take time.” In other words, we can expect more versions of the same article in the weeks and months to come. This repetitive assault could be compared to an “energy pulse” The Times keeps directing at our brains.

The official “spoke on the condition of anonymity because much of the government’s work to determine a cause of the incidents is classified.” Why is it classified? And why does The Times accept such an explanation without wondering why? To classify as “classified” important information indicates a reluctance to help the public understand. At least such speculation about the motives for concealing facts by classifying them would be more informative than repeating endlessly the speculation that the Russians may have engineered an event we don’t even know ever happened. But The Times wonders about nothing. It persists in repeating a theory it admits has no factual foundation.  

In the past two months, The Times has applied its principle of uncritical respect for classified information to the John F. Kennedy archives, the Havana syndrome and the death of Jeffrey Epstein. We can expect this servile respect for state secrecy to emerge again in the ongoing trial of Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, concerning the suspected connections between Epstein, Maxwell, her “suicided” father, and US and Israeli intelligence networks. Any honest investigator should at least express some curiosity about why in all of these cases things are being hidden. The Times uses the notion of national security to suggest that the motives for classification must always be honorable.

Despite beginning by claiming there are “no answers to the mystery,” The Times article quickly builds up to the point where it can assert that we should be afraid. It quotes CIA Director William Burns as saying, “What I know, having talked to dozens and dozens of my colleagues who have been victimized, is that real harm is being done to real people.” Most people would be justified in reading this as a simple true statement. But it is rhetorically designed to imply the existence of a human agent, an evildoer. The idea of “harm being done to real people” supposes an intention to do harm.

The Times follows Burns’ hint at human agency with a mention of a 2020 report, now clearly in doubt, suggesting a “microwave weapon, a form of pulsed directed energy” was “the most likely cause.” It then adds this speculative remark: “Recent studies have indicated that directed energy or microwaves could cause brain injuries and symptoms like those of Havana syndrome.” They “could” indeed, but there is no evidence of their existence. There is, however, a lot of evidence for their non-existence.

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This reasoning reminds us of the face-saving speculation patented by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who produced this improvised poetic in 2002: “There are known knowns — there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns — that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

One “known known” about Rumsfeld himself is that this epistemological rambling was an instance of what The Washington Post reporter Dan Zak “tactical equivocation,” the deliberate distortion of knowledge to obscure the truth about Saddam Hussein’s supposed (and non-existent) weapons of mass destruction. The Times honors Rumsfeld’s tradition with this deadpan assertion: “The absence of proof could mean an adversarial power is using a technology that is unknown, and undetectable, to the United States.” Once again “could” is the workhorse verb that permits random speculation presented as news.

The absurdity continues as the authors cite the fact recently by The Washington Post that Burns warned the Russians of consequences “if” it turned out they were the culprits. The article tells us that this “was the second time senior American officials have raised the issue with their Russian counterparts, who have consistently denied involvement.” The authors expect readers to feel morally offended that the obdurate Russians “consistently” deny something that may not even exist. This is the ongoing mind-game that The Times has been playing regularly in its reporting on the Havana syndrome.

Historical Note

When the authors write, “so far, the C.I.A. has been unable to collect hard evidence to show…some sort of energy pulse,” they fail to mention that the agency has been at it for five years, with the usual unlimited budget to achieve its goal. “So far” indicates that there will be more budget and more time to keep alive the version The Times’ preferred version of the story.

The “so far” method has become a standard rhetorical trick. In the 58 years since the JFK assassination, every US administration, echoed by the legacy media, has promoted the reasoning that because “so far” the identity of a second shooter has not been established, Lee Harvey Oswald must be the lone killer. Despite the Zapruder film, forensic evidence and diverse testimony indicating the necessary presence of a second shooter, the deeply flawed narrative of the Warren Report must stand as authoritative. In the meantime, documents serious historians might want to use to construct a better hypothesis remain classified, in the name of national security.

