Last night between around six and eight, MSNBC repeated incessantly that one of the three suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre had been killed and the other two were in custody, "according to two senior US intelligence officials". Surprised at the rapidity of this denouement, I toggled back and forth during those two hours between CNN, France 24 and MSNBC. The latter continued to "confirm" the report, while eventually, CNN began insisting rather heavily that there had been no deaths and no arrests, in what was plainly a war between the two flagging news channels. By ten o'clock it was announced that the younger suspect had given himself up and the other two, brothers, were still on the run.[tag]
I don't know what MSNBC will say if any journalists query them (maybe Sunday on Meet the Press, or Reliable Sources?), but what struck me from the very beginning was Chris Matthews' emphasis on the US source. Why do we get information about a French terrorist attack from an American intelligence source? What do they know that French intelligence doesn't know? How significantly are they involved in the manhunt - and the release of information?
Recent developments between the US, Europe and Russia (the caught-in-the-middle entity being reluctant to implement the sanctions ordered by the first against the last), have convinced me that the US runs the European Union, in Brussels. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised to learn that it also runs the local police and intelligence communities in the Union's member states. Still, it's a sad day for Europe, in more than one way.
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