New ‘Half-Scandal?’ There May Be New Details Of Bin Laden’s Death

Does this mean that bin Laden isn’t dead? No, it just means there is a new report about the circumstances behind his death.

According to Democracy Now!, the new report written by Seymour Hersh for the London Review of Books says the Obama administration gave a false account of the hunting and killing of Osama bin Laden. It is normally claimed that bin Laden was shot dead four years ago this month in a U.S. raid on his compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

Hersh is an American investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. According to Wikipedia, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award.

He first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War.

In his article, Hersh cites interviews with “a retired senior intelligence official” and American sources who “had access to corroborating information,” writes Slate magazine.

Hersh says top Pakistani military leaders knew about the operation and provided key assistance. The U.S. also claimed it helped locate bin Laden by tracking his personal messenger. But Hersh reports a former Pakistani intelligence officer identified his whereabouts in return for the bulk of a $25 million U.S. bounty. Pakistani intelligence was reportedly aware of bin Laden’s location and held him “prisoner” at the Abbottabad compound since 2006.

The White House claimed at the time the U.S. operatives entered from Afghanistan without Pakistan’s knowledge.

Hersh’s article also questions the U.S. account of bin Laden’s shooting, saying there was never a firefight inside the compound and that bin Laden himself wasn’t armed.

A retired American official says U.S. claims of finding information from bin Laden’s computers and documents was a “hoax” to give the false impression he was still operationally important.

Questions were also raised about whether bin Laden was actually buried at sea, as the U.S. claimed.

The White House has denied the accounts given by Seymour Hersh, and the CIA has called the Hersh article “nonsense.”

(Updated article)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/11/headlines

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/10/seymour_hersh_in_london_review_of_books_obama_lied_about_bin_laden_raid.html

Extended TYT Discussion About Fox News’ Host Bill O’Reilly’s Lies And Fabrications

TYT Network / Nerd Seed

TYT Network discusses Bill O’Reilly’s lies and fabrications regarding his war stories.

(Updated post)

Fox News Chairman Ailes On Brian Williams: ‘I’d Put Him Back’

Recently, The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Fox News’ Chairman Roger Ailes, and near the end of the interview, the Hollywood Reporter asked him about the return of NBC News chairman Andy Lack, and that led to talk about NBC News anchor Brian Williams.

Ailes spoke of Andy Lack and then commented on anchor Brian Williams, who was put on a hiatus by NBC due to falsifying accounts of his time in the Iraq war and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

“Andy is a smart guy,” said Ailes.  “He’s going to work on several problems at the same time. That in and of itself will make a difference. He’s got to make the right call on Brian Williams. I’d put Brian back.”

This makes total sense, because – as Mother Jones, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Media Matters, and CNN have shown – Fox News’ own Bill O’Reilly has been caught numerous times in his own lies / fabrications / exaggerations, and O’Reilly never suffered any consequences.

More:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/introspective-roger-ailes-fox-news-789877

More on Bill O’Reilly:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/27/bill-oreilly-every-claim-so-far_n_6760320.html

http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/03/08/new-developments-in-bill-oreilly-exaggeration-controversy/

(Updated article)

Leonard Pitts On Whether Fox News Treats Employees Differently Than Other News Groups

According to Wikipedia, Leonard Pitts, Jr. is an American commentator, journalist and novelist.  He is a nationally-syndicated columnist and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.  Pitts wrote a column recently on the Bill O’Reilly controversy (and cover-up) about his exaggerations.

Pitts:

“Last month, when NBC News anchor Brian Williams’ career imploded as he was caught in a high-profile, self-aggrandizing lie, I suggested in this space that there would be much less angst or fallout if someone from Fox News were caught lying.”

Since then, Mother Jones ran a story questioning Bill O’Reilly’s claim to have been in the combat zone in the Falkland Islands while covering that war for CBS.   Other news organizations have reported other questionable assertions by O’Reilly, including the claim that O’Reilly was outside of the home of an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald when the associate shot himself.

O’Reilly dismissed Mother Jones as the “bottom rung of journalism in America,” and called the reporter David Corn a “liar,” an “irresponsible guttersnipe,” a “far-left zealot” and “dumb.”

Other instances of questionable claims include O’Reilly saying that he witnessed the execution of a group of American nuns in El Salvador that happened in 1980, even though O’Reilly apparently did not reach El Salvador until 1981, and he “saw photos” of the incident.

In his book, “Keep it Pithy,” O’Reilly states that he saw “Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs.”  Fox News itself denied that comment, according to the Chicago Tribune.

O’Reilly has claimed he was “attacked by protesters” while covering the 1992 Los Angeles riots for “Inside Edition,” but former colleagues say he is exaggerating an incident where an angry man took a piece of rubble to a camera.

Brian Williams

“For one falsehood, Williams received a six-month suspension without pay. For a handful of apparent falsehoods, O’Reilly has received unstinting support from his bosses at Fox,” says Pitts.

Pitts claims that Fox “is not a real news-gathering organization but, rather, the propaganda arm of a right wing that grows ever more cult-like and detached from reality as time goes by,” and proof is that “O’Reilly is not fighting for his professional life.”

“(P)undits are entitled to their opinions. But that does not release them from the obligation to be factual,” writes Pitts.

It is telling that Fox recently responded to sharp questions about all this from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow by sending her a statement noting that O’Reilly’s ratings are up despite the controversy.

“To act as if ratings answer, or even address, questions of credibility is to express contempt for the very notion of credibility. It suggests Fox’s full-body embrace of the old saying, often attributed to Barnum, about the birthrate of suckers,” he writes.

Pitts calls Fox “an alternate reality wherein birthers make sensible arguments,” and “death panels are real…,” and it tells viewers “what they want to hear.”

“Yes, he is apparently a serial fabulist. And yes, that would disqualify you from most newsrooms,” writes Pitts.

More:

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/03/12/fox-news-bill-oreilly/70207198/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-bill-oreilly-scandal-20150228-story.html

Bill O’Reilly’s Response To The Coverage Of His Untruths

Bill O’Reilly gave a response to the coverage of his untruths and exaggerations – by not addressing them.

Instead, he showed his ratings and polls, which prove that his audience is loyal.  But is his audience right?

He did not address the substance of the accusations.

Secular Talk

Former Colleague Calls O’Reilly A ‘Phony’

In his 2012 best-selling non-fiction book Killing Kennedy, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly writes on page 300 that he was about to interview a man named George de Mohrenschildt, a figure in the JFK assassination.  As a “reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt’s daughter’s home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian … that reporter’s name is Bill O’Reilly,” states Media Matters.

O’Reilly repeated the tale for the Killing Kennedy audiobook.  In Kennedy’s Last Days, the adaptation for younger readers, O’Reilly wrote, “As I knocked on the door, I heard a shotgun blast. He had killed himself.”

The Fox News host also repeated the tale while promoting his book and movie special on Fox News.

However, numerous pieces of evidence contradict O’Reilly’s claim that he “heard the shotgun blast” that killed de Mohrenschildt.

In comments to Media Matters, two of O’Reilly’s former colleagues at station WFAA in Dallas said that O’Reilly’s version of events is not true.  “Bill O’Reilly’s a phony, there’s no other way to put it,” said Tracy Rowlett, a former WFAA reporter and anchor who worked there with O’Reilly.  “He was not up on the porch when he heard the gunshots, he was in Dallas. He wasn’t traveling at that time.”

Byron Harris, a reporter at WFAA for the past 40 years, said that O’Reilly had not traveled to Florida for the story and accused him of “stealing” his reporting on de Mohrenschildt’s suicide from a newspaper.  He said O’Reilly “was in Dallas. He stole that article out of the newspaper. I guarantee Channel 8 didn’t send him to Florida to do that story because it was a newspaper story, it was broken by the Dallas Morning News.”

Both Harris and Rowlett said O’Reilly never mentioned having been present for the gunshot during his time at WFAA.

“I don’t remember O’Reilly claiming that he was there. That came later, that must have been a brain surge when he was writing the book,” said Rowlett.

Harris further pointed out that WFAA “would have reported it as some kind of exclusive — and there was no exclusive — if O’Reilly had been standing outside the door.”

O’Reilly’s claim of having been present when de Mohrenschildt shot himself was also missing from his 1992 Inside Edition report on documents relating to the Kennedy assassination.

During that report, O’Reilly said, “moments before he was to be interviewed by House investigators, de Mohrenschildt blew his brains out with a 20-gauge shotgun.”

(That statement comes at roughly the 2:37 mark in the video below.)

In comments to Media Matters,  Reporter and University of California (Washington Center) visiting professor Jefferson Morley said O’Reilly’s claim of being present for the gunshot is “just not true” and speculated that it was “just part of the pattern, to embellish the story and make it a sexier story.”  Morley said, “It is what these guys all do, they inject themselves into a dramatic situation,” said Media Matters.

Below is a video of CNN’s Brian Stelter interviewing Morley about O’Reilly’s report on de Mohrenschildt.

(Updated post)

More Of Bill O’Reilly’s Untruths And Exaggerations Revealed

Keith Olbermann

A segment by ESPN host Keith Olbermann last year sheds some more light on Bill O’Reilly’s questionable claims about himself (starting at about the 2:35 mark in the video).

On November 19th, 2014, Olbermann named the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly as his daily “Worst Person In The World.”   It wasn’t actually because of their political differences.  Instead, it was about O’Reilly’s past claims about his athletic skills that were presented as fact.