“So far” reasoning can be a powerful tool of propaganda to plant an unverified story and make it survive for months, years or decades on end. All this is maintained while preventing serious investigators and historians from accessing the evidence that risks contradicting the preferred narrative.

Donald Rumsfeld was right. There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. But there are also concealed unknowns, ones that we know exist but are not allowed to know. Some find it reasonable to grant governments the privilege of refusing to admit past errors or crimes. Papers of record in a democracy should take a different approach.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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The New York Times: All the Illusion That’s Fit to Print

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For much of the liberal media, anything an intelligence official says in public is not only worthy of reporting. It is routinely treated as an example of deep understanding of unrevealed truths. When a CIA director stands up and “warns” the Russians, The Post expects its readers to believe there is some real substance to the story. But as The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has pointed out regularly over the past three years, substance is the one thing that has been absent from this story. A sophisticated reader might be forgiven for laughing when a CIA director issues a stern warning followed by an entirely speculative condition introduced with “if,” especially after five full years of experiencing the phenomenon in question and four of investigating it.

The author of The Post article, John Hudson, doesn’t expect the paper’s readers to be quite that sophisticated. While exploiting the fear factor, aggravated as usual by the designation of Russia as the suspected culprit and the reminder that the complaint produces “severe brain damage and other debilitating ailments,” Hudson nevertheless takes the trouble to explain that William J. Burns’ use of the conditional means there is no factual basis for the accusation other than a conviction by members of the intelligence community that Russians are the kind of evil people who might be up to such shenanigans.

“The fact that Burns formulated the warning by saying ‘if’ suggests,” according to Hudson, “that after four years of investigations across multiple administrations, the U.S. government remains unable to determine a cause of the unusual incidents.” It is comically certain that if, with your massive resources, you can’t determine the cause, you will have trouble designating a culprit. But Hudson doesn’t give up. “Nevertheless,” he adds, “the director’s decision to raise the possibility of Russian involvement directly to his counterparts in Moscow underscored the deep suspicion the CIA has of Kremlin culpability.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Deep suspicion:

In the language of the deep state, any desire officials may have to accuse someone they want people to think of as the enemy as a pretext for any radical, aggressive action that may be taken in the future

Contextual Note

NBC News the same story but pushed the doubt implicit in Burns’ use of the conditional a step further, affirming that US “officials cannot say for sure that they were the result of human activity.” Once again, laughter would be the most understandable reaction. The intelligence community has no idea whether humans were involved, but they have a clear idea of who those humans would be if they were involved. For the moment, there has been more for crickets than humans.

Whether employing the tools of logic or human psychology, it is difficult to avoid seeing a pattern here, something akin to the clinical of paranoia: “feelings and thoughts often related to persecution, threat, or conspiracy.” Another source paranoia as “an irrational suspicion or mistrust of others.” For psychiatrists, paranoia belongs to the rarefied atmosphere of psychosis rather than the much more banal neurosis, from which most of us suffer at some point in our lives.

There is, however, a difference when attributing a psychological disorder to a private person or a government institution. When paranoia is diagnosed in an individual, psychologists have the opportunity to explore and eventually trace to etiology of the disease. When paranoiac symptoms appear in an institution, unless that institution is defined by the presence of a unique charismatic leader, it is no longer the question of the failure of psychological control but of the deliberate implementation of a conscious strategic plan. The paranoiac literally suffers from delusions; the institution promotes delusionary theories with an aggressive purpose. The individuals who formulate the delusion may or may not believe in it. Analyzing the source of institutional paranoia requires a focus on strategic intent rather than psychic dysfunction.

