IF IRAN HAD A NUKE...

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

A  RECORD BREAKING CELEBRATION, the Republican National Convention was underway, the final evening. New York City was playing host once again, Madison Square Garden the venue. The mayor had pulled out all stops to ensure safety, security, and festivities. Security was indeed very tight. More than two hundred twenty million dollars - a record, had been spent on safeguards. The alert levels had been increased to their highest, and the days leading up to the kickoff were tension filled. More than half a million protestors let their voices be heard - a record. Two thousand one hundred twenty people were arrested - a record. New York City’s Hercules Teams, more than ten thousand five hundred cops in full riot gear and with automatic weapons, patrolled the streets and subways - a record. There were minor foolish skirmishes, but no riots. 

Along with bomb-sniffing dogs, brand new technologies were deployed, including Stoichiometric diagnostic devices that detect specific chemical compositions such as radioactive particles and other explosives. Able to penetrate metal, concrete, or virtually any dense material, the detectors being use by Homeland Security had an accuracy rate greater than ninety eight percent. There had been no bombings. It was the final hours of the last day, and soon all could breathe a sigh of relief. 

“The Garden party” had run very smoothly inside the convention walls, as forty-five speakers had stood on the podium to deliver speeches over the course of four days and nights. Some speeches were dull, the speakers robotic. Other speeches were feisty, attacking. Then there were the dramatic speakers, imbued to biblical quotations, evangelical in their delivery. Finally, there were the visionaries, speakers that rallied the masses, emboldening and challenging the Americans to tackle the future head on, without ducking. 

Senator Taylor P. Cox, the junior senator from Virginia, was an exceptional orator, adept at communication, and fell into the category of visionary. He rallied the Republican troops, and the Tea Party faithful, the Independents too, a speaker whose knack for vocal expression topped all during the four days leading up to the acceptance speech by the presidential nominee. His eloquence was highlighted in a defining moment when he laid out his vision for the continued war on terrorism using forty words:

“As Americans we must help all those who ask for our help; vigorously defend our shores, borders, and way of life; show magnanimity and benevolence to those who hate us; and without impunity, crush those who seek to destroy us.” 

The final ten words got the approval of the delegates and conventioneers, who if not already standing, leapt to their feet, erupting into ovation, one that lasted five minutes. “Cox for VP” signs filled the Garden. He knew he was at the top of the short list. 

The call came to his hotel suite at the Marriott Marquis one hour before the nominee’s acceptance speech. Taylor Cox was looking out the window at Times Square. His aide answered the cell phone, handing it to the senator. He listened for one minute without an utterance to the man on the other end of the connection, a person he respected, greatly admired, a former Navy man to boot, and one not given to prattle. At the end of the minute, almost to the second, he was asked a question, an easy one for him. “Taylor, I want you on my ticket – how bout it?”

“Thank you sir, and I accept,” Taylor Cox answered without hesitation. 

“Good man, see ya.”

The new Republican ticket stood on the podium amidst the jubilation and confetti, hands joined, arms raised, their families and closest supporters surrounding them, full of patriotism, full of pride. Next came an event that all law enforcement had the most concern for, a fireworks display over the East River rivaled only by the fourth of July. Thirty minutes and sixty thousand stunning explosions, including comet bursts, glittering bursts, and flickering bursts, followed by the grand finale. A million people would be on hand to watch from balconies, rooftops, Battery Park in Manhattan, Liberty Park in Jersey City, from Brooklyn, and on Roosevelt Island. For security reasons, delegates, and conventioneers would watch from giant screens inside Madison Square Garden, the running mates however, would be whisked by motorcade from the Garden to Battery Park, arriving on a stage moments before the grand finale. There the candidates would deliver more rousing speeches to all gathered at the Battery, and those watching on TV. The plan called for coordination between the Secret Service, FBI, the Air National Guard, air traffic control, and local law enforcement, the details worked out well in advance.  The fireworks would begin at 10:00 PM. 

*   *   *   * 

HANIF ZAR WALI, now going by the name of Martin De La Vega, disembarked from the pyrotechnics barge two hours before it was towed to the East River. His work for the time being was done. The load heavier than usual, he’d used a crane to carefully lift the last container of fireworks, part of the grand finale. Final checking the container, he had paid particular attention to one sensor attached to a shell; a sensor ultimately controlled by a pyrotechnician using a fireworks master control board. Martin was confident it would perform flawlessly, but only on his command, not the technician’s. Ensuring its wires were securely connected, he covered the sensor, protecting it from the elements, and went ashore. 

When routine pyrotechnic sensors receive electrical impulses, matches on the fireworks shells are ignited, detonating lift charges and launching the pyrotechnic shells hundreds of feet into the air. This independent sensor however, did something very different. Martin would use a hand-held metal box, when opened, revealed a digital remote control that safely sent an impulse to the sensor. At exactly 10:30 PM Martin would press a button on the remote sending the desired signal. When the sensor received the command impulse it would launch the remaining shells of the grand finale, and a split second later fire a uranium bullet down a six-foot barrel hidden inside the container. The bullet would impact a uranium sphere and generator inside a tamper cover, compressing the subcritical masses together, initiating a fission reaction. 

       Despoina was in a van expecting her brother any moment. He was on time. Together they drove away taking the New Jersey turnpike south, stopping at a rest area. They waited. At precisely 10:30 PM her brother opened the box and pushed the button.

