Why Does the US Seem So Resistant to Finding Out How the Pagers Were Rigged?
© AP Photo / Hussein Malla
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On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a press briefing that the United States had no foreknowledge of the Israeli pager attack against Lebanon and claimed that the United States was collecting information about the attack “in the same way journalists are across the world,” despite its close ties to Israel.
The booby-trapped pager attack on Lebanon and the subsequent attack that utilized walkie-talkies, phones and solar stations, has raised the question about the safety of supply lines across the world. While Miller’s absurd assertion that the United States has to gather information the same way journalists do is laughable on the face of it, actual journalists are running circles around the US intelligence community’s alleged fact-gathering.
Journalists have already revealed that the pagers were branded by a Taiwanese company called Apollo, which in turn blamed a Hungarian company, saying that it only licensed its logos to the company. However, it appears that the company was a shell corporation, perhaps acting as an intermediary for a Bulgarian company called Norta Global.
It has also been revealed through statements from Hezbollah that the devices were delayed for three months in transit, during which they suspect Israel intercepted and implanted explosives in the devices. Reports have also stated that Israel set off the devices because they believed Hezbollah fighters were starting to notice something was off about them.
In contrast, on Thursday, Miller refused to provide any more details about the attacks, only denying any US involvement. On Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin held a phone call with his Israeli counterpart where it has been reported that they “discussed the situation in Lebanon and Gaza” but apparently nothing that Miller could later share with the public.
“Why doesn’t someone from our government ask the Israelis?” Syrian-American journalist for The Gray Zone Hekmat Aboukhater posed to Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Thursday. “Do we know if any of our citizens, many of whom live in Lebanon, many of whom live in the region, if they use any pagers?”
However, US media reported, citing anonymous intelligence officials that Israel had “informed Washington of [the attack’s] specifics after the operation through intelligence channels.” However, that information, it seems, is not for the hundreds of millions of Americans who carry devices that could be used in the same way the pagers and other devices were used in Lebanon.
Instead, as has been the case for many of Israel’s actions since October 7, the US has closed its eyes and ears to the situation, still refusing to say if they suspect Israel was behind the attacks.
When asked on Thursday if the US hoped its investigations would lead to public attribution of the attack, Miller refused to say. “We continue to gather information for a number of reasons, I’m not going to speak to them publicly.”
“Compare and contrast that to the absolute freakout in 2001 to the anthrax threats where the entire system of shipping and system of mailing within the United States had to be stopped just because of two or three mail letters that were suspected of having anthrax,” argued Aboukhater. “We have a situation here where thousands of Americans, potentially, and allies of America could be using devices that are still to this day laced with explosives.”
The United States also had little hesitancy in placing blame in that situation, first pinning the attacks on Iraq, then on a scientist, and then on another scientist who, purportedly, committed suicide after being accused. However, there are significant doubts about the evidence connecting the attack on that suspect, but the US considers the matter closed.
“But, for some reason, we have [Miller] going out and saying we’re going to treat this like investigative journalists,” Aboukhater exclaimed. “We, the United States, the country with eyes everywhere, with the most superior intelligence operation around the globe, we’re gonna treat this like journalists.”
On Tuesday during his System Update broadcast on Tuesday, journalist Glenn Greenwald called Miller’s journalist comment “incredibly deceitful.”
“The U.S. government is the government on whom Israel depends for their funding, for the payment of their military, and for the arming of their wars. Obviously, the U.S. government has the easy, direct, immediate means of finding out ‘what happened’ here and who was responsible by picking up the phone and calling the Israelis and demanding that they explain to them what it is that they did,” Greenwald argued.
On Thursday, Miller again insisted that the US had no foreknowledge of the first attack, but refused to say whether it had been informed about the second attack the next day.
“We were not involved in that operation in any shape or form, and I’ll leave it at that,” Miller said. When the reporter asked for clarification whether that answer meant the US had no awareness or if he would not say whether the US had foreknowledge of the second attack, Miller again would only say that the US was “not involved.”
One reason the US may be hesitant to say what it knows about the attack is that it uses very similar methods in its so-called security operations. In 2013, Der Spiegel revealed internal NSA documents that the agency–along with the CIA and FBI–were routinely and secretly intercepting laptops and other electronic devices to plant surveillance bugs inside of them before reaching their destination.
It has been largely speculated that Israel did something similar to the pagers and other devices in Lebanon, only implanting explosives instead. The question most have is: where and when this happened.
“Because of my own understanding of how Israel works in the region and what its allies and the puppets of the United States Empire are, [I] would point my finger to the UAE, [I] would point my finger to Saudi Arabia,” speculated Aboukhater. “And [I] would question these areas where it could have potentially been held up and had the explosives laced.”
On Wednesday, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was asked if Americans who have these pagers should be concerned. Kirby would only say that he has “nothing more to add” about the attacks.
On Thursday, a group of UN human rights experts called the attack a violation of humanitarian law, noting that it was an indiscriminate attack that also violated international law against explosive booby traps disguised as benign devices.
“[The Israelis] knew that these people who were carrying these pagers were going to be driving cars down the street, going to the grocery store, walking alongside children. They knew that was the case and they, despite all of that, directly attacked civilian populations,” activist and podcast host Misty Winston told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “The way that they've done this is such a terrifying thing. I think that we're all kind of looking at our electronics a little differently today.”
