Dark Actors and Dark Alliances

What a perfectly awful symmetry yesterday.

First, there was the headline in The Observer, Kelly death paramedics query verdict:

In the cramped office of an Oxford law firm, Dave Bartlett's solicitor turns to him and asks if he is happy to stand by the dramatic comment he has just made about the death of Dr David Kelly.

Bartlett's eyes do not waver. 'Yes. I have always said that had it been a member of my family I wouldn't have accepted what they came out with.'

Sitting next to Bartlett is his colleague, Vanessa Hunt. Like him, she has been a paramedic for more than 15 years. She does not hesitate either. 'There just wasn't a lot of blood... When somebody cuts an artery, whether accidentally or intentionally, the blood pumps everywhere. I just think it is incredibly unlikely that he died from the wrist wound we saw.'

Odd that it warrants a story now, because the paramedics have been on the record for at least a year, as seen in Renan Talieva's excellent "Questions for the coroner's inquest":

It has been estimated that for a person of Dr Kelly's size to die of haemorrhage, he would need to lose about five pints of blood. But witness accounts did not indicate anything near that amount at the scene.

Paramedic Vanessa Hunt volunteered the observation that there was 'no obvious arterial bleeding. There was no spraying of blood or huge blood loss or any obvious loss on the clothing. ... As to on the ground, I do not remember seeing a sort of huge puddle or anything like that.' This was seconded by ambulance technician David Bartlett, who commented "we was surprised there was not more blood on the body if it was an arterial bleed."

And then this shock: Gary Webb, reporter who linked CIA to drug sales, dead at 49

SACRAMENTO - Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative reporter who wrote a controversial series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, has died at age 49.

Webb was found Friday morning in his home in Sacramento County's Carmichael area, dead of an apparent suicide. Moving company workers called authorities after discovering a note posted on his front door that read "Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance."

He was killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to Sacramento County Deputy Coroner Bill Guillot. Authorities are treating the death as a suicide, Guillot told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Not every suicide is an execution. Some people do kill themselves. Webb was going through a divorce. But some people divorce without killing themselves, too.

Webb wrote in Into the Buzzsaw:

In seventeen years of doing this, nothing bad had happened to me. I was never fired or threatened with dismissal if I kept looking under rocks. I didn't get any death threats that worried me. I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? Hell, the system worked just fine, as I could tell. It encouraged enterprise. It rewarded muckracking.

And then I wrote some stories that made me realise how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job. It turned out to have nothing to do with it. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.

So now Webb joins Casolaro and Kangas, Hatfield and Lombardi, and more. The suicided chroniclers of the dark alliances of the "dark actors playing games." (And I haven't forgotten you, Margie Schoedinger.)

Can we say with certainty Webb was murdered? Certainly not. We're not permitted to know anything with certainty that could be prejudicial to the Prime Suspect, the National Security State.

But we can say it with conviction. And we ought to.

If it was murder, say those who believe Webb killed himself with multiple gunshots to the head, then what was the motive? The story of Dark Alliance was out of the box, and roundly marginalized by America's MOCKINGBIRD media. So where was the benefit in killing him now?

Cryptogon shares some interesting speculation regarding some of Webb's recent stories, particularly "The Killing Game":

This one describes disturbing aspects of a video game designed jointly by the U.S. Army and Navy called America's Army. Clearly, this game is the front end of a something that makes the original MKULTRA programs seem innocuous by comparison. I wonder what close analysis of the sound and graphics used in this game would reveal... Are any "extra" image frames inserted into the gameplay? Just what exactly is contained on the audio tracks?

Myself, I'm inclined to believe Webb's death is unrelated to his current work in Sacramento, and is more likely attributed to the Agency setting an example, and sending a message to America's investigative journalists who've held Webb as a role model. The message: You fuck with us, you're fucked forever. You'll never be safe, and we'll get you on our own time.

Why kill him now? If he'd been killed when the story had just broken, the CIA would look to have blood on its hands even to some dyed-in-the-wool coincidence lambikins. So it's partly about plausible denial. But it's also about all the darker secrets that must be hidden now. Never have there been so many of them.

Still, most people say, Let's not jump to conclusions...you're sounding paranoid...this isn't fascism...they're not THAT evil...it's just coincidence....

How much cognitive dissonance will take for some people to wake up? Let's not wait to find out. Let them enjoy their sleep. By the time they tumble out of bed it'll probably be too late for them to make a difference. They'll just stumble about, groggy and uncomprehending, rubbing their eyes and mumbling "This can't be happening!"

As Leonard Cohen says, "There's a war between the ones who say there is a war, and the ones who say there isn't." Well, there is a war, and we're the only side taking casualties.