Light on the Painting - THE JERICHO TRIGGER

Pontic Mountains, Turkey

IN THE MORNING, when tickled with first light purified by cathedral glass, the vision she had painted was correct, an earthly accent highlighting resolution. But then, when illuminated by a great candle chandelier hanging from a pyramidal ceiling of stone, light necessary at a minimum to begin seeing detail, her work stirred to life, becoming mesmerizing and increasingly complex, impossible to understand. That’s exactly what she wanted.
     Shades of gray pigment rendered in surrealism, her easy, untethered brush strokes had assembled numerous geometric rows of long, cylindrical objects, bold, silver-gray and crisp on one side of the mural-size canvas, muted, charcoal-gray, blurred and distorted, similarly echeloned in opposition on the other. Woven in between the objects was a massive steel-gray chain, an unseen force dramatically pulling on it, violently uprooting the cylinders against their structural will towards the center, meshing them together, while sequentially destroying them.

They were pointed shapes with fins, set against a chaotic pale taupe background of thick crumbling walls and collapsing buildings, burning with giant ash-gray flames of fire, and drenched in dark, arsenic-gray rain. In as many shades of gray, the artist had also painted numbers; binary code that fluttered from an inky sky, initially as single digit ones and zeros, before morphing into random numerals of multiple digits, that then transformed into summations and equations, with fractions, Greek letters and symbols in brackets and parenthesis, and in various sizes and forms. Some of these formulations were wavy block, some vague cube, some sharp flat, overlaying the work, floating arbitrarily in space before taking on a unique perspective of their very own. And lastly, at the linear vanishing point of the bleak scene was one large eye, with the pupil dilated and fixed, leaving a thin iris rim of glaucous and blue-gray.

Watched by five unlit klieg lights perfectly positioned on the spotlessly swept stone floor beneath it, spaced exactly three and a half feet apart, the swirling painting, six by fourteen feet, was mounted on wooden stands against the granite wall of a large, four-sided room. The room was reinforced with dark mahogany throughout, and decorated with four large windows of multicolored, antique glass, symmetrically patterned, designed to catch most of the day’s sun. Once a chapel, but empty of ornaments as a result of looting from previous centuries, the drafty space, which had a distinct amplified echo, was at the center of a medieval Christian Monastery perched high on the western face of a craggy Turkish cliff.

The timeworn sanctum had become the artist's studio, a refuge to paint, as well as her place to study and learn. A plain wooden desk, two wooden chairs, and the tools of an artist were all that now furnished the room. And there, created amid the bouquet of the artist’s solvents, mixed with humid currents of cool air meandering through dark corridors with vaulted ceilings, the large painting was just one representation, a single chapter in an expanding volume of the artist’s impressions of the struggles of the human race, the totality that is the essence of not only the evolution of mankind, but the discovery of the rules of the universe itself.

It was a layered postulation of murky oils made with grizzled paintbrushes and pallet knife, and with the floating numbers and formulas, the essence of a theorem, perhaps verifying something, but solving nothing. And with those complexities and likely conundrums, the composition had managed to produce substance and achieve analytic life. Yet, could her analysis be fearful, a gloomy, surreal projection in mural form?

From the start, as geniuses before her, she was a cerebral vacuum, and painting was her resulting quasar. Through art she’d discovered a cathartic outlet, her artistic creations being a veritable spinoff for a voracious, super black hole of intellectual appetite. An apt juxtaposition with inflation of the universe at the jumpstart of the Big Bang, a favorite subject of hers’, the expansion of her grasp rapidly inflating, her mind was dissecting accepted theories, often uprooting the basis of their foundations with original and revolutionary proofs of her own, the state of being versus what will become. In her own scale of Planck Time, she was devouring all that was discoverable or ever dreamt possible to imagine, and finding not only the known unknown, but also that never before imagined – the unknown unrevealed secrets of the universe.  

Her curiosities ranged widely from language and art, to philosophy, math, and especially physics; lately on studies most would consider to be obscure, certainly very small. The deep inquisitive interest she developed for things was aroused by the magical, or what appeared to be supernatural, that is until truly investigated, and explained scientifically. The compass, magnates, fireflies at dusk, had all captured her curiosity at one time or another. And now she was captivated by a brilliant, silver-gray metal called uranium. 
     She'd become preoccupied with the element at first for its shiny color, which reminded her of mercury, quickly becoming more engrossed because of its unique behavior. From her studies she's learned that contained within uranium were dormant forces, at rest since the birth of the universe, and that when sparked and unleashed, those forces were exceptional to behold. Inside this gray metal, where things are a billion times smaller than she, was an isotope, another form of uranium able to sustain a fission chain reaction unleashing enormous, mind-boggling energies similar, she knew, to that of the sun. She also knew that the power released from that dormant energy could be used for good, or for bad.

On one hand it could be used as an energy source with unlimited potential, such as powering an entire city of millions of people, and on the other hand for weapons with terrible destructive power, "Weapons of mass destruction," many called them, capable of instantly vaporizing that very same city along with all of those people. She had also discovered that nowadays the use of fission from uranium alone was considered primitive, and weapons had long ago evolved to thermonuclear, a type of bomb the world’s superpowers each had tens of thousands of. But it started with uranium, and when enriched with enough quantity, an equalizer for those who weren’t superpowers, and without question, a means of terror.

Therefore because of those particular truths, many conventionally powerful regimes, some frightening and bellicose, were just as obsessed as she was with uranium, the radioactive element that made it all possible. She just looked at it differently than they did. A sweep with the paintbrush here, and a stroke with the paintbrush there, represented a myriad of her original feelings, analysis, and predictions. That’s how she worked.

