Certes, notre titre n’est pas original puisque traduction mot pourt mot, \u00abThe Persecution of Juan Cole<\/em>\u00bb, de celui de la chronique de ce 17 juin 2012<\/a>, de Justin Raimondo (Antiwar.com<\/em>). C’est simplement que le cas est remarquablement clair, et assez in\u00e9dit sans aucun doute.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLe 15 juin 2011<\/a>, le New York Times<\/em> publiait des r\u00e9v\u00e9lations d’un ancien officier de la CIA, sur les mesures diverses, toutes ill\u00e9gales dans leur forme autant que selon le statut de la CIA qui ne doit pas intervenir sur le territoire des USA, prise contre le professeur Juan Cole, \u00e9diteur du site Informed Comment<\/em> et critique particuli\u00e8rement bien inform\u00e9 de la politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re US, notamment du temps de l’administration GW Bush, et concernant l’Irak principalement. Parmi les mesures prises contre lui, des pressions exerc\u00e9es sur la direction de l’universit\u00e9 Yale, qui avait offert un poste de professeur \u00e0 Cole (qui exerce \u00e0 l’universit\u00e9 de Michigan), et qui retira finalement son offre.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abA former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIn an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted to get Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tCole est tr\u00e8s connu dans le monde des experts du Moyen-Orient, et en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral tr\u00e8s appr\u00e9ci\u00e9 pour son professionnalisme et son ind\u00e9pendance d’esprit. Steve Clemons, sur son site The Washington Note<\/em>, commente cette affaire, le 16 juin 2011<\/a> :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abWhile I am deeply disturbed by former CIA analyst Glenn Carle’s recent revelations that there was a White House-directed appeal to the CIA to dig up dirt on my friend and blogging comrade Juan Cole, I am not surprised at all by this news.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe George W. Bush administration ignored the fact that no WMDs were found in Iraq and invaded nonetheless; went after Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame lying about who did what and who knew what at very high levels of government; created a Kafkaesque international legal purgatory in Guantanamo where normal rules didn’t apply and where torture became a routenized part of managing high value detainees; and engaged in massive domestic spying on US citizens. We learned that many retired US Generals and Admirals hired out to US news organizations like Fox were given talking points and retainers by the Pentagon to not provide objective analysis but be seemingly’ independent talking heads controlled by the Department of Defense.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tRaimondo (cit\u00e9 plus haut), pour sa part, constatant cette \u00e9vidence que l’administration GW Bush devait avoir sa liste d’adversaires (dont Cole) qu’il fallait tenter de discr\u00e9diter \u00e0 tout prix, s’interroge, avec une r\u00e9ponse affirmative \u00e0 l’esprit, sur le fait de savoir si l’administration Obama n’a pas suivi le m\u00eame chemin. Bien entendu, certes. L’intervention de Raimondo est d’autant plus notable que Cole est un homme tr\u00e8s nettement \u00e0 gauche, tandis que Raimondo est \u00e0 l’extr\u00eame droite libertarienne. Il y a une solidarit\u00e9 des chroniqueurs politiques d’Internet, et une certaine complicit\u00e9 d’une position sp\u00e9cifique, anciennement dissidente ou marginale, qui acquiert de plus en plus sa sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9 honorable tout en \u00e9vitant le plus souvent les pi\u00e8ges de l’institutionnalisation. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abA couple of years ago, Prof. Cole, who teaches at the University of Michigan, was being considered for a teaching post at Yale: the matter became a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre in the blogosphere, and in the neoconservative media, where an organized campaign to deny him the position was launched. Yale eventually caved in to the pressure: Cole continues to teach in Michigan.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIn retrospect, I think there can be little doubt that the campaign to deny Cole the Yale tenure-track position was directed from the White House. As the Times reported, the effort to dig up dirt on Cole started in 2005: the next year, when the Yale position was up for consideration, he was accused of being pro-terrorist, anti-Israel, and called every name in the book. When David B. Low, Carle’s boss, called Carle into his office, he said of Cole: The White House wants to get him.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbWell, it looks to me like they got him.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbProf. Cole has reportedly called for an investigation, and good luck to him in that. Each and every member of the faculty committee at Yale that voted on Cole’s proposed appointment should be asked and probably will be asked to reveal their contacts with outsiders regarding the matter. I have no doubt that the trail of defamation will lead straight to Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe larger lesson to be learned from all this is that none of us is safe. If you stick your head up above the tall grass, and are critical of whatever gang is in charge at the moment in Washington, you are taking a very big chance. Your career, your private life, your financial and professional existence all are put at risk. And the idea that, under the Obama administration, we are going to catch a break is laughable: the FBI has been given more leeway in pursuing domestic intelligence targets, and that’s for a very good reason because they intend to use it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbYou can bet Prof. Cole wasn’t the only one on the Bush White House’s enemies list who suffered damage to his professional reputation inflicted by US government operatives. We’ll probably never know the identities of the targets, or the methods used to smear, slander, and marginalize them.