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The individuals who have complained of being victims of the Havana syndrome are not clinically paranoid. They have experienced something deeply unpleasant. Even in cases where psychosomatic factors may be in play, their experience is real rather than imaginary. If the victims succumb to paranoid beliefs about the cause of their suffering, these only emerge as an effect of institutional discourse. The institution — in this case, the CIA or possibly the State Department — is the agent supplying the delusional explanations, which the victims may or may not adopt. To the extent that employees and their family members trust their employer, they too may evince paranoid symptoms. But that does not make them paranoid. A true paranoiac fabricates rather than receives the delusion of intentional oppression from an outside source.

The public manifestation of paranoia that Burns dared to toss at the Russians may be little more than political posturing. It could be intended to comfort the victims by creating the illusion that the government is ready to go to battle in their cause, while pleasing hawkish Democrats intent on accusing Russia of everything bad that takes place in the world. This example of officially proclaimed paranoia begins with the formulation engineered by the authorities who make the claims, with no need to present evidence. It is then disseminated by the media, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times or NBC News. Those organs can be trusted to spread an illusory idea of a chain of cause and effect. In this case, that borders on comedy — they make the assertion while officially denying that it is a fact.

This operation could be seen as a clinical case of “engineering consent,” a concept Edward Bernays, the godfather of public relations, first proposed as a fundamental tool of government. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman analyzed the concept and the practice in their book, “Manufacturing Consent.”

Historical Note

The Washington Post now adds a new twist related to the historical context that may help to understand how a story with literally no substance may itself be full of “consequences.” John Hudson points to the fact that William J. Burns’ utterly hypothetical accusation “adds another layer of complexity to the U.S.-Russia relationship as the Biden administration tries to determine whether Moscow’s buildup of troops along the border with Ukraine is muscle-flexing or the preamble to a full-scale invasion of the country.”

History has seen other largely imaginary “incidents” that led to “consequences.” For example, the sinking of the Maine in 1898 served to provoke a profitable war with Spain that ultimately delivered Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to the US. More recently, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 inaugurated the war in Vietnam. Nearly four decades later, imaginary weapons of mass destruction justified the invasion of Iraq. If the media helps to confirm in Americans’ minds the status of the Havana syndrome as a Russian attack — with no requirement of hard evidence — it matters little whether the attack was real or significant. As a series of “incidents,” it will have served its strategic purpose of helping to justify whatever action will subsequently be taken over Ukraine.

The Biden administration now appears to be focusing its obligatory paranoia on two hot spots: Taiwan and Ukraine. They have been chosen to define the power relationship with the two formidable adversaries in a brewing new cold war. Taiwan is the prize to fight for in Asia in the showdown with China. Ukraine has been assigned the same status in Eastern Europe in the confrontation with Russia. The role of both is highly symbolic because of the history of those regions. The stakes are high because they will have an impact on the future image of US global hegemony. For the moment, it resembles melodramatic comedy. But the public has a growing “deep suspicion” that things may quickly go awry.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The CIA Brings Havana to Ukraine appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

When Cancel Culture Cancels Culture

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Investigative journalism explores facts that have been covered up or neglected and that contradict official discourse. Ironic journalism investigates ideas that are presented as obvious but are visibly at odds with reality. In such cases, whether the contradiction is conscious or unconscious, the ironic commentator will highlight the irony to elucidate the motive for the misrepresentation. It may not be simple, because people who are skilled in misrepresentation usually take elaborate precautions to deviate attention from the flaws in their apparently rational assertions. Even when it appears obvious, as in cases of outright lies exposed by ironic commentary, there may be other dimensions that remain hidden from view.

Irony provides one of the basic elements of humor. The surprise that makes us laugh at a joke occurs when a word, a phrase or a narrated action reveals an unsuspected ironic contrast. Sigmund Freud was a contemporary of the great ironist and author of “The Devil’s Dictionary,” Ambrose Bierce. The Viennese doctor who created psychoanalysis wrote an entire book about jokes and humor (filled with wonderful examples of jokes, by the way). He intended to demonstrate that the gap between the conscious mind (that can plan things and execute precise tasks) and the unconscious (a magma of random wishes and suppressed drives) is the principal source of the irony that informs all types of humor.