Climbing down from a wooden stool on which she’d stood for those final sweeps and strokes, the artist looked at her mother, who while admiring the work steadied the stool. With her brush, she pointed at the forbidding cylindrical shapes. “They're missiles,” she said with a gaping smile revealing a missing tooth, a lateral incisor.

“I can see that,” her mother answered with a smile in return, placing an elegant hand on her daughter’s ponytailed head, the hair satin coffee just as hers’.

Gliding her hand softly down the fair face, squaring it to her own, produced a gleam from the girl’s luminous hazel eyes. The mother gently held the tiny chin, lifting it to examine the still fixed beam closely. “Hmm, well look at that. You have another new one coming in, don’t you?”

The girl nodded silently, probing the space with the slide of her tongue. “Est-il à votre gout – is it to your liking?” she asked turning her head to eye the painting.

“Yes – yes it is,” the mother answered, her undeterred doting gaze coming from unusually wide orbits, a Bouvier-esque mild ocular hypertelorism and downturned eyes just far enough apart to make her appearance uncommon, yet uniquely alluring and beautiful. The condition was hereditary and the daughter just the same.

“S'il vous plait Karen. You’re just saying that, aren’t you?”  the daughter teased, injecting her new favorite language, accented as well, into the subtle ribbing, especially rolling the r of her mother’s name.  Oui oui Kareen. They'd been on a first name basis for several months, an informality that Karen was initially startled by, but had now grown accustomed to. Although things were becoming different, Karen knew that she would always be a mother in a traditional sense, especially for those few things that remained routine and natural. There was the nurturing and caring as all loving mothers instinctively possess, but primarily in being the guardian, and of that she was devoted, which gave her great comfort. 

“Don’t be silly. Of course I’m not. I love all of your work,” Karen giggled, shifting her attention to the painting, her thumb on chin, forefinger crossing full lips.

“Well you don’t sound very positive. Maybe you need to see it a little better.”

“Alright – I’m trying,” the mother said, her eyes narrowing as they darted across the canvass.

“Pensez positif ma chère Karen. Oui - think positive please, you need to really see it. Here, I can help you,” the girl said, continuing her French intonation and nodding at a black button a step or two away on the floor. A black electrical cord was attached to the button, and the cord connected to a transformer, and in turn to a wire whorl that led to a generator.

The mother did as instructed, and upon lifting her foot off the button, she could feel a sudden vibration to her core. A low hum simultaneously increased in pitch as the five klieg lights began to flicker and turned on, and within moments the cold room was very warm, and awash in reflected colors from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Eyes opened wide, her tall, thin frame rigid, the mother caught her failed breath, forcing a murmur, “I…” She couldn’t finish, the words of expression had vanished, so instead said nothing and just looked.

“You can see it now, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Karen breathed with the faintest of a whisper. 

“Tell me if you like it now.”

“I’m…” Karen tried.  

“I knew you would like it,” the little girl said with a slight one-sided grin.

Her mouth filled with saliva produced by an over stimulated nervous system, Karen swallowed, clearing her throat to ask in a barely audible tone, “What are you going to call it?”

“It doesn’t have a name yet.”

“Is it finished?”

Taking a few steps back and folding her arms, brush gripped in her small hand, the little girl pursed her lips, squinted and studied. “Oh yes,” she finally said after a long silence. “It’s finished.”

“Then sign it untitled,” Karen said, finally snapping the hold of the painting. With a slight tremble she handed her daughter a pallet knife that the child took. “You can decide on a name later,” she added nervously.

Scraping and scooping from a pallet of oils, using titanium white for petals, cadmium green for filament, she briskly fashioned a flower in the bottom right corner of the painting. Then with a sharp pin and a prick of her finger, she added the stamens. That was her signature, Lily. 

VENICE

    We met in Venice.

    “Venezia,” she corrects me in song. She’s right. The old city’s name is more agreeable when spoken in Italian, with accents of course, similar to singing, and especially when sung by her. If I'd forgotten the correct, most appealing way to say it, the proper elocution, finished with an exotic flair, well – all I had to do was just take one look at this beautiful woman. The allure of the city on water, the flowing notes of the name, finished with exhale of pleasure, was the exact essence of her.
    “Come darling. Follow me,” she said softly and smiled. “Back to Venezia.” So I took her hand, and now here we are again.

THE GREAT BLIZZARD OF 2015 (2009-2015)

THE REAL BLIZZARD - THE BLIZZARD OF LIES 

The great blizzard that Bill de Blasio warned New Yorkers about, the one that was going to be the blizzard of the century was a little late in coming. The blizzard actually started in 2009. "The Taliban is not a terror group and Bergdahl served honorably..." How often does Barack Obama and his Administration lie about things that matter? Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wrote of this in a October 14, 2014 OpEd: 

"In 1996, the late, great New York Times columnist William Safire published a column, 'Blizzard of lies,' in which he laid out a series of falsehoods by Hillary Rodham Clinton and declared 'Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.'

Today, Americans of all political stripes are coming to a similar, sad realization about our president. A recent Fox News poll asked Americans 'How often does Barack Obama lie to the country on important matters?' Thirty-seven percent said 'most of the time,' 24 percent said 'some of the time,' and 20 percent said “only now and then' Just 15% said 'never.'

Think about that: 81 percent of Americans believe that Obama lies to them at least “now and then” on “important matters.”

Mr. Thiessen went on to write, "Because there is a culture of deceit in the Obama White House — a serial willingness to say things that are untrue to protect the president.

Think about some of the falsehoods this White House has told the country:

They told Americans that no one at the White House edited the Benghazi talking points to blame the attack on an Internet video — until it came out that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes had urged Susan Rice 'to underscore that these protests are rooted in and Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.'

The president repeatedly told Americans that no one would lose his or her doctor or health-care plan — until it later emerged that White House policy advisers had urged him to drop the line but “were overruled by political aides.”

Obama told Americans that there was 'not even a smidgen' of corruption at the Internal Revenue Service (while the investigation was still underway) — but then it was revealed that there had been a spontaneous combustion of hard drives among IRS officials under investigation.

Add to that White House spokesman Josh Earnest’s false claim that Obama 'wasn’t specifically referring to' Islamic State when he called them JV terrorists . . . or Obama’s false assertion that the sequester was 'not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed' . . . or his false claim that '7 million Americans . . . have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion.'

The list goes on and on.

One falsehood can be a mistake. Two are troubling. But three, four, five or more in a row? That is a pattern of deceit. Or, in the immortal words of William Safire, a 'Blizzard of Lies.'”

WH: Taliban Is Not a Terror Group

The White House today said that the Taliban is not a terror group, but rather an “armed insurgency.”

INSIDER.FOXNEWS.COM

The Rescue of Sharyl Attkisson – and thoughts on STONEWALLED, the best selling exposé about her CBS News experience.

Readying my things on the morning of September 11, 2012, I was on the island of Kauai when the attack on the consulate in Benghazi occurred, learning about it as a headline from the Wall Street Journal app on my iPad. As we were preparing for a sailing trip that morning, the things I wanted to take on the boat were being neatly laid out on the bed. "There's my camera. Here's my iPad. Hmm, what's this story?" It was the anniversary of 9/11. "How could they not have prepared for this?" I thought. 

I looked at my travel companion (who bares an uncanny twin-like resemblance to Sharyl Attkisson). “Jesus Christ  - the U.S. consulate in Benghazi has been attacked,” I blurted. She was aware that I had spent some time in Libya just a couple of years before. “Four Americans are dead, including the ambassador. I met that guy,” I added after reading some more.

“Why were they attacked? Who did it?” she asked, handing me my morning cup of Kona's finest.

Scrolling on, I also searched other news stories. I saw pictures of the burned out compound, which looked identical to the one I had stayed in when I was in Benghazi, and just like the one we had in Tripoli as well. I was certain that I would know a number of key players in this event. “It says here that they were attacked by demonstrators because of an anti-Muhammad video on YouTube. At least that’s what administration officials and the State Department are saying.” I cynically repeated, “YouTube video,” giving the quotation marks with my fingers, and tossed the phone on the bed in disgust. I knew that by the time it was all said and done, this was going to be a very painful story, with at a minimum plenty of “stonewalling” and obfuscation, and from there it would only get worse. But I was also certain that it was one scandal that would never see the full truth exposed. It was far too dangerous. Benghazi is at the heart of Sharyl Attkisson's experience at CBS News.

“You were there weren’t you?” my friend later asked me on the boat that day. "In Libya. Benghazi."

“A few times,” I said.

“What was it like?” she asked, her hand rubbing my back, coming to rest on my shoulder.

“Like the bar in Star Wars, only without the booze.”

Besides being a newswoman that the camera likes, she's very articulate, and on the surface at least, very calm. Yet if there is one adjective that can be used to describe Sharyl Attkisson, it’s “poised.” And she has remained remarkably poised in spite of the unfair attacks coming from former colleagues and other members of the far left media as she has trained the klieg lights on rampant media bias of a new order. The light she shines is not new, but it does further illuminate what many have always known about Washington and network news - corporate and political manipulation of news content is alive and well, and that "Big Brother" is very active. Such are the primary themes her new book STONEWALLED. 

Stoic and detailed in her story telling, Sheryl Attkisson is a very seasoned broadcast news journalist with tenacious investigative drive, and after nearly three decades in the business, she’s a reporter that certainly knows her way around a network newsroom, able to painstakingly cajole a scoop from an allusive and truly reliable source. Now she finds herself at the center of a firestorm, fueled by her detailed allegations of newsroom and White House deceit, corruption of character, and management indifference, as CBS News and the Obama administration skipped hand in hand in collusion to deceive the American people time and time again about scandal after scandal.

There may be some ire and bad blood over her memoirs floating around, but taking it all in a very professional stride, one that should be greatly admired by the way, (and pardon the following cliché), Sharyl Attkisson rises like a Phoenix out of the ashes that is CBS News today, tackling with alacrity and gusto the very questions that cause many to have their heads explode regarding the network news media and their cozy relationship with the Obama administration; highlighted by the book’s tagline, “My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington.” Finally we get the reports from Sharyl Attkisson on Benghazi and Fast and Furious, as well as a number of other stories that the producers and management at CBS had either suppressed or completely nixed altogether ("death by a thousand paper cuts"), and we get the valuable back stories to boot. Having grown up in McLean, Virginia, my father a "Company Man," I love the juicy gossip about Washington D.C., especially when I can get it from a reporter. In this case I don't even have to buy drinks at Off the Record in the Hay Adams Hotel. She gives us the names to Google search and affix faces permanently to those enablers that were either corrupt or inept. It’s in print form in her book, but thoroughly discussed on video found on YouTube as she now makes the book promotion tour.

