Moonie Times Reporter Audrey Hudson, YOU'RE Our Twit of the Week!
You're sick, SICK of Annie Jacobsen and her terror, you say? Well, it's not over yet.
Here's the lastest article from Wash Times reporter Audrey Hudson, keeping the fear alive with "Second Person Saw Suspicious Behavior": The incident on Flight 327 highlighted concerns that terrorists have been making "dry runs" on commercial jets in preparation for attacks.
Homeland Security and FBI officials briefed Senate Judiciary Committee staffers Wednesday. The House Judiciary Committee also is conducting an oversight review of what happened on the flight. Federal officials agreed the activity was suspicious but doubted the account by Mrs. Jacobsen and her husband, said one staffer who attended the briefing.
"They emphasized repeatedly there were material discrepancies between what the two [passengers] reported and what the flight attendants and federal air marshals observed," the staffer said.
So, as I predicted, Congress is now involved in this stupidity. And while Federal officials are saying that "there were material discrepanacies" (hint, hint!) between Annie's account and that of the non-hysterical people, some unnamed pilots and flight attendants have told Annie and reporter Audrey that they see Arabs talking to each other and enterering the onboard lavatories all the time, so there must be "probing" going on. That's why I'm glad Salon's Patrick Smith (aka "Ask the Pilot" ) has addressed the story again; among other sensible things, he writes: Of course, you needn't be a convicted criminal or watch-listed radical operative to be a potential terrorist. With nothing else to go on, Jacobsen's allies keep coming around to the "dry run" theory. The trouble with this proposition is that it leaves open every Arab, and for that matter anybody who is conspicuously Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, Indian, or Central Asian, to a guilty-until-innocent presumption. The dry run idea provides a vague, but craftily indisputable fallback. Who can prove it wasn't a rehearsal?
"Annie Jacobsen is entitled to her own interpretations," says David Adams, lightly emphasizing that last word in a manner that suggests we read between the lines. "While the 19 original hijackers are known to have conducted test runs, there is no specific intelligence that terrorists are conducting test flights or surveillance activities on U.S. airliners. Period."
But hey, if Annie was scared, then obviously we should believe her interpretation of events and not those of the trained professionals.
But this is the the part of Smith's piece I want to focus on today: I'm unsure what saddens me more -- Jacobsen's rhetoric itself, or the manner in which commentators and pundits have spun the story into a partisan conflict of ideals: Those who find folly in draconian security measures and racial scapegoating are, to use one of my most loathed Bushisms, siding with the enemy.
Yeah, there does seem to be a real push to sell the idea that Annie was, to quote that radio guy who has written a book about the lack of airline security, "a victim of terrorism." And if you don't agree, or if you don't think that Annie's terror means we should start racial profiling of passengers and ban butter knives from airport diners, then you're a liberal, an "appeaser, " a jerk who can't remember 9/11, or a commie or something. And Audrey is doing her best to keep this story (and this meme) alive.
The Annie/Audrey Connecton
Why is Audrey our Twit of the Week? Well, mostly because Wo'C reader Scott R. sugested she'd make a good addition to our wingnut coverage. So, let's look at the Google News indexes of Audrey's recent Annie Jacobsen coverage, and I think you'll agree that the honor is more than deserved.
As mentioned previously, this is her latest: Second passenger saw suspicious behavior:
Washington Times, DC - 6 hours ago
By Audrey Hudson. Government officials are questioning a passenger's account of alarming and suspicious behavior by Syrian musicians ...
Here's another snippet from the piece: The passenger, who was riding in first class, said the constant foot traffic and strange behavior she witnessed in the front cabin frightened her as much as it did Annie Jacobsen, the first passenger who publicly reported the incident.
"I thought I was going to die," the second passenger told The Washington Times. "And that makes me furious because that's the whole point of terrorism, to make people afraid. It makes me mad that they achieved that. But I'm not letting it stop me from taking other trips."
So, the musicians' real purpose wasn't to blow up the plane with a bomb constructed of Big Macs and chocolate shakes, or even to conduct a dry run of a bombing, it was to scare nitwits. And since they suceeded in their task, they won, proving they really WERE terrorists; terrorists who learned how to play musical instruments.
Anyway, this passenger didn't tell anyone of her concerns, because she didn't want to look stupid. But now that Annie has made it heroic to be scared and stupid, she came forward (anonymously) to Audrey. Although she was sitting in first class, she seems to have seen the exact same things as Annie did in coach, including the "beheading" gesture and the mouthed "no." Another reporter might have asked some questions about this, but not Audrey: you don't get to be the Moonie Times Homeland Security reporter by asking inconvenient questions.
As you may know, Audrey's previous Annie story was: Here's a key passage: Singer Nour Mehana's latest album includes the song "Um El Shaheed," or "Mother of a Martyr," said Aluma Dankowitz of the Middle East Media Research Institute. The song tells the story of a woman who mourned her son's death until she realized that "he died for a good cause and he should be glorified for what he did," said Miss Dankowitz, who translated the song for The Washington Times.