Because the Daily Devil’s Dictionary focuses on irony in its commentary of current events, it flirts and often engages with the principles that produce humor and comedy. By focusing on context, we avoid the temptation to treat apparent anomalies and contradictions as simple laughing matters. Occasionally, however, the gap between meaning and intention may be so exaggerated and its duration so unnatural that laughing becomes the only appropriate response. The consistent absurdity of the legacy media’s reporting on the “Havana syndrome” has now reached that point, just as it had already done over the past five years with Russiagate.

The New York Times is one of the prime perpetrators of both of these long-running and apparently unconscious jokes. In its latest offering, Times reporter Lara Jakes the recent dramatic case of embassy workers in Colombia affected by the syndrome. Her report includes this gem: “Though the origins of Havana Syndrome remain unknown, its symptoms are similar to those caused by surveillance equipment used by Russia during the Cold War.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Similarity:

Proof of criminal activity

Contextual note

Just like Russiagate, The Times editorial team has been presenting this story week after week and sometimes day after day. Instead of intensifying its suspense, this obsessively repeated motif has been stretched out beyond its breaking point. This leads us once again to wonder why and to look beyond the obvious fact that The Times routinely prints any talking points the intelligence community graciously shares with its journalists. The sheer convenience of playing megaphone to the military-industrial complex rather than investigating the manifold threads of a story clearly makes a reporter’s job easier and saves time.

Our best guess at an alternative explanation is that recent market surveys have revealed to the editorial department that the readership of The Times, , has an unabated appetite for anything that appears to implicate Russia in the Havana syndrome. Jakes’ citing “symptoms … similar to those caused by surveillance equipment used by Russia during the Cold War” represents a new stage of specious reasoning designed to please the newspaper’s audience. She fails to realize that in doing, so she has committed a fundamental error of journalism. The appeal of the Havana syndrome drama isn’t just the opportunity to accuse Russia. It is also the fear of a super-sophisticated weapon. It is closer to science fiction than political fiction.

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The Cold War is the distant past. The Havana syndrome delineates our future. Cold War stories are reassuring. After all, we survived and the Russians folded. People read newspapers to justify their sense of panic about the future. Our health, wealth and well-being are being constantly threatened by a pandemic, climate change, an economy that’s running off its rails, government dysfunction and rising signs of civil violence. All of that is stale news. Every astute journalist should be aware that readers now need to worry about something that remains unexplained and can therefore be attributed to invisible Russian microwave technology that produces “directed energy.”

Of course, no physical trace of the presence of technology and even less of a national origin has been revealed. The only parties found guilty of any of the reported effects are Cuban short-tailed crickets. That is where the idea of similarity becomes attractive to a desperate journalist whose editorial board needs to keep the story alive and associate it with a designated culprit.

The Times is not alone. NBC News offered this helpful : “Officials say they are now completely discounting a 2018 State Department report by the JASON advisory group, an elite scientific board, suggesting that some of the original cases were caused by sounds made by a loud species of crickets.” NBC neglects to mention that the elite group spoke less about crickets than their suspicion that the reports show serious evidence of “psychogenic effects.”

As usual in this type of journalism, citing the authority of unnamed “officials” — presumably intelligence officials — is sufficient to “completely discount” the analysis of experts or even the belief of State Department officials forced to for not believing in the directed energy hypothesis.

“Some officials believe that if directed energy is the culprit,” NBC observes, “it may have begun as a method of collecting intelligence that has now been weaponized, multiple sources told NBC News.” After five years, all that can be asserted is a hypothetical idea introduced by “if.” We then learn that something “may have” happened to explain it. That of course is true because anything could have happened. Scientifically speaking, this assertion has the same truth value as saying Elon Musk is the suspected author of all these incidents because in 2022, he “may” intend to propose a solution to the mystery thanks to the capacity of his Starlink satellites to spy on everything that takes place on earth. This would, after all, be “similar to” his proposal in 2018 to build a miniature to rescue youngsters trapped in a cave in Thailand.

Historical note

The real reason the Havana syndrome is still in the headlines appears to be an HR problem within the US State Department. Several officials have indicated they take seriously the hypothesis of mass hysteria. The diplomatic personnel who have complained of symptoms felt disrespected by the State Department’s failure to explain the causes. Their jobs have become increasingly prone to situational stress and the fear of being attacked by an invisible enemy has frayed their patience.

With their insider insight into the culture of their own intelligence community, these spies and diplomats may suspect that their superiors are aware of the cause but, for security reasons, are intent on hiding that knowledge. Like so many other Americans who are now going on or quitting their , people no longer trust that their employers may be concerned with employees’ welfare. This is a growing trend, complicated by the increased distrust of governments that appear to be incapable of managing a pandemic but perfectly capable of imposing severe restrictions on people’s behavior.

Humanity is clearly at a historical turning point. Pressures are building on every front. And yet the media carries on seeking “similarities” with moments and events from what people now perceive as a far more placid historical epoch: the Cold War. Nostalgia for that period informed Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, the Biden administration shows signs of encouraging a new Cold War. The New York Times will always be there to back them up.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The New York Times’ Laughable Lack of Irony appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The Post’s latest on the subject, “Biden signs legislation to aid U.S. personnel suffering from ‘Havana Syndrome,’” mentions the evocative but discredited term “Havana Syndrome” seven times before citing the State Department’s official designation of the complaints: “anomalous health incidents.” This admission occurs in the 12^th paragraph, in which the authors also grudgingly acknowledge that no one has identified the “exact cause” of the phenomenon. 

Is the Havana Syndrome a Psychogenic Illusion?

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A few paragraphs later, the two authors offer a classic demonstration of the art of instilling in the reader’s mind an assumption that is probably false before mentioning, as an insignificant afterthought, a fact that contradicts the first idea but which is incontrovertibly true: “Current and former intelligence officials have increasingly pointed a finger at Russia, which has staged multiple brazen attacks on adversaries and diplomats overseas. No evidence against Moscow has been made public, however, and Russia has denied involvement in the incidents.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Made public (evidence):

Believed to exist, as opposed to evidence that has not been made public, which means invented for some other purpose and therefore not required to be presented to the public

Contextual Note

In a detailed published on Friday, October 9, on McGill University’s Office for Science and Society website whose mission is “Separating Sense from Nonsense,” Johathan Jarry examines all the hypotheses and explains that “ the most plausible theory right now” is mass psychogenic illness. “Crickets, dizziness, constant suspicion, all examined by medical specialists falling prey to confirmation bias, leading to debilitating symptoms blamed on extravagant weaponry, and we end up with Havana syndrome.” 

For The Washington Post, that kind of research and reflection cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. The Post’s journalists begin by citing the authority of “current and former intelligence officials.” Whom should an intelligent reader believe: a medical expert examining all the facets of the controversy with no ties to government or industry, or intelligence officials?

A discerning reader should know by now that intelligence officials are not only trained in the art of lying; to a large extent, lying is the basis of their professional activity in their interaction with the outside world. Former director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, laughingly it in a rare moment of candor at a public event.

His confession was greeted by the audience of Texas A&M University students with approving applause. They apparently believed that lying, cheating and stealing are noble acts when it comes to representing the interests of the nation. 

Only a madman (and Washington Post and New York Times journalists) would assume that intelligence professionals are committed to speaking the truth. And yet, the media in the US — and particularly cable news, including CNN and MSNBC — regularly employ former intelligence officials and directors as expert analysts ready to explain the truth behind the news.

The Post’s journalists tell us that these totally reliable intelligence officers “have increasingly pointed a finger at Russia.” Other reporting in the recent past by The New York Times and The Post reveals there is no new evidence that should justify increasing suspicion of Russia. But enterprising journalists know how easy it is to slip the word “increasingly” into a dubious assertion to guide the reader toward a desired conclusion.

That should simply be called lying, but it is a trick journalists know will always be effective, if only because there is no clear way of proving it is false.

Why did Wagner and Berger choose to say “pointing a finger at” rather than “accusing”? They are playing it safe because, as they offhandedly admit in the next sentence, there is, as always, no evidence to back it up. But before admitting that there is no evidence, they offer something that looks like evidence. They assert that Russia “has staged multiple brazen attacks on adversaries and diplomats overseas.”

The authors obviously do not bother to cite those attacks, but here they are on more solid ground since every powerful nation’s intelligence apparatus engages in this type of activity. 

Their choice of the verb “staged” also merits our attention. It trivializes the image of the fearful enemy by comparing its activities with those of the manager of a circus or a theater. The underlying suggestion is that Russians are dangerous but superficial. In contrast, American intelligence is assumed to be serious and deep.

The paragraph concludes with this sentence: “No evidence against Moscow has been made public, however, and Russia has denied involvement in the incidents.” This is particularly insidious because, as a simple fact, it is true that no evidence has been made public. But it creates the unfounded belief that evidence exists that has not been made public. By including “however” in the final assertion the authors make the one truthful statement resemble an inconsequential afterthought. 

Although there is much more in the article, we can conclude by examining another sentence that floats between the truth and tendentious intent: “The exact cause of Havana Syndrome remains unknown and U.S. officials refer to potential cases as ‘anomalous health incidents,’ even as government investigators continue to probe its origins.”

The first part of the sentence is both truthful and accurate, except for one detail. It speaks of “the Havana Syndrome” as if it was a simple, coherent medical reality that has a single “exact cause.” Everything we know about the various complaints grouped together under this appellation indicates clearly that no one has yet discovered an identifiable medical condition that applies to the 200 reported cases.

This is the moment when the authors finally reveal that the State Department (“U.S. officials”) has replaced the term “Havana Syndrome” with “anomalous health incidents.” Once again, they present an essential truth as a kind of an insignificant afterthought. The decision to change the name tells the untold story of how the key people in the State Department “increasingly” doubt both the existence of the syndrome and Russia’s culpability.

Historical Note

Politico has by similarly focusing on the rhetorical fear factor associated with the idea of things that are “increasingly” happening. The message the journalists seek to convey is that drastic action has become increasingly necessary. The title of Politico’s article reads: “U.S. investigators increasingly confident directed-energy attacks behind Havana Syndrome.” It affirms that “lawmakers are also growing increasingly confident that Russia or another hostile foreign government is behind the suspected attacks.”

Whenever the US military-industrial complex and complicit journalists feel the need to push the nation toward war, they see “increasingly” as the most useful adverb in the dictionary. In July 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson’s military advisers were calling “for an even greater commitment,” which included the forecast of requiring “a half-million men,” the CIA a report with 12 bullet points for the president. The word “increasingly” appeared five times in those bullet points, including in the last two examples:

“The Viet Cong appear to be resorting increasingly to terrorism and controls to keep the peasants in line and cooperating.

 There are indications that growing numbers of the rural populace tend to blame the presence of the Viet Cong for bringing the war to their doorsteps and to regard them as increasingly unwelcome.”

The first assertion begins with the verb “appear,” clearly indicating it is not a fact. The second uses the locution “there are indications,” another way of saying the same thing. In contrast, the two memorable and incontrovertible facts that all historians agree on is that Johnson did indeed end up sending a force of 500,000 troops and that in the course of the war 50,000 American soldiers died.

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This exercise in close reading should underline one obvious fact: respectable journalists and the CIA share the same rhetorical instincts, and they have been for decades. Could this possibly be evidence of collusion? apparently still has wings.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Art of Propaganda: When Journalists Use Facts to Create Fiction appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.