Investigate the Pentagon's Strait of Hormuz Scandal

The Pentagon has been caught with its pants down on the bogus story of Iranian boats threatening to "explode" U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz January 6. Now that that patently false story has blown up in its face, Congress should find out who is responsible and make them accountable.

Here's a tip for anyone in Congress who cares about the public trust: the trail of lies and fabrication in this case leads to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. As I reported earlier this week for Inter Press Service, the lurid press stories of an Iranian threat to blow up U.S. ships that began the coverage of the incident did not come from some rogue freelancer. They were a direct result of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bryan Whiteman's briefing for the Pentagon press corps on the morning of January 7.

It was Whitman who supplied all those juicy details that filled the press stories, including the Iranian phone threat, the objects dropped in the water which reporters were told could have been explosives, and the titillating story that at least one Iranian boat was "a heartbeat from being blown up," as reported by ABC News. All of which turned out to be flatly untrue.

Whitman could not have given that briefing, however, without the authority of the Secretary of Defense himself. The responsibility goes to the top of the Pentagon.

Equally blatant in its intent to deceive was the decision to put together a short video clip of the incident in which a mysterious voice seems to issuing a taunting threat against the U.S. ships. That voice was grafted on to the soundtrack of the video in order to dramatize that element of the story.

The question many were asking when it became clear that the voice on the video was that of the "Filipino monkey" -- the heckler or hecklers who have been horning in on ship-to-ship communication in the area to hurl insults, threats and racial epithets for many years -- was who was responsible for fabricating such a ridiculously lurid and obviously phony video.

When I started to investigate that question, the Pentagon press office referred me to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet information office in Bahrain. But both that office and the Navy's Office of Information steered my back to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. And sure enough, the press office at the Pentagon, which is part of the OSD, confirmed that the "leadership" of the Department of Defense was in on the decision on what to release to the public.

So Gates was in on both the original decision to disseminate a false account of the incident in the Strait and the decision to release a video that was deliberately rigged to dramatize the supposed threat by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps navy to blow up a U.S. warship. In both cases there can be no doubt that the decisions made only after consulting with the White House.

Could Gates and the White House have been taken in by reports from overeager commanders in the Gulf who sent panicky reports that presented an exaggerated sense of threat -- like the nervous sonarmen who thought they were under attack in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964, at least for an hour or so?

Not very likely. The commander of the 5th Fleet, Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff told Pentagon reporters on January 7, "I didn't get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats."

Furthermore, an official at the 5th fleet headquarters told me that everyone there knows about the "Filipino Monkey" problem. Anyone who has ever transited the Strait is told to expect such taunts and threats over the ship-to-ship channel. It is inconceivable that any of the naval officers involved would have failed to make clear in their reports on the incident that they believed the threat that came over the VHF channel was probably that of the infamous heckler.

When high officials are caught deliberately creating a phony threat to American ships, Congress has a duty to investigate. It seems very likely that laws were broken in this bumbling effort at deception. But thus far we have had only pained silence from the Democratic leadership in Congress. And apparently there are no plans by either the Senate or House committee on Armed Services to carry out an investigation into the outrage.

Are the Democrats protecting Bob Gates? He has been widely credited with helping to restrain Dick Cheney's desire for military action against Iran, which men of good will must applaud. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that Gates is also personally responsible for using the Pentagon's propaganda machine to support a political line -- both at home and abroad -- aimed at keeping up political pressure on Iran, even it means doing violence to the facts.

In the post-NIE phase of American policy toward Iran, protecting Gates from the consequences of the Strait of Hormuz scandal no longer a matter of preventing a war. It will only implicate the Democrats in the administration's broader anti-Iran scheme -- and all the lies that seems to require.

Comments

[Plowboy]

During a recent football game, a friend commented on a very bad call by an official by saying that he supposed the referee to be from the George W. League. Our foreign policy has certainly been from there. And now our propagandists are.
But don't worry. Most Americans won't see anything wrong with it. Most don't see anything. They have been afraid to look for such a long time. What they might see would undermine their inflated image of themselves.
A nation with George W. League leaders must be a George W. League nation.