The memoir could have been aptly titled “Blown Off – Case Studies of How and Why CBS News and the Obama Administration are Rife with an Ingrained Culture of Corruption so Pervasive, that Lying to the Press Corps and American People is the Normal, Expected, and Accepted Behavior.” Many left-wing talking heads on MSNBC, Chris Hayes, and other cable news neophytes that couldn’t hold a candle to Ms. Attiksson’s credentials and experience, have taken a few cheap shots at her credibility, attempting to label her effort as a bad case of sour grapes, or an effort on her part to land a job at Fox News, or both, making her a perpetual pin cushion. Quite possibly there is a little cynicism bordering on disgust on her part, but who could blame her for wanting a job at Fox News over a "go nowhere with the rest of my career" working for last place CBS News, if that’s in fact where she ends up? In the meantime she’s a paid guest at Fox, with apparently a seat next to Howard Kurtz on Sunday mornings, and finally getting the long overdue widespread exposure that she rightly deserves. I’m sure the pay, not to mention the freedom and self-actualization are more than enough justification. 

For many, as if that weren’t enough of a reason to give CBS News management the single finger salute, imagine after twenty years of devoted, accomplished, and award winning news journalism she’s quite suddenly faced with the realization, an epiphany if you will, that her bosses at CBS News were either mostly biased a**holes, or spineless amoebas cow towing to the Chicago style mafia of the Obama administration. Perhaps as she suddenly found herself with less and less time in front of the camera, she also began to watch her own news station a little more closely, coming to the realization of just how far the once dominant CBS News had fallen, seemingly held precariously together by a few choice Obama connections. Those connections between the Obama White House and CBS News, which few other than those at Fox seem interested in pointing out, come in the form of Ben Rhodes, the current deputy national security adviser for strategic communication (not a bad job for someone with zero previous experience in National Security and an MFA in Creative Writing) and Mr. Rhodes brother David Rhodes, President of CBS News. Questions? There should be plenty. If the previous facts aren’t material enough, how about having her computer hacked and tracked for quite some time? And evidently that didn't seem really bother anyone at CBS News, other than to confirm that there had in fact been “unauthorized intrusions” into her mac. Wasn't anyone at CBS the least bit curious? And apparently the hacking began while Sharyl was deep into her investigation of Benghazi. It would later be learned that Ben Rhodes figure prominently as a key figure in the White House's early handling of the Benghazi Talking Points. 

To her credit, Ms. Attkisson is not cut from the usual cloth of those news journalists that have spent twenty years at CBS News, even her first and last names are unusual, and rather than dance delicately around Obama scandals such as the Benghazi, or Fast and Furious, and the CBS News management’s handling of the administration’s messaging as if they were a paid Public Relations firm. She hits the salient points spot on, pulling few punches. Also to her credit, in the spirit of simply seeking the blind truth regardless of political affiliation, she pulled few punches while at CBS, no doubt pissing off many bosses up the chain, certainly David Rhodes. Ruffling those feathers is perhaps the very reason that as an effective broadcast news journalist, she had nonetheless in short order been muffled at CBS, and in a manner of speaking, handed her hat, and shown the door. She’s obviously getting the last laugh, and deservingly so.

I must admit that before 2013, I don’t recall having ever heard of Sharyl Attkisson. And many die-hard Fox News viewers probably hadn’t either, having long since tuned out the network news shows once Roger Ailes began offering up “fair and balanced” programming as an alternative to the three networks ABC, NBC, and CBS, and the cable news giant CNN. My first recollection of hearing her name was via the reporting of Howard Kurtz, who had recently moved from CNN to Fox News. Kurtz, a very respected journalist who had been with both the Washington Post and CNN for many years, hosting Reliable Sources at CNN, a show that I often watched, was reporting on a story about a CBS investigative news journalist that had been reporting on the Benghazi scandal, and that had coincidentally also had her computer hacked. 

My immediate thought was, “Stop the presses – you must be joking. You’re telling me that there’s a TV news reporter at CBS tracking Benghazi as a scandal? No way.” Such a notion seemed ridiculous. Upon further investigation I confirmed that Sharyl Attkisson had in fact been reporting on Benghazi, but unfortunately her broadcast reports were never being aired, having been sanitized and placed in the never to be widely seen world of online news. At that point Sharyl Attkisson was now permanently on my radar screen. The report that her computer had been hacked was also very intriguing, not to mention somewhat surreal. During that same timeframe two of my computers had been hacked as well, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that we both attended the University of Florida at the same time. Wisely, she wasn't saying who she thought that the guilty party, or parties were. Equally well advised, she wasn't telling anyone who had performed the cyber footprint forensics that confirmed intrusion. On the heels of the Justice Department's investigation of Fox's James Rosen and the Edward Snowden revelations about NSA, I would be paying very close attention to this particular chilling part of Sheryl Attkisson's story.

It’s not Ms. Attkisson’s fault for my missing out on her during a career that has spanned nearly three decades. I wished that I hadn’t, for it was my loss – that is until she was intentionally shelved at CBS, where only the truly news ravenous, seeking specific stories on the Internet could find her. After graduating from in 1982 from the School of Journalism at Florida (and I’m surprised she escaped my radar back then, as I did loiter around the School of Journalism now and then between my Accounting and Finance courses) she first cut her chops locally on PBS in Gainesville, Florida and then as a bureau reporter in the Fort Pierce and West Palm Beach markets. Those early career grinds were followed by a stint in Ohio and Tampa, before hitting it big with the burgeoning CNN as an anchor in 1990.

The pre Gulf War timing for her arrival at CNN was fortuitous and provided Ms. Attkisson with considerable exposure and a loyal following once the Gulf War coverage began and CNN’s ratings exploded.  Cable news was here to stay, and CNN was king of the hill. At the time Sharyl Attkisson had been playing her cards perfectly. 

Unfortunately, I was not ones of those loyal viewers. After having been a Navy fighter pilot in the Gulf War, a place where I didn’t have much of an opportunity to watch cable news, and newly divorced, I chose the expatriate lifestyle of Hemingway, living in Spain until 1994.  Something about Marbella and tuning in to watch 24-hour cable news beamed by satellite from the U.S. just didn't seem to jibe. By the time I returned to the States, Ms. Attkisson had moved on to CBS News. Unfortunately that was a network news program that I hadn’t loyally watched since the departure of Walter Cronkite in 1981, when Dan Rather took over the anchor chair. 

CBS Evening News was number 1. "That's the way it was."

The story of STONEWALLED is also the tale, rather the “tailspin” of CBS News and the “Tiffany Network.” Why would an entire generation of Walter Cronkite devotees abandon the network in droves once the most “trusted man in America” was gone? Walter Cronkite was the news guru every evening Monday thru Friday, telling his viewing audience, “And that’s the way it is.” The audience wholeheartedly believed him, and at the time CBS News was number one. 

And every Sunday evening, at least in the Ball household while I was there (I maintained the tradition at boarding school, college, and for a time after getting married) was spent eating steaks while watching 60 Minutes. All food was timed to be ready, TV Trays on the table in the family room, mouths watering for the simultaneous taste of the filet and hearing “tic, tic, tic.” It was a staple, and our only religious experience of the week.

Never mind that CBS News was left leaning back in the day, in spite of their Republican favoring founder William Paley, who had built Columbia Broadcasting Company into a behemoth focusing on two things; news and entertainment. The late Don Hewitt, the creator of 60 Minutes, referred to the strategy as Bill Paley’s “two towers of power.” With the secret formula for network success “therein lies the rub,” and the reason that news loses to entertainment. Entertainment costs more to produce, but also pulls in much more money, considerably more. 24/7 cable news doesn’t face the same dilemma. Competing against each other, news will invariably come out on the short end of the stick. 

Edward R. Murrow circa 1955

In spite of Paley’s political leanings, or CBS’s corporate sponsors’ concerns over a number of negative news stories broadcast over the years, most notable those aired on the 1950s news magazine and documentary series See It Now, hosted by Paley’s good friend, the legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow, who was also the show’s creator. The precursor to 60 Minutes, Murrow took on a number of serious, controversial news stories that ruffled the feathers of powerful “corporate partners.” The most egregious offenses came against Alcoa, which pulled its sponsorship in 1955, thus ending its weekly version. Within two years Murrow and the show’s co-creator Fred Friendly were gone as well, the show ending in 1958, with Paley saying that he was, “Tired of the weekly stomach aches.”

During this period, news programming at CBS had remained balanced for the most part. But winds shift, and by the time of Sharyl Attkisson’s arrival at CBS in 1993, Paley was three years dead and the balance slipping away, the scales tipping distinctly to the left.  Firmly at the helm for the last 13 years was Dan Rather, whose time at the top anchor job had not been without controversies of his own. When Dan Rather left the anchor job in 2005, a spot he’d held for 24 years, longer than anyone in network news, CBS News was trailing badly in the ratings to both NBC News in first place, and ABC in a solid second. CBS brought in veteran Bob Schieffer as temporary news anchor filler, until settling on Katie Couric in 2006.  

The arrival of Couric brought with it many changes to news production as well. The set, the theme song and the graphics of the show ware also changed to suit the “entertainment focus” of the Couric style of news, which had been honed over 25 years as co-anchor of Today on NBC. The new look and format of the CBS Evening News was besieged with a maelstrom of severe critics right off the bat. Nothing seemed to work and the ratings further fell. Couric’s multi-dimensional brand of storytelling and soft news didn’t work for the thirty minutes of evening news, effectively ending her anchor stewardship after five years in 2011. Enter Scott Pelley.

Originally from Texas, as was Dan Rather, Scott Pelley began his career at CBS in 1989, and went on to report on major stories such as the Branch Dividian Siege, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Pelley then became Chief White House Correspondent in 1997, remaining there for two years when hen moved first to 60 Minutes II, and then to 60 Minutes. Pelley, Sharyl Attkisson thought for a time at least, who came from a hard news background, was perceived as the saving grace, as someone that would morally support her, and have her back as she and her producer went after the controversial scandals. It was not to be.

Stylistically the book works and reads quite well. In fact, it's a rather easy and fun read. Essentially, her effort can be broken down into three major themes: media bias, corruption, and the government’s abuse of power. The subthemes include gross incompetence, stupidity, juvenile arrogance, criminality, and megalomania.

If I could be critical of Sharyl for anything, it would be for her initial naiveté and cavalier shrugging off of the first evidentiary instances of hacking. Alarm bells should have been sounding so loudly in her head that she would have jumped to immediate countermeasures. Instead she carried on like a typical pretty teenage-girl character in a scary “house on the lake” movie, opting to open the door to left after finding a closet full of dead bodies in the closet to the right (she’s the girl that lives though). Ms. Attkisson then takes the reader on an anecdotal journey of journalistic colloquialisms (news-speak), refreshing the reader’s recollection, or informing the reader for the first time (the extent of the green energy FUBAR) of the numerous scandals that have been spawned by this White House unlike no other. The scandals she reported on, and tried valiantly to get aired are the most nefarious, wrought with lies, ineptitude, and cover-ups to make pettifoggers of the Grant administration, 150 years dead, blush embarrassingly from their graves. The analysis should be turned into a course on ethics in journalism and politics, as her experience is quite representative of case studies on how to become one of the worst presidents, not just in the United States, but anywhere.

The relationship between the Obama White House and the media has devolved into the worst kind of dysfunctional marriage in which the husband is rich and powerful, constantly cheating and lying about it to his wife, yet they make public appearances together, attend parties, and carry on as if everything is simply simpatico. To those that remember Bill Paley, that probably sounds like his second marriage to Babe. Or quite possibly you may see the Clintons, or JFK in that comparison. It’s not. It is instead how the media and the White House, and in the world of Sharyl Attkisson specifically, CBS, functions. Ms. Attkisson takes the reader on a correspondent’s journey through the digging up of information on the several important scandals that have plagued, and defined the White House of Barak Obama, yet miraculously left little impression on the majority of non Fox media, and therefore apathy with at least half of the voters (the same voters that Dr. Gruber referred to in his video no doubt, and perhaps the very same 47% that Governor Romney was talking about in the video taken of him surreptitiously at a Palm Beach "Romney for President" fund raiser); Fast and Furious, $90 billion of Green Energy waste (think many Solyndras – which sounds scarily similar to “Soylent Green”), Benghazi, HealthCare.gov. Sharyl Attkisson tried her damndest to get the stories aired without the sanitization edits of her bureau chief, but to no avail (under duress or direction from the White House, or C., both A. and B. – you pick the right answer).

To read Sharyl Attkisson’s book is akin to following her investigative journey as she uncovers new leads and new whistleblowers, all willing to commit to telling their stories on air, perhaps jeopardizing their career, perhaps even their safety or that of their families, as was the case in Fast and Furious. You don’t have to believe everything portrayed on Netflix’s House of Cards to see that Washington D.C. can be a beautiful place filled with awful characters, particularly those appointed staffers, full of entitlement they presume to be theirs, all funded with the taxpayers’ dollars. Cynicism abounds in that town. 

Sometimes the reader may want to scream, sometimes laugh, and many times cry at all of the buffoons discussed in her book. It’s more of the same all the way through: stalling tactics + administration lies + stalling + lies + obfuscation – anything remotely true + CBS laziness/incompetence/corruption = STONEWALLED (death by a thousand paper cuts). We could have taken that formula, massaged it into an algorithm, plugged it into her laptop, and saved her added grief of being hacked. 

She begins by taking the reader through the first days of suspicious computer behavior coming from her laptop and the discovery of “extra” splicing running from her house to Verizon’s equipment, only Verizon hasn’t any record or justifiable reason to give her for the redundant fiber optic. At this point the reader is now imagining poor Sharyl as the new “Enemy of the State,” being tracked by some dweebish Jack Black lookalike at NSA. After the Snowden revelations, such a vision is not far fetched in the least. Her Gene Hackman savior she calls Number One (they meet at McDonalds), and wisely kept his identity a secret, even to this day. 

There is quite a bit of insight and useful information to be gained by Sharyl’s insider exposé as she teaches us numerous tags unique to her trade, such as “AstroTurf,” which is the creation of a falsehood as being a widespread fact, or as she put it, “the whole point of AstroTurf," she writes, "is to give the impression that there’s widespread support for an agenda when there’s not.” Obamacare is the first thing that comes to mind, a campaign that succeeded only because the network news media were equal players in in the manufacturing of falsehoods (lies), in order to shove Obama’s signature achievement down the throats of Americans. The recent Gruber YouTube videos have confirmed those facts. And if it wasn’t the White House manipulating CBS News, it was corporate partners of the network, their bread and butter advertisers.

The author goes on to tell us a story of a bureau chief that got in the middle of one story that Sharyl was running with. The bureau chief wanted the reporter’s notes and expressed concern to Sharyl regarding the story. The bosses up the ladder weren’t too keen on the story as well. It turned out the negative impact the story had on some corporation, also a "sponsor," was potentially going to have an adverse effect on CBS stock, which was rumored to be splitting in the near future. The company getting the bad press was real definition of a “corporate partner” of CBS. No doubt that's a conundrum that's difficult to solve for CBS executives. 

 Now, if it’s a Republican president in the White House trying to get a story held up because of an impending terrorist attack being thwarted, those West Wing “stonewallers” can go straight to hell, but CBS bosses will be damned if they’ll let some little news bitch that doesn't play ball, fuck up their precious stock split with an investigative piece exposing corporate deception and unethical practices.

Sharyl Attkisson worked tirelessly to get herself in the middle of a number of landmark scandals that only Fox News would really ever cover, without covering them up. And when Scott Pelley became anchor and Managing Editor, that's exactly what he and his team at CBS Evening News, and 60 Minutes seemed to be very good at - covering the scandal in order to cover it up. 

A possible conversation can be very easily imagined, with David Rhodes asking Pelley, "What's Sharyl Attkisson's problem anyway?"

"She's a real pit bull," Pelley replies.

"Pit bull? Yeah, well she's causing me a lot of headaches. My little brother is calling about her constantly," Rhodes complains.

"Sorry about that. Like I said - she's a real pit bull," Pelley says.

