MSM — MIA or AWOL?

 
Barcepundit broke an incredible news story this week.

Quite by happenstance, on May 18th Gates of Vienna was tuned to Lars Larson, a talk show radio host. Larson was interviewing Frank Gaffney about his NRO essay, Spain’s Terrorgate.

Using Barcepundit’s translations of the El Mundo editorial (May 16th), Gaffney exposes a huge new story on 3/11. It is a remarkable tale, composed of a number of stranger-than-fiction elements.

How’s this for starters: ABC — yes, our good old MSM behemoth — staged pictures of the supposed unexploded backpack remaining from the bombing of the train. The police claimed not to have the “real” one available but, hey, offered to use one of the officers’ backpacks since it looked similar. Another example of good journalistic practices, right?

But it gets worse. Gaffney reports:

El Mundo suggests that, almost immediately after the 12 bombs went off in one of the city’s busiest train stations, some in the Spanish police force fabricated evidence, then swiftly hyped it to the domestic and international press. The object seems to have been to support the oppositions’ claims that Islamists angry over the government’s support for the war in Iraq were responsible for the attacks.

As Gaffney says, one could reasonably infer that if this report is true, then Tedax, the Spanish police bomb squad was, at worst, involved in the bombing itself.

There was a real backpack. What the police did was to hide from the investigating judge an xray of its contents. “Backpack 13” could never have exploded. The cables connecting the cell phone to the explosive were never connected. An interesting lapse when you consider these terrorists were “experts.”

We’re spiraling downward here in this stranger-than-fiction recount. Carmen Toro alledgedly supplied explosives for the bombings. And in Mr. Toro’s personal phonebook was the cellphone number for the chief of Tedax (the above mentioned Spanish bomb squad). When the investigating judge called the number, it turned out that a member of the bomb squad answered the phone. Creepy, no?

Here’s the order of creepiness:

• The Aznar (conservative) government had sent Spanish troops to Iraq.
• The opposition (socialist) party promised to reverse that policy should it be voted in.
• On 3/11, the bombings in Madrid assured the turnover in government.
• The Aznar government blamed the bombing on ETA (a separatist Basque movement) because of the nature of the explosive and because of the setup with the cellphone trigger. This was denied by the opposition, who claimed the death and destruciton of Spaniards in the days before the election was due to the country’s support of the USA in Iraq.

There is no way to know what kind of explosive was used in the train bombing since the explosions eliminated any forensic evidence. All that remained was the contents of Backpack #13, curiously undetonated and waiting for conclusions to be drawn about its provenance.

The cellphones used in the attack were from a phone shop owned by a Spanish police officer… a police officer named Maussili Kalaji. Officer Kalaji was born in Syria. In addition to being a member of Al Fatah, his resume included a stint as an agent for Soviet Intelligence. Nice fellow.

Next we come to his sister. She worked for the police also, translating the wiretapped conversations among the (alledged) Madrid bombers prior to 3/11...

So: Starting with ABC’s faked photo and ending up with a suspicious translator, this is a story begging for investigation.

Calling the MSM, calling the MSM. Hello? Anyone there?

Are you all still flushing Korans in Gitmo?

Or maybe interviewing deserters from the Navy?

Anybody home?