Dirty Tricks Revisited William Arkin targeted by the U.S. government?

by Justin Raimondo March 21, 2005

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I thought I'd seen everything when it came to smearing and otherwise attempting to discredit journalists and others perceived as "unpatriotic" opponents of American foreign policy – the entrapment of Scott Ritter, the libeling of George Galloway, and the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame all come immediately to mind, all of them underhanded in their own special way. But a March 17 Washington Post story by Howard Kurtz had even me gasping with incredulity:

"Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to produce a document accusing journalist and activist William Arkin of serving as a spy for Saddam Hussein.

"The Pentagon says the supposed Defense Intelligence Agency cable is a forgery. Arkin says it's 'chilling' and is demanding an investigation. The NBC News military analyst says he became aware of the bogus document when a Washington Times reporter called about the spying allegation and sent him a copy."

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Now we have another phony set of documents, this time masquerading as a "raw" intelligence report, designed to accomplish pretty much what the Gannon "memo" was created for: to discredit a political opponent and knock an obstacle out of the War Party's path. Arkin, who insists he's an activist and not a journalist, has nonetheless uncovered some of the biggest war stories of recent years, including the Bush administration's "contingency plans" for using nukes against seven countries and a secret Pentagon report detailing the real problems that would accompany an American invasion of Iraq. He works for Human Rights Watch and also does consultancy work for the Air Force: he's a former Army intelligence analyst who has worked with Greenpeace, and Kurtz describes him as "an academic, an author, a newspaper columnist, and a talking head." He is, in short, a formidable obstacle in the path of the War Party, one that would have to be blown out of the water by nothing less than a charge of high treason – spying for Saddam.

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<http://www.antiwar.com/justin/>

I vividly remember the footage of the dusty tomes with their faded but neat lines of Arabic that supposedly implicated Galloway as a paid stooge of Saddam, miraculously unearthed from the looted remains of some ministry building within just a day or two of Iraq's "liberation." It was completely unbelievable but they put it out there anyway, just hoping enough mud would stick.