"What's she working on now?"

"I hear she's writing up a story about Benghazi and..."

Rhodes cuts him off. "God damn it. You better put her desk in your office right next to yours."

Scott Pelley listening to David Rhodes in 2011

Obviously Benghazi was the scandal that required web spinners to be at their best, but before that came the Fast and Furious scandal, and the majority of the mainstream media’s refusal to cover the administration’s ineptitude and cover-up of the scandal was troubling to say the least. It brings to mind the Twilight Zone episode with the gremlin on the wing ripping apart the engine cowling and only the William Shatner character can see him. He even begins to think if he doesn’t look, it’ll just go away. Attkisson describes a time where it appears the bosses at CBS News were simply looking away, but then things changed and they actively began to aid in the deception by either changing the story, or by omission, as was the case of the Steve Kroft interview with Obama soon after the Benghazi attack.

Ms. Attkisson reminds the reader of the consequences of the crazy “gun walking” scheme, and aftermath of the scandal, which CBS allowed her to report on up to a point, and then ceased their support, looking the other way. Two federal agents were dead, a number of resignations within the Justice Department and ATF, Eric Holder the Attorney General was held in contempt by congress, and lastly, Obama invoked executive privilege, which probably saved Holder from obstruction of justice charges. Nobody went to jail and they should have. Many people should have gone to jail. (As I write this, the Justice Department has just dumped 42,000 pages of documents as a result of a lawsuit by Judicial Watch and the Justice Department and as part of a FOIA request by the Plaintiff).

However, if there is a “Mount Everest” of scandals that Sharyl was on the scent of like a bloodhound, it was the Benghazi story. She was on the story from the get-go as it was breaking.  The story of Benghazi actually has three parts: one - the incompetence of the State Department and Hillary Clinton before the attack; two - the attack and lack of leadership during the attack; and three – the cover up of one and two.  The Benghazi scandal and the enabling of the mainstream media and cable news stations friendly to the White House, to perpetuate lie after lie, spin after spin, resulting in a reelection of Obama, has got to be the Obama scandal most Shakespearean. Four Americans died, many were wounded, and a number of careers completely wrecked. And it’s not over - far from it.

On Benghazi, as she had so often done with other important stories, Sharyl Attkisson moved quickly to ask the right questions about the right people, but was stonewalled every bit of the way by the Obama administration, her chief obstructionist being Tommy Vietor, an appallingly immature former National Security Council spokesman. Not only was Attkisson continually road blocked in her investigation by Vietor, she was also treated with indignant behavior, similar to Vietor’s demeanor in a May 1, 2014 exchange with Bret Baier on Fox News Special Report when Vietor sophomorically replied to a question, “Dude, that was like two years ago.” Sharyl Attkisson’s experience was very similar, only worse.

From Vietor she learned that the White House was prepared to go to any lengths possible, including ignoring the law, in order to change the narrative, and would use Vietor not only to give their message to CBS News, but also in an attempt to rein in Sharyl Attkisson and get her to toe the line. She also learned that she knew infinitely more about National Security than the National Security Council’s own spokesman.

Vietor had very limited knowledge on numerous National Security response priorities, and no knowledge whatsoever about the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FAST), used for rapid response for terrorist incidents. He didn’t even know of its existence. The idea seemed to be, as it had been with Susan Rice going on the Sunday talk shows to spin the spin on the video, “How dare you blame our messenger for saying something incorrect – after all, they don’t know anything in the first place.”

At that point Attkisson writes, wondering then, “Does the president simply think that if he says it, people who don’t know better will be convinced. Or is he disconnected – misled by his staff into thinking all the questions have been answered?”

The same runaround would be Attkisson’s experience with the State Department as well. But where she did have success was with those on the ground that personally knew Ambassador Chris Stevens, and had firsthand knowledge of the security problems, increased al-Qaeda activity, and the State Department’s indifference to the growing problems. The whistleblowers were beginning to come forward.

She also quite by accident uncovers the real truth regarding Obama's use of the word "terrorists," and "terrorist attacks," as they related to his defining what happened at Benghazi. Everyone had said that it was a terror attack on the day of and the day following the attacks, except the president. It didn't fit his narrative in the 2012 election, which was that Osama Bin Laden was dead and that al-Qaeda was on the run. From that point on the mincing of words game begins, and the story of who said what when becomes more confused and disjointed as to send that part of the story into a Black Hole. Attkisson doggedly pursued the truth in the stories she knew to be important, until she was just shut completely down. The computer hacking was the proverbial straw, and quite possibly could have been coordinated with the Justice Department by cooperation elements within her own organization at CBS.

Fortunately there is always another side to go to in the world of journalism, and for Sharyl Attkisson it’s a very friendly welcome. At Fox News she has a number of close colleagues that have walked in her shoes so to speak. Fitting right in as a commentator, she’s able to finally do what she does best, and that’s report quality stories dug up by determination, and written by a talented journalist. Howard Kurtz is there at Fox, and we’ll be seeing her often as a guest on his Sunday show. James Rosen, who certainly knows what it’s like to be spied on by the Justice Department, is there at Fox as well. And at Fox News there is also a pervasive attitude that one must at the end of the day just laugh at all this stuff that happens in Washington, because if you don’t, your head will surely explode.

Hands down, Sharyl Attkisson’s STONWALLED is an excellent book written by a top flight correspondent, a read that really drills down into the seedy collusion that takes place between the media and the Obama administration, and one reporter’s mission to see that story finally aired. Read it.