Richard Engel and the "bad Assad" propaganda stories that built the case for the war on Syria

Friday, 17 April 2015

Richard Engel and the "bad Assad" propaganda stories that built the case for the war on Syria

The Richard Engel Kidnapping Fake - MoA Scooped MSM By 28 Month

The veil is lifting a bit over the slew of the "bad Assad" propaganda stories that built the case for the war on Syria. The New York Times reports today: NBC News Alters Account of Correspondent’s Kidnapping in Syria

NBC News on Wednesday revised its account of the 2012 kidnapping of its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, saying it was likely that Mr. Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by a Sunni militant group, not forces affiliated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

Moon of Alabama questioned the original Richard Engel story at that time and found that the whole "kidnapping" and "rescue" was likely a completely staged event:

Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, the Angry Arab, has reason to not believe that story and has indications that these were not Assad loyalists but FSA insurgents playing the role of Assad loyalists for a fake media stunt.There is now new evidence that this was indeed a fake event and that, whatever Richard Engel may believe, he and the people with him (which included one ever unnamed "British engineer" who is more likely some special operations guy) were not in the hands of Shabiha but in the hand of well known experienced video fakers.

We had earlier looked at the fake citizen journalist Khaled Abu Salah who created and distributed fake videos about "Assad atrocities" sponsored by the shady U.S. para-government organization Avaaz. He was, as we documented, involved in the Richard Engels stunt. This led us to ask:

How come that this known serial producer of fake videos is involved in a murky kidnapping case that looks like a propaganda set up for "western" media consumption?
Further:

Who smuggled Richard Engel into Syria? Was it Avaaz?

Did "Danny" and Khaled Abu Salah knew that he was coming?

Did they prepare the kidnapping and the liberation of Richard Engel?

Some of the answers may be found if Richard Engel explains how he came to meet Khaled Abu Salah for this interview. Engel should urgently answer that question.

Engel still does not come clean on this issue. His new account of the fake kidnapping only comes, as HuffPo writes,

.. after new information surfaced suggesting he may have been misled about the identities of his captors, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The New York Times had recently started a new investigation about the case and only that has led Engel to "revisit" the issue - that is to cover his old lies with new ones.

His bosses at NBC put Engel on air with sectarian talk even when it knew that his story was very likely wrong:

NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals. Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events.

Two years ago it was clear to the Angry Arab and to me that the Engel account was very wrong from start to end. The Daily Beast then added some details pointing out that NBC "reported" a story it knew to be wrong:

[T]he sources say the gunmen who seized the crew may also have included rogue members of the rebel FSA–something top FSA commanders are keen to obscure. According to one source, “NBC’s security advisers were convinced that there was some FSA involvement in this and contacted wealthy Syrian-American donors of the rebel group, pointing out that Richard had been supportive of the uprising against Assad. They urged them to put pressure on the FSA. They really screwed down on them.” Top FSA commanders were alarmed and promised to help.

How is that now, more than two years later, "new information"?

The alleged "Shabiah" show of the "kidnapped" Engel was clearly fake and the "rescue" by the fake "moderate Sunni rebel" journalist pointed to a bigger plot.

Engel's lies continue. He now admits that the dead "he had seen" were not seen by him at all.

In his Vanity Fair article, Mr. Engel described one of his captors lying dead. In his statement Wednesday, he acknowledged that he did not see bodies during the rescue.

Engel still speaks of dead kidnappers and a firefight during which he was "rescued". But the NYT found a witness that lets one seriously doubt this:

Thaer al-Sheib, another local man connected with the rebel movement who sought the NBC team, said that on the day of the release “we heard some random shots for less than a minute coming from the direction of the farm.” He said that Abu Ayman, the rebel commander credited with freeing the team, is related by marriage to Mr. Ajouj, and that he staged the rescue.

So Engel still does not say how he was really "rescued" and how he immediately thereafter came to sit down with the video and news faker Khaled Abu Saleh. In the video Khaled Abu Saleh gets lauded by Engel as part of the group that freed him. That group was Ahrar al Shams who are pure Bin Laden Jihadists. Did Engel, an Arabic speaker, not notice that? What by the way does Avaaz, with whom Khaled Abu Saleh cooperated, knew about his relation to Jihadists?

Neither has NBC's Richard Engel come clean on this nor have the NYT or HuffPo really dug out the back story.

That back story would reveal that "western" secret services, with the help of para-government organizations like Avaaz and some paid Syrian "revolutionaries", created false stories and videos about the "bad Assad regime". That back story would explain that "western" journalists from outlets like NBC, the NYT, including the writer of today's piece on NBC C.J.Chivers, and HuffPo willingly took part in and propagandized those scams even when they were known to be quite obvious lies.