Greenwald: Embassy Closings Looks Like A Conspiracy To Silence NSA Debate

[DirkGently]

79. There's "conspiracy" and there's spin. This smells like the latter.

The information doesn't have to be false. It likely isn't false. Whether it's something that would have been publicized and promoted as an immediate, incendiary threat at time when rightwing Republicans and White House weren't also frantically trying to tamp down public alarm about NSA surveillance is a perfectly valid question.

This information is all tightly controlled to begin with. A very few people decide when to take something NSA or CIA picks up and announce it publicly. It would be the easiest thing in the world to cherry-pick a piece of "chatter" and decide to "terror alert" it, Bush-regime style.

And isn't that all this really is? "Lookout, we're on Tangerine Alert!" Remember how the "threat level" always rose to a more alarming shade of whatever when Bush / Cheney were taking heat? Are we also to believe now that didn't happen either, and was an "ego-trip" / "conspiracy theory?"

It's not like it's a novel theory, or even a theory at all, that authorities would invoke the very thing they claim justifies authoritarian tactics -- the threat of an outside enemy -- in order to defend themselves.

And they don't have to particularly "lie" to do it. They have only to select and emphasize and publicize.