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Anatomy of a Deception: How a Conservative Magazine Attempted to Discredit the Occupy Movement
On Saturday October 8, 2011 video was released on to the internet showing a frenzied group of protesters outside of the National Air and Space Museum dodging a pair of Smithsonian security guards indiscriminately pepper-spraying the crowd. Something inside the Museum, moments before, caused this chaos which led to the Museum being shut down for the rest of the day. The events have since been used by their portrayal in the media to tarnish the image of the Occupy protests emerging across the nation.
What happened inside the Museum to cause the police action has not been reported. Only today, Monday, are reports starting to hit the major media that there is evidence of the involvement of an editor from the Conservative magazine The American Spectator at the center of what took place this weekend in Washington D.C..
When I discovered Saturday afternoon an article published by Patrick Howley on the Spectator's website entitled "Standoff in D.C." I immediately began to analyze the evidence in light of the events portrayed in Howley's piece. I found a photograph taken by the reporters from OpEdNews.com that showed Howley alongside another man in a confrontation with a uniformed security officer in the entranceway to the museum moments before the initial use of pepper-spray. With the exception of Howley's claim that he stood down a "300-pound guard" the photo fit perfectly with the scenario described in Howley's account. (None of the guards present on the scene even remotely fit this description or even his later toned down "heavyset" language.)
Central to the story were the outright confessions of Howley that he was an active participant in the events, rather than an observer, who openly admits his intent to use the action to discredit the nascent movement. Far more problematic are Howley's boastful statements of openly defying the security-guard's directives, forcing his way into the then closed Museum, being pepper-sprayed as a result and then pursued by the security forces, together with his subsequent activities in the Museum while actively seeking to evade being caught.
Given the evidence I had gathered on Saturday I wrote two online pieces (one on DailyKos and the other at Firedoglake) openly calling Howley an "agent provocateur". He was, I continue to maintain, seeking to entice others to engage in unlawful acts as a means of generating a story he could use to discredit the protests, the protesters, and the movement. His employer, The American Spectator, I assert, directly aided him in these acts.
Critically challenging my description of Howley and the role of The American Spectator, David Weigel has argued the following today in Slate:
"I'm seeing some commentary and analysis that argues Howley egged on the protesters, somehow, by going slightly further -- by accident! -- than they did. No, I'm not buying it. Howley stumbled upon conservative media gold by covering the October 11 movement's co-opting of Occupy Wall Street/Occupy DC."
According to Weigel this Spectator editor was merely observing the events as a journalist and reporting what happened. The protesters were to blame and no evidence has been presented that Howley's actions had anything to do with the actions of others or the police reaction and pepper-spray response. The disruption at the Museum was solely the responsibility of the protesters and the successful co-optation of the Movement by an anti-war group with its own unrelated agenda.
The problem for Weigel, however, is that he appears to rely solely on a revised edition of Howley's story published hours after the stories I wrote began to spread around the internet and critical questions had begun to be asked. In fact the Spectator clearly knew that they had been exposed when the Washington Post picked up the story yesterday afternoon. By the time Weigel was on the story the editors of the magazine had already been engaged in damage control and attempted to re-write history.
When Howley's controversial admissions gained this level of attention and national discussion over the internet the revision of the story began.
An analysis of the original unedited piece and the focus of the revisions reveals clearly the recognition of guilt, perhaps even legal culpability or liability for the actions of their employee, by The American Spectator.
What becomes obvious upon reading the two related pieces side-by-side is that alterations were made to eliminate Howley's original braggadocio-filled portrayal of his roles. He was both infiltrator of the protest and initiator of the conflict. In what follows I demonstrate the undeniable conclusions that this was not the report of an ambitious and aggressive journalist who luckily stumbled upon a golden opportunity by being among those whose actions constituted a newsworthy story. This is the story of an immature individual being placed in a position of responsibility by those who feign journalism to hide their own political and self-interested agenda -- and are willing to do anything to shape public opinion to their advantage.
Howley walking up steps of museum (Screen grab from video by Rob Kall opednews.com)