[Ides]

Funny how not a single MSM station has touched this since it's been debunked.

[realitytrumpsbull]

There's a book, here...'a defense budget too far'...something like that...

[MajorKong]

Normally when you're going to ambush someone you don't call them on the radio and say: "I'm coming to get you! Nyaah! Nyaah! Nyaah!"

It kind of spoils that whole element of surprise thing.

[Independent voter]

For those of us who used to watch the nighly body counts from Vietnam this is no surprise. Soon America will have as much credibility as some third world banana republic

[cylindar]

I*t was obvious on first glance that this was a hoax for many reasons. What surprised me was that the sci-ops people thought they could get away with it. You have to be a really dumb F@#K to buy their story. Of course a lot of Americans are very very dumb. That being said, it was such a bad production that even the dumb ones are squinting their eyes at this one. My, my these Republicans think they are oh, so clever. I hope all the Repubs enjoy it when they get smaked upside the head in the next election. Not only that this scene is getting to be frayed around the edges and I think a lot of people are going to snap if this s%$t keeps on happening.

[Purple Girl]

YEAH YEAH YEAH
And the World bank nearly got blown up too this week. bullshit.
Some one should read W. the story of 'The boy who cried Wolf". Now that you have US all rolling our eyes every time you open your mouth- or we open the papers, click on the internet or turn on the TV.
You have oversatiated your subjects with unrelenting stimuli- we are apathetic to your concerns.
We've become mor einterested in the threats we feel from you- Corporate experiementors, with your lelmentry understanding of behavior modification techniques. what did you do take a weekend works shop- read an article, remembered it from Psych 101.
A prime example of how a little knowledge, with our conprehension is a very dangerous thing.

[research]

Why WON"T Congress stop BuchCO?

Rahm Emanuel takes credit for winning in the 2006 elections. He was a dem "field marshal".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel

Rahm and the rest of the Lieberman DLC DINO dems believe

the 2006 win had nothing to do with voters wanting to end the war or anger with BushCo.

DLC.org

PNAC.info

Obama Clinton and Edwards are all Lieberman DLC DINO DEMS.

Vote out these Republican DLC dems in the primaries!

[research]

IMPEACH Bush and Cheney before THEY KILL AGAIN!

[Plowboy]

Remember the Maine!
The Filipino Monkey "may be Big Bill Taft's Little Brown Brother, but he ain't no friend of mine."
Gawd bless Amurrica!
Kill them Eye-racks and Eye-rans. They got our oil.
(And our bosses don't like them.)
We never lie --- except when it seems useful.
Greatest nation on earth.

[ChimpmasterDJ]

Investigate, you say? Very good! Now who do you suggest should conduct this investigation? The same spineless imbeciles who keep impeachment "off the table"?

Do you begin to see how devastatingly screwed we really are? Short of importing a couple of thousand guillotines and having a grand old fashioned revolution, this Constitution is GONE!

[mjjcpa]

How much did the Iranians pay you? A few Hannah Montana tickets?

[tbone99]

done before - Gulf of Tonkin

[DoninJoisey]

The fundamental problem is there have been so many scandals with this administration that we have become numb. When I heard the news reports initially, I was immediately skeptical, thinking of the Gulf of Tonkin. I am saddened that now I know I was right to disbelieve.
I want to trust my government, but I can't.
How deplorable.

[lisakaz]

I was cynical about this from the start, given the zero credibility of this government. I didn't see what was "in" it for Iran, either. Seeems the MSM played this up big time but now when the hoax has been established, NO ONE WILL SAY SO. Not the lapdog media, not the lapdog Dems. Nada. This was a "lie us into war" ploy AGAIN and yet there is no outrage. Nothing. What is wrong here with these people?