San Bernardino ‘Terror Attack’: Did a Major News Company Accidentally ‘Jump the Gun’?

By James F. Tracy

Are major Western news media complicit in the staging of so many recent and curious mass shooting and “terrorist attack” events? A simple answer would be “Yes,” if only because journalistic outlets collectively (and perhaps intentionally) fail to thoroughly interrogate these events and the potential motivations of individuals and institutions directly involved in such incidents, in particular those wielding unprecedented oversight with the most at stake–federal government and law enforcement agencies.

This is especially so because the storylines and evidence offered to demonstrate events including the Sandy Hook massacre, the Boston bombing, the Umpqua College “shooting,” the San Bernardino “terrorist attack” and most recently the Orlando nightclub shooting event are so weak and implausible that journalists and the public alike, with an Orwellian combination of cognitive dissonance and fear, automatically place even modest critical faculties in abeyance and defer to state officials taking turns at the podium. 

Sometimes, however, the media’s deceit is much more forthright. For example, one may conclude that strong evidence along these lines exists if a major newspaper chain inadvertently publishes a detailed story on a mass shooting across its platforms from a major wire service before the event has transpired. This appears to be what Canada’s Postmedia did with an Associated Press story its outlets published one day before the San Bernardino incident allegedly took place. The posts, captured in screen shots here, have since been scrubbed from the company’s sites.

History provides clear examples of news media complicity in political conspiracies, including their full-fledged use by state actors. For example, as presented in Oliver Stone’s masterful JFK, on November 22, 1963 Col. Fletcher Prouty was halfway around the world in New Zealand when that country’s newspapers published detailed accounts of President Kennedy’s assassination hours before the tragic event.

“For those of us who just happened to be in far-off Christchurch, New Zealand,” Prouty recalls, “the Kennedy assassination took place at seven-thirty on the morning of Saturday, November 23, 1963.” He continues,

As soon as possible, the Christchurch Star hits the streets with an “Extra” edition. One quarter of the front-page was devoted to a picture of President Kennedy. The remainder of the page was, for the most part, dedicated to the assassination story, from various sources. Who were those sources, and how could so much intimate and detailed biographic information about Oswald have been obtained instantaneously? The answer is that it wasn’t obtained “instantaneously.” It had to have been prepared before the crime, and like everything else, prepackaged by the secret cabal. 

This “instant” news, available so quickly and completely in far-off New Zealand, is the most important detail of the murder plan. This newspaper ran an “Extra” edition that was on the streets before noon in Christchurch. It ran news items filed by experienced on-the-spot reporters in Dallas, who reported that the President was hit with a “burst of gunfire.” A few lines below, it said, “three bursts of gunfire, apparently from automatic weapons” were heard.[1]

With the above in mind the following evidence suggests a similar dynamic at play in news media to this day.

On December 1, 2015 Canada’s Postmedia news outlets published the AP wire story, “‘They came prepared to do what they did’: At least 14 dead, 17 hurt after California  shooting spree,” recounting the San Bernardino shooting on many of its platforms, including Ottawa Citizen, Windsor Star, Montreal Gazette, Regina Leader-Post, and Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.

[Click Images to Enlarge.]

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Yet the official narrative the San Bernardino mass shooting states that the event didn’t take place until the afternoon of December 2. This is at least according a foremost chronicler of state-sanctioned storylines, Wikipedia, whose role in this regard now rivals the New York Times.

On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, which consisted of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing. The perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a
married couple living in the city of Redlands, targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and holiday party, of about 80 employees, in a rented banquet room. Farook was an American-born U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, who worked as a health department employee. Malik was a Pakistani-born lawful permanent resident of the United States.

After the shooting, the couple fled in a rented sport utility vehicle (SUV). Four hours later, police pursued their vehicle and killed them in a shootout. On December 3, 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened a counter-terrorism investigation. On December 6, 2015, in a prime-time address delivered from the Oval Office, President Barack Obama defined the shooting as an act of terrorism.

According to FBI Director James B. Comey, the FBI’s investigation revealed that the perpetrators were “homegrown violent extremists” inspired by foreign terrorist groups.

Each of the articles appearing in Postmedia’s subsidiary papers above have a byline listing reporter Douglas Quan. Thus MHB reached out to Mr. Quan via email, presenting him with the above screen captures and requesting an explanation for the publication snafu. As of this writing Quan has not responded to the query.

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Quan’s edited wire story appearing in Postmedia’s premier publication, the National Post, was either correctly held off until December 2, or the paper changed the publication date ‘ex post facto.’

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Again, the news media’s involvement in such deep events is not new. Intelligence agencies’ infiltration of mass media has a long history and is understandable given the journalist’s information-gathering role. Yet because a large portion of the public still look to such outlets for objective information and reportage, these activities constitute fraud on a colossal scale.

The above is yet another example of how corporate (and government)-controlled news media today cannot be trusted to honestly report the news. Since these media are not involved in true journalism in the first place, their activities do not even rise to the level of journalistic malpractice. They continue to function because they are economically powerful.

Yet more importantly, major media proceed since criminal manipulation of public opinion on this scale is far beyond the imagination of most people. Such organizations function as appendages of a corrupted state power that makes no secret of its intent to deceive, and whose ultimate purpose is to rob the people of their civil liberties, their material possessions, and their psychic well-being.

Notes

[1] L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, New York: Birch Lane/Carol Publishing.

H/t MHB Commenter D. Martinez