A comment I posted last night on 60 Minutes' website re: the NSA segment [View all]

[markpkessinger]

markpkessinger

I gather the producers of 60 Minutes felt the Benghazi report fiasco hadn't done enough damage to the program's journalistic credibility, so they decided to air this outrageously uncritical, blatantly pro-NSA propaganda puff piece. The NSA personnel who appeared in the report all have a vested interest in protecting what the NSA sees as (and many Americans disagree is) its rightful turf.

The bit about the alleged 'BIOS plot' was particularly telling. 60 Minutes allowed an NSA spokesperson to claim that this plot was hatched by a state actor, which she declined to identify, that had the intent to turn computers across the U.S. "into a brick" (to quote the very loaded term used by 60 Minutes) and thereby crash the U.S. economy. Then, in a slick, journalistic sleight-of-hand, the report provided hearsay statements by unidentified NSA analysts that the state actor in question was China, which the agency refuses to confirm or deny. I'm not buying it for a second. The government of China has absolutely nothing to gain, and a great deal to lose, by crashing the U.S. economy. This segment didn't pass the smell test of someone with a raging sinus infection!