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbWhat I want to know is: who’s on Obama’s enemies list? Because, as sure as Washington real estate prices will continue to rise while plummeting in the rest of the country, these very same activities are continuing under the present administration<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tCertes, Cole et son Informed Comment<\/em> jou\u00e8rent un r\u00f4le tr\u00e8s important, sur le r\u00e9seau, dans l’information sur le conflit irakien. L\u00e0 est sans doute le fait le plus remarquable que nous voudrions souligner, et d’ailleurs que ce r\u00f4le tr\u00e8s important le fut (et le reste encore) sur le r\u00e9seau, mais aussi d’une fa\u00e7on g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, tous outils d’information confondus. Dans le domaine de l’expertise politique sur les mati\u00e8res de politique ext\u00e9rieure, c’est sans doute la premi\u00e8re fois qu’une action de cette sorte, covert<\/em> et ill\u00e9gale, est entreprise contre une personnalit\u00e9 travaillant essentiellement sur un site, dans le cadre d’Internet. Jusqu’ici, les actions de ce type ont surtout \u00e9t\u00e9 entreprises contre des personnalit\u00e9s en tant que telles, \u00e9ventuellement contre certains journalistes de grands m\u00e9dias institutionnels, notamment des chroniqueurs et des enqu\u00eateurs, et surtout dans des cas sp\u00e9cifiques portant sur des enqu\u00eates ponctuelles. Jamais une personnalit\u00e9, ou un expert du calibre de Cole, op\u00e9rant sur Internet dans ce domaine de la politique ext\u00e9rieure et de s\u00e9curit\u00e9, n’a \u00e9t\u00e9 la victime de telles attaques de discr\u00e9dit et de d\u00e9stabilisation de la part de son gouvernement, pour le seul fait de sa capacit\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9rale d’analyse \u00e0 partir de sources qui lui sont propres ; et cela s’est fait selon des tactiques employ\u00e9es par le FBI de J. Edgar Hoover, ou durant la p\u00e9riode du McCarthysme, selon des circonstances bien \u00e9tablies qui d\u00e9notent l’importance du cas consid\u00e9r\u00e9 aux yeux de ses pers\u00e9cuteurs. (Bien entendu, le cas de Juan Cole est compl\u00e8tement diff\u00e9rent de celui de WikiLeaks<\/em>, dont le but explicite est la diffusion de documents classifi\u00e9s. Il y aussi une diff\u00e9rence compl\u00e8te par rapport \u00e0 certaines actions de d\u00e9nonciation, sur Internet, de faits sp\u00e9cifiques, avec l\u00e0 aussi transmission de documents secrets ou r\u00e9alis\u00e9s clandestinement. Cole fait de l’analyse et du journalisme. Il s’appuie sur ses sources, sur son exp\u00e9rience et sa capacit\u00e9 d’analyse, sur son appr\u00e9ciation et son opinion.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tBien entendu, il n’y a rien qui puisse nous surprendre dans cette d\u00e9marche elle-m\u00eame, de la part du syst\u00e8me de l’am\u00e9ricanisme. L’aspect novateur et r\u00e9v\u00e9lateur est que la d\u00e9marche s’exerce contre l’activit\u00e9 d’un homme passant par l’Internet. De ce point de vue, la pers\u00e9cution de Juan Cole ressemble \u00e0 l’hommage du vice \u00e0 la vertu. Elle appara\u00eet comme la cons\u00e9cration de l’Internet comme outil majeur de l’expression politique la plus professionnelle et la plus sophistiqu\u00e9e. Elle consacre l’Internet comme un outil majeur de la communication et de l’information, dans les domaines les plus essentiels, au m\u00eame titre que les grands m\u00e9dias mais peut-\u00eatre dans une dynamique qui est en train de les supplanter \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard, si ce n’est d\u00e9j\u00e0 fait (les grands m\u00e9dias \u00e9voluant vers le type presse-Pravda<\/em>, s’ils n’y sont d\u00e9j\u00e0 pour la plupart). D’une fa\u00e7on encore plus g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, nous avons la confirmation qu’Internet est d\u00e9sormais le principal<\/strong> outil de communication de lutte contre le syst\u00e8me, capable de lutter contre le Syst\u00e8me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t(Voir aussi, bien entendu, les commentaires de Juan Cole sur son propre cas, sur Informed Comment<\/em>, les 16 juin 2011<\/a> et 17 juin 2011<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 17 juin 2011 \u00e0 12H10<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Certes, notre titre n’est pas original puisque traduction mot pourt mot, \u00abThe Persecution of Juan Cole\u00bb, de celui de la chronique de ce 17 juin 2012, de Justin Raimondo (Antiwar.com). C’est simplement que le cas est remarquablement clair, et assez in\u00e9dit sans aucun doute. Le 15 juin 2011, le New York Times publiait des r\u00e9v\u00e9lations… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3104,6179,11214,3015,4479,3100,11213,60,857,4337],"class_list":["post-73101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-cia","tag-clemons","tag-comments","tag-communication","tag-destabilisation","tag-information","tag-informed","tag-internet","tag-irak","tag-raimondo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}