Norman Mailer, author of great novels that people used to say they read, and source of the occasional paranoid outburst, has a theory about Newsweek's now retracted story. His entry into the blog world (Huffington Post) gives us some hint of the foundations of his literary reputation.
At present, I have a few thoughts I can certainly not prove, but the gaffe over the Michael Isikoff story in Newsweek concerning the Koran and the toilet is redolent with bad odor.
Get it? Bad odor. Toilet. No mixed metaphors here.
Who, indeed, was Isikoff's supposedly reliable Pentagon source? One's counter-espionage hackles rise. If you want to discredit a Dan Rather or a Newsweek crew, just feed them false information from a hitherto reliable source. You learn that in Intelligence 101A.
Counter-espionage often depends on building "reliable sources." You construct such reliability item by secret item, all accurate. That is seen by the intelligence artists as a necessary expenditure. It gains the source his credibility. Then, you spring the trap.
As for the riots at the other end, on this occasion, they, too, could have been orchestrated. We do have agents in Pakistan, after all, not to mention Afghanistan.
Ah . . now we have it. Its not that the MSM has been doing bad journalism, its that the evil Bush administration is pulling their puppet strings. Dan Rather was fed a bad story by some CIA spook. The whole Koran story, including the riots in Pakistan, were "orchestrated" by our agents. What a subtle and diabolical plan! Bush gets to laugh at Newsweek and all it costs us is increased enmity across the Muslim world. What is the evidence for all this?
Obviously, I can offer no proof of any of the above. [But the] outcome was too neat. It came out too effectively for one side. At the age of eighty-two I do not wish to revive old paranoia, but Lenin did leave us one valuable notion, one, at any rate. It was "Whom?" When you cannot understand a curious matter, ask yourself, "Whom? Whom does this benefit?" Dare I suggest that our Right has just gained a good deal by way of this matter? [I found the novelist required some editing, but go to the source if you suspect foul play].
In other words, we don't need no stinking evidence. A story that hurts Bush is manifestly true until it is discredited, whereupon it automatically switches to a example of the Bush administrations covert manipulation of the news.
I have my own theory. I think no such person as Norman Mailer exists. He is a creation of the CIA, engineered to make the left look like a bunch of raving lunatics. Big brother creates not only his own army but the armies of his enemies, so he can stage faux battles to keep the masses occupied. I admit its paranoid, but now that the NVB has shut down, someone has to keep up the good work.
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