TBogg had a great post about this expose on Nour (as presented by another twit, Heather Wilhelm) and what it means (it means that Heather knows too much about porno mustaches). Oddly enough, it seems that Heather ALSO got her translation done by Aluma Dankowitz. So maybe you're wondering, "Just who is Aluma Dankowitz, and what is MEMRI?" Well, it's no good asking Audrey; she isn't saying. Not that the information wouldn't be relevant, but because it might make you wonder if there's an agenda being furthered here.
So, let's do a little research. Here's part of the summary from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia: The technical accuracy of its translations is rarely disputed. However, the extent to which its selection is contextual or representative of Arab/Iranian media is very often disputed, particularly in view of its alleged ties with Israel and, in some cases, with Israeli intelligence.
Here's some more background info on MEMRI and Aluna Dankowitz (the former Aluna Solnik): MEMRI’s slogan, “Bridging the Language Gap Between the Middle East and the West,” does not convey the center’s stridently Zionist and anti-Arab political bias. MEMRI, which describes itself as “objective and independent,” has gained a reputation for cherry-picking the most virulent, anti-Israel and anti-U.S. reports and commentary from the Arab media. A former CIA counterintelligence official, Vincent Cannistraro, said that “they [MEMRI} are selective and act as propagandists for their political point of view, which is the extreme-right of Likud…. They simply don't present the whole picture.” [...] Numerous current or former MEMRI staff are Israelis, including Yotham Feldner, MEMRI’s director of media analysis. Like Carmon, Feldner worked in military intelligence while serving with the Israeli Defense Forces. Another MEMRI staff member, Aluma Solnik, also worked in military intelligence before joining MEMRI.
So, while Aluma probably did translate those lyrics correctly, I'm not sure if I would rely on her to interpret their significance, or take her word that the lyrics to this one song mean that Nour Mehana is advocating terrorism. But if Audrey had pointed out Aluma's possible bias, it might have made some people less scared, and we can't have that!
And going back a week or so ago (back to when we were young and Annie was only starting to become omnipresent), here are the summaries of Audrey's previous Annie Jacobsen stories: Syrians flew with expired visas
Washington Times, DC - Jul 26, 2004
By Audrey Hudson. Almost all of the Syrian musicians who were questioned by law-enforcement officials after exhibiting suspicious ... Terrorists testing jets, crews sayWashington Times, DC - Jul 21, 2004
By Audrey Hudson. Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting ...
And, as we mentioned previously, last week "Fox & Friends" was "efforting" to have Audrey on their show, the better to terrorize gulllible housewives. So, it seems that Audrey has found a new career: selling Annie Jacobsen to a public which wants to be scared (or a public which SOEMBODY wants scared). Thus, I thought it might be interesting to explore Audrey's background (via Google) and find out how she became our nation's foremost promoter of Syrian Musicians with McDonald's Sacks of Terror.
Audrey: The Early Years of a Twit
Audrey apparently got her start as a reporter with the Vail Daily. However, by 1996 she was working as the press secretary to Republican Congressman Scott McInnis. Here, lets's watch her in action: Some other members of the Colorado delegation aren't so sure the CBVC request was so ordinary. "Strange that a $10 million appropriation request would not be made to the House delegation," says outgoing Democratic congresswoman Pat Schroeder in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "But that makes sense," says Audrey Hudson, press secretary to Representative Scott McInnis, a Republican from Grand Junction. "Campbell's on Appropriations, and that's who you lobby. Who else from Colorado is on Appropriations?"
And in one of those odd coincidences that occur in politics, by 1998 Audrey had moved on to bigger things: being the press secretary for Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
And then in the summer of 1999 she had made the magical leap to the Moonie Times, and was a reporter covering Congress. You know, from a Republican point of view. She also frequently wrote about enviromental issues (from a Republican point of view); one of her most frequently cited sources was Rep. Scott McInnis, who was now "Chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health." Some of her articles which quote him are: "Fires lend urgency to forest-thinning act," "Study Says Nearly Half of Earth's Surface Still Wild," and, surpringly, "Protesters Try to Halt Ships" (her angle was that Greenpeace was protesting the transportation of military equipment being sent to Iraq, pre-invasion, and this showed they were hypocrites because Saddam had set fire to the oil fields in 1991. ("Rep. Scott McInnis, Colorado Republican and chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health, called the fires "the largest environmental calamities in human history.")
But Audrey (and McInnis) had their biggest collaberation in 2001. Audrey broke a story about Federal Wildlife biologists who had planted the hair of rare lynxes in the Cascade mountains so that the Endangered Species Act would close off federal land to the public, and confiscate private property. You know, as part of one of those radical environmental conspiracies. Ten articles, two editorials, and a couple of congressional hearings later, it turned out that the biologists hadn't planted any fake lynx fur, they had just included some blind samples of lynx hairs to be tested by the Forest Service's DNA lab, because they had (justified) doubts about the lab's reliability. No land was going to be confiscated. No lynxes were driving Cadillacs and wearing Rolexes as they cashed their welfare checks.