On November 17th, O’Reilly had given a radio interview talking about his days as a varsity football player at Marist College.

“We were undefeated our senior year,” O’Reilly told ESPN radio host Dan Le Batard. “That was a pretty good deal.”

But Olbermann had de-bunked that claim as far back as 2005, and showed that Marist did not have a varsity team until 1978 – seven years after O’Reilly graduated.

Le Batard pointed out Olbermann’s claims. “It was varsity football in the sense of that we played Georgetown, Catholic U., Fordham, Manhattan, Iona,” O’Reilly said in his defense.  “So, you know, look. You know what it is, guys, you know what it is.”

O’Reilly made some claims about baseball that Olbermann also corrected.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Looks At Bill O’Reilly’s Statesments About Lee Harvey Oswald Associate’s Suicide

Hien Lun

According to Media Matters, Bill O’Reilly has repeatedly claimed in his books and on Fox News that while he was reporting for a Dallas television station in 1977, he was directly outside the home at the moment that George de Mohrenschildt — an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald — shot himself in Florida.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC took on O’Reilly recently, and she ran a clip of him on “Fox & Friends” repeating the story from 1977.

Maddow played audio tapes released by CNN last week of phone calls made by O’Reilly from 1977.   The recording was recently released by CNN on Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter.

On the tapes, O’Reilly can be heard asking the congressional reporter Gaeton Fonzi about the details of the suicide, and adding that he is not yet in Florida — a claim that is at odds with O’Reilly’s statements that he was near the home where de Mohrenschildt killed himself, states Media Matters.

CNN Releases Audio Of Phone Conversation Contradicting Fox News Bill O’Reilly’s Oswald/de Mohrenschildt Story

Secular Talk

According to Media Matters, Bill O’Reilly has repeatedly claimed in his books and on Fox News that while he was reporting for a Dallas television station in 1977, he was directly outside the home at the moment that George de Mohrenschildt — an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald — shot himself in Florida.  The police report filed at the time makes no mention of him.

Media Matters also reported that several former colleagues and journalists at the time have disputed O’Reilly’s story.

Adding to the mounting evidence against O’Reilly’s tale are tape recordings of a phone conversation between O’Reilly and a congressional reporter who was interviewing de Mohrenschildt before his death, states Media Matters.

The recording was recently released by CNN on Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter. 

“On the tapes, O’Reilly can be heard asking the congressional reporter about the details of the suicide, and adding that he is not yet in Florida — a claim that is at odds with O’Reilly’s statements that he was near the home where de Mohrenschildt killed himself.”  Secular Talk takes a look at it.

(Updated post)

What Publications Have Reported On Bill O’Reilly’s Questionable Facts?

David Corn and Daniel Schulman recently published a scathing article in Mother Jones attacking Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly for allegedly misspeaking about reporting from a “war zone” in the Falklands in 1982.

Corn and Media Matters exposed a series of questionable claims made about his reporting during the Falklands War and the El Salvadoran Civil War.

In the former case, O’Reilly repeatedly suggested to viewers he was in a combat zone in the Falkland Islands when no CBS News reporters (O’Reilly’s employer at the time) ever reached the islands.  He, instead, covered protests in the capitol of Argentina, Buenos Aires.   In the latter case, O’Reilly said on multiple occasions that he witnessed the execution of four American nuns in El Salvador – an event that took place before he was even in the country.

“It’s pretty lightweight to say you were in a war zone because you covered a protest,” said Corn to HuffPost Live.

The story about O’Reilly’s inconsistencies began with the publication Mother Jones and then spread to Media Matters. What other publications have reported on it?

USA Today’s editorial board is calling on Fox News to “distance itself” from the network’s “truth-challenged” Bill O’Reilly in the wake of revelations that the Fox host has repeatedly lied about some of his experiences as a reporter.

CNN’s Brian Stelter picked up the story. O’Reilly reportedly called Stelter “another far-left zealot … masquerading as a journalist. CNN can do a lot better than this guy.”

David Corn told The Huffington Post Live recently that O’Reilly “still has yet to refute a single fact” in his and Daniel Schulman’s original Mother Jones’ report on O’Reilly’s Falklands claims.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow did a segment about O’Reilly’s threatening behavior towards David Corn.

The British paper The Guardian published a piece relating to inconsistencies with O’Reilly’s reporting on the LA riots in 1992.

Politico reported that Bill O’Reilly threatened a New York Times reporter interviewing him about recent allegations he made up stories concerning his reporting on the Falklands War in 1982.

During a phone conversation, O’Reilly allegedly told Times reporter Emily Steel there would be repercussions if he felt her coverage was inappropriate. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” O’Reilly said. “You can take it as a threat.”

O’Reilly has also threatened David Corn, suggesting that he needs to be placed in the “kill zone.”

Updated post.