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CBS ’60 Minutes’ and News Media Foist Hoax on Public With Outdated Panetta Interview
30 January 2012
News media yesterday were citing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as saying Sunday that the U.S. will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapon, and that the U.S. and Israel have a common view on the need to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. What neither CBS "60 Minutes," nor the other news media are reporting, is that the statements by Panetta in the "60 Minutes" program broadcast Sunday evening, are at least five weeks old! During that time period, both Panetta and Pentagon spokesmen have refined their statements as to what constitutes a "red line" for military action against Iran, and have clearly differentiated the U.S. military’s view, from that being spread by the lunatics in the current Israeli government. When Panetta filmed the "60 Minutes interview on Dec. 19, aboard the Pentagon’s airborne command centeron the way back from a trip to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, CBS immediately publicized it and promised that the full interview would be broadcast on Sunday, Dec. 25—which never happened. The Dec. 19 interview was broadly taken as Panetta giving a "green light" to Israel for an early attack on Iran. Since that "green light" interview, U.S. military officials have decisively "walked back" these statements. Two days later, at a Dec. 21 DOD news briefing, Capt. John Kirby made it clear that Iran would have to take a number of specific steps before crossing the "red line," which would include enrichment to the level required for a nuclear weapon, weaponization of nuclear materials, and kicking out the IAEA inspectors. Kirby said that the U.S. would know if Iran crossed the threshold, and "we would have time to deal with it." He emphasized that "the red line is a nuclear-armed Iran," that is, not merely having the capability, or even the process of moving in that direction. Iran "with nuclear weapons" is the red line. Panetta himself, in a Jan. 8 CBS "Face the Nation" interview, said that Iran is not now trying to develop a nuclear weapon, but only a nuclear capability, and he stated that the "red line" is the actual development of a weapon. Panetta stressed putting diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran so that they would not get to that point. Nonetheless, "60 Minutes" ran the stale interview as if nothing had happened over the past five weeks, and the news media played along as if Panetta’s statements were some hot war news. Two Pentagon spokesmen told EIR Monday that the most recent interview with Panetta by "60 Minutes" that concerned Iran, was in December. The bottom line: CBS and the rest of the media are perpetrating a hoax, by reporting Panetta’s comments on Iran as if they just took place on Sunday, and ignoring the intervening war-avoidance moves. |