Here's part of a very interesting Audubon Mag article about the matter: Perhaps the most astonishing aspect is the circulation of lies by America's mainstream media. Of all the reasons to disregard or at least rigorously vet a story, few are better than reading it in The Washington Times. Whatever possessed the Associated Press to recycle it 24 hours later? ...
Right-wing talking heads prattled gleefully. The property-rights community puffed and blew. Feeding the ravenous media were members of the U.S. Congress, most notably Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) and Representatives Scott McInnis (-CO), chair of the Forests Subcommittee; James Hansen (R-UT), chair of the Resources Committee; Barbara Cubin (R-WY); and Richard Pombo (R-CA). Craig called for oversight hearings; McInnis and Hansen scheduled them. In an open letter to the directors of the Interior and Agriculture departments, Pombo, Cubin, McInnis, and 16 other Republican representativescondemned the "unethical behavior [and] malicious activities that support the closet agenda of the 'green' community" and called for the termination of "those officials who knowingly and willingly planted unauthorized samples."
What makes the behavior of The Washington Times astonishing is not its willingness to shatter innocent lives in an effort to sell newspapers. This is expected of the Times. What's astonishing is its effort to use the mess it made to sell an ad. Two weeks after the Times ran its original story and three iterations, the FSEEE got a call from the paper's advertising department. The guy said that the biologists were getting the bejesus kicked out of them by the editorial department and that the really smart thing to do would be to purchase a full-page ad for $9,450. That way the FSEEE and the biologists could tell their side of the story. Overcoming speechlessness, Stahl feigned interest. "This wasn't just some ad rep operating on his own," he said. "I made sure he went to his department and that the Times sent me a mock-up of the ad. It's their brand of ethics: 'For a small price you can fix some of the damage we've done.'"
I am unable to determine how the Times could not have known the "bio-fraud" tale was false before it published at least six of its "news" stories and two of its editorials. Audrey Hudson, who wrote all but one of the 12 stories, told me she got the investigation report that vindicated the biologist of "biofraud," a word the Times invented, from PEER's web site. PEER says it posted the report during the last week of December. This raises three disturbing questions: How was Hudson able to reference the report and selectively pull information from it in the paper's first story, on December 17? Why, on January 18, was she still repeating the untruth about the biologists planting fur in the forests? And why was the Times still accusing the biologists of "fraud" on March 2? This was my conversation with Hudson.
TW: "Are you going to issue a retraction and apology?"
AH: "No. We stand by our story."
TW: "But you've known it was false at least since December. . . ."
AH: "I reported what the Forest Service told me. We stand by our story."
TW: "But the Forest Service told you in its investigation report that your story isn't true. . . ."
AH: "I'm not going to quibble with you." I guess that means that PEER and/or the FSEEE will have to write the Times's retraction and apology for it--provided, of course, that the paper has ad space available.
Here's part of the FAIR report on "Lynx-gate": The Washington Times turned this incident into a crusade, dedicating 10 articles, two editorials and an opinion piece to this "biofraud" over the course of a month after breaking the story on December 17. Lynxgate illustrates the power of the Times--a newspaper founded in 1982 as a vehicle to promote the right-wing views of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church--to promote a conservative agenda and feed it into the mainstream media environment.
The Times’ Audrey Hudson broke Lynxgate with a front-page piece headlined "Rare Lynx Hairs Found in Forests Exposed as Hoax" (12/17/01), citing "officials" as the source for her allegation that biologists had planted lynx fur. "Had the deception not been discovered, the government likely would have banned many forms of recreation and use of natural resources in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state," her story falsely asserted. The one-sided article quoted a variety of conservative government and non-governmental officials, many with a dislike of the Endangered Species Act or federal land management policy. To give the appearance of balance, Hudson quoted the National Wilderness Institute, a think tank with an anti-environmentalist bent. [...] The "false premise," actually, is that a few fur samples could "shut down" forests--a claim repeated throughout Times coverage. In truth, the existence of lynx would have to be verified by live trapping and other measures before any changes in management would take place, a process that could take years. Even the proven presence of lynx would not close the forests; recreation and even logging goes on in forests inhabited by lynx. But presenting such facts does not serve the conspiratorial storyline.
Those Conspiratorial Storylines
Conspiracies do seem to be Audrey's speciality. And that is presumably why she got the Homeland Security beat. Here's a paragraph about her from an April 2003 AJR piece about "Duct Tape-Gate": Before January, Audrey Hudson was covering Congress for the Washington Times. Then she got the new homeland security beat. The halls of the Capitol, this is not. "It is very challenging," she says. "You're sort of isolated.... Your sources are limited and the information is limited."
Despite the limited sources and info, since Jan. 2003 Audrey has brought us such scary stories as:
Boston, New York rail lines vulnerable
Washington Times, DC - Jul 8, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Audrey Hudson. A national intelligence agency warns in a new report that al Qaeda terrorists can easily attack ...
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And many, many more. So, obviously Audrey is a natural for a recurring gig with "Fox and Friends," and she and Annie Jacobsen will probably end up with their own Fox program before this is all over.
Be annoyed. Be very annoyed.
5:36:46 AM | 
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