Lebanon: “Calling it on the Money”

Editor’s Note: This piece was first published on May 9, 2008 at World Defense Review

W. Thomas Smith Jr. was reporting from Lebanon for National Review Online in September and October of 2007. The former Marine headed straight into the proverbial lion’s den – the cities, camps, and remote border areas where the international terrorist group Hezbollah was planning, building, organizing, even rehearsing, some seven months prior to the recent violence it has unleashed on the Mediterranean state.

Smith knew exactly what he was doing. He had direct access to multiple high-level sources within the Lebanese government and Army – one of whom has since been assassinated – and he reported on Hezbollah’s once private activity, which is a job few correspondents seem to have been doing at all. At least not until the fighting began a few days ago, and Hezbollah began seizing new ground in Lebanon.

If anyone knows how to uncover and accurately report a story, it’s Smith. And it’s obvious now, “he called it” on the money.

If anyone knows how to manipulate and use the media to their advantage, it’s Hezbollah. And we are today seeing what the group is capable of militarily, just as we did during the group’s war with Israel in 2006.

The Iranian-funded, Syrian-supported, Lebanon-based terrorist group has been very guarded. Its members, numbering in the thousands, never answer questions that might reveal to the world what they have actually been doing in Lebanon unless it is something they have wanted the world to see. Hezbollah has escorts who accompany local and foreign journalists so that the organization can manage the news that is reported. The group posts guards so that the media and Lebanese authorities do not have access to protest camps and larger security zones unless those members of the media are friendly with Hezbollah. It has its own television stations, newspapers, and radio stations, some of which are on the U.S. State and Treasury Departments’ lists of terrorist organizations.

The group even has paid mercenaries in both Lebanese and Western media, to include our own. Those mercenaries have been known to write both flattering and unflattering stories about Hezbollah. They write unflattering stories which they know will not actually damage Hezbollah, but they do so to create a false sense of objectivity and fairness in their own reporting. Then they are perceived as legitimate when Hezbollah needs them to propagate whatever it is the group wants the public to see.

This method of writing flattering and unflattering stories is a commonly used – and thus far successful – tactic of deception. Hezbollah and its sympathizers are masters of this tactic.

Smith on the other hand, is an enemy of international terrorists, and he has been one of the most defiant journalists ever to expose the truth about Hezbollah.

What Smith wrote damaged Hezbollah, slapped the group and its sympathizers in the face publicly, and defied Hezbollah’s intricate media campaign. Since many members of our own media are sympathetic to Hezbollah, Smith angered them too by reporting what he saw personally and the information his sources were providing him. American reporters and bloggers fed – some wittingly, some unwittingly – by Hezbollah propagandists, launched a smear campaign against Smith, calling him a “fabulist” and a “liar.” They had no proof or evidence beyond what their political allies told them (another means by which terrorist groups effectively infiltrate our media). In fact, those members of the media who attacked were the ones who lied; which is obvious to anyone who takes the time to read what Smith actually wrote – and what many counterterrorism experts have said – and compare it with what Smith’s attackers said he wrote.

What did Smith actually say? On September 25th, 2007, he wrote:

“Between the airport and the committee’s office, we (my escorts and I) passed by the sprawling Hezbollah tent city – some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen – positioned between the parliament and the Serail, basically the headquarters of the prime minister, his deputies, and all the cabinet members.”

Tom Harb, the secretary general for both the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and the World Council of the Cedars Revolution, as well as many other members of the pro-democracy movement in Lebanon, have said that Smith actually underreported the numbers in the camp. Even Hezbollah themselves admitted to a force of 600 in November (three-times Smith’s reported numbers, and this after the numbers had in fact decreased from when Smith was there).

On September 29th, 2007, Smith wrote:

“Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 [Hezbollah] gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.”

According to both Harb and John Hajjar, the US director for the World Council of the Cedars Revolution, Hezbollah does in fact deploy from their neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut into East Beirut, sometimes by the hundreds, sometimes thousands. This deployment in September was confirmed several others.

After Smith had returned from Lebanon, international media reported that Hezbollah did deploy in the thousands south of the Litani River. The first report on this exercise came from none other than the Hezbollah-supported al-Akhbar newspaper. No other reporter reported this until Hezbollah’s own newspaper reported it.

Also, as late as January of this year, counterterrorism expert Dr. Walid Phares wrote:

“Isn’t it interesting to see how back in the fall of 2007 Western-based media, friendly to Hezbollah, attacked an American journalist reporting from Beirut, [W. Thomas Smith Jr.], for daring to mention that Hezbollah has ever deployed forces in Beirut, while according to [a Stratfor intelligence report], the organization is sending in -not only regular militiamen, but special forces.”

While Smith was in Lebanon, several of his sources warned him that Hezbollah might engineer a character assassination through members of the Western media. In January 2008, a phone conversation with Al Sayed Mohammad Ali El Hussieni (a former senior commander in Hezbollah who was slated to be the replacement for Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah) confirmed that. Hussieni said that Hezbollah had “quite a few American journalists who are Hezbollah sympathizers … Many are paid a lot of money.” Many of their own publications are not even aware of this. Several senior members of the Lebanese Diaspora and the pro-democracy movement agree that is in fact what happened.

Smith’s only problem, if you want to call it that, is that he didn’t always detail where his personal observations ended and where his sources’ intelligence begin. There were several reasons why, not the least of which was the absolute necessity of protecting sources. Smith, however, concedes he should have done a better job attributing his sources because it opened holes for his attackers. However, he was writing for a blog, not a newspaper article. Smith had well-placed sources in the Lebanese government, members of the military, former members of Hezbollah, and members of Lebanon’s pro-democracy movement. Many of his sources were not known to – and not friendly with – his other sources. So he found himself often walking a tightrope where it would have been irresponsible and dangerous to name anyone or even suggest to one person that he was talking with (or collecting information from) another. Few in the media actually understand this.

On Monday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported:

“An official Lebanese government report reveals that Iran is setting up an illegal telecommunication network across Lebanon, capable of intercepting all telephone conversations in the country, the Saudi-owned daily al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Sunday … Iran has set up this network to aid the Lebanon-based guerilla group Hezbollah.”

This telecommunication network was in many ways the catalyst that launched the recent fighting between Hezbollah and pro-government forces in Lebanon.

Smith warned us about the telephone network more than seven months ago. On October 9, 2007, he wrote:

“… [Hezbollah] is monitoring and jamming cell-phone communications, and tracking phone signals. They also have their own private telephone comm lines running from the south to the Bekaa Valley, and from both regions to Dahiyeh (in Beirut) and who knows where else. The very Internet service provider I am using to post this entry is a subsidiary of a larger Hezbollah-owned or affiliated company.

“Worse: Many of the Lebanese ‘leaders’ here are afraid to go on the record about these issues or anything else related to Hezbollah.”

By keeping reporters at arm’s length from their activity, Hezbollah was in many ways able to prevent the world from learning the truth. At least until Smith showed up. The former Marine dared to squeeze in tight to the chest of the terrorists in order to get the truth out. He risked his life to tell us what Hezbollah was doing. And when the attacks against him began, he resigned from National Review because he did not want his attackers using him to attack the publication he continues to revere and respect. For these reasons, Smith is a hero.

Smith does not in any way reflect the profane and false monikers his attackers have labeled him with. Those monikers belong to the ones who never attempted to seek his side of the story. They never spoke to him. They dismissed his honorable military service, his distinguished journalism background, and his vast body of work. They created things he never said, then published their fanciful propaganda in an attempt to destroy him. They in fact lied to destroy him, and they did so in a profane and vitriolic way, because it has been their mission to quash the truth.

But they would have to physically kill the former Marine to shut him up. And that might be a bit more than they could handle.

©2008 Unto the Breach Media