Understanding US Government Propaganda Operations Surrounding Osama bin Laden

By Robert Wenzel

If we buy for a moment that the U.S. government is telling us the truth about what they found during the raid  on Osama  bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011, it is instructive to examine the timeline of the release of information about the raid.

It is an object lesson in how government propaganda operations work.

A little more than a week after the raid, this is some of what the "All the News That is Fit to Print" New York Times reported in a story that was titled, Pornography Is Found in Bin Laden Compound Files, U.S. Officials Say:

 The enormous cache of computer files taken from Osama bin Laden’s compound contained a considerable quantity of pornographic videos, American officials said on Friday, adding a discordant note to the public image of the Islamist militant who long denounced the West for its lax sexual mores.

In the report, NYT was pretty open about what this report could mean:

 [T]he disclosure could fuel accusations of hypocrisy against the founder of Al Qaeda, who was 54 and lived with three wives at the time of his death, and will be welcomed by counterterrorism officials because it could tarnish his legacy and erode the appeal of his brand of religious extremism.

How convenient for the Empire.

However, what was not reported at the time in the esteemed NYT, was that bin Laden had an extensive book collection. The books suggested a strong curiosity about US evil operations around the globe and included,  Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, The Best Enemy Money Can Buy by Anthony Sutton. (See: The full list here.)

The timing of the release of this book list, today, is curious. It comes within just a couple weeks of a report by Seymour Hersh that not much was found in the bin Laden compound. And so today, we have a document dump from the USG as to what was taken out of the bin Laden compound, including the list of books.

In other words, its an example of government propaganda operations.

When it was convenient for the government to smear bin Laden, reports of pornography on his computer were leaked early on to the media. But now, years later, only to counter the bad publicity of the Hersh report, do we learn of the fascinating book collection of bin Laden, which can certainly provide much more insight into the thinking of bin Laden than news that he liked to watch big tit blond porn.

But the government is not about truth telling and transparency. It is about spinning tales and controlled information leaks and disclosures. The USG tells us only what they want us to know, when it is to the government's advantage for us to know. Only now has it become to the advantage of the government to let us know that bin Laden had an extensive book collection. If Hersh did not publish his expose, we would probably have never heard about the books that Osama bin Laden owned, which provide important insight into the man's intellectual interest.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher at EconomicPolicyJournal.com and at Target Liberty. He is also author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics