 |
Wayne Simmons' mug shot for his arrest in Annapolis
in 2007. Annapolis Police Department
|
By the time Wayne Simmons went on Fox News
last March for what would end up being his final appearance, viewers
knew what to expect. "This president clearly has absolutely no idea what
he is talking about," Simmons said of President Obama's handling of
ISIS. Simmons had made guest appearances on Fox more than a hundred
times as a "former CIA operative," and certainly looked the part: white
mustache, neck bulging out of his dress shirt, a handshake "so hard, he
can crush you with it," as one Fox host put it. Beyond offering his
expertise as an intelligence officer, he had become particularly adept
at serving up hawkish red meat to the network's audience. "We could end
this in a week," he went on, suggesting that the United States run
"thousands of sorties" against ISIS. "They would all be dead."
Simmons was largely anonymous when he first appeared on Fox, in 2002,
but he soon became a regular face on the network, alongside a cast of
retired military officers who, like Simmons, had been recruited into the
Pentagon's "military-analysts program." The initiative invited retired
officers who had made names for themselves as television-news
commentators to attend regular briefings from Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and to make trips to Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. In 2009,
The New York Times
won a Pulitzer Prize for its report on how the Pentagon used the
analysts to build public support for the war in Iraq. The program
disbanded, and many of those involved tried to distance themselves from
it. But Simmons boasted of his connection as a way to bolster his bona
fides, even mentioning it in his Amazon author biography. In 2012,
Simmons co-wrote
The Natanz Directive, a novel about a retired
CIA agent called back for one last op. When the book was published,
Rumsfeld contributed a blurb: "Wayne Simmons doesn't just write it. He's
lived it."
But according to prosecutors, Simmons was living a lie.
READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment