CIA Admitted to Staging Fake Jihadist Videos in 2010 – Questions arise after experts say ISIS beheadings video likely “staged”

A 2010 Washington Post article authored by former Army Intelligence Officer Jeff Stein features a detailed account of how the CIA admittedly filmed a fake Bin Laden video during the run up to the 2003 Iraq war.

The article, which includes comments from multiple sources within the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, explains how the agency had planned to “flood Iraq with the videos” depicting several controversial scenarios.

“The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory,” the article states. “The actors were drawn from ‘some of us darker-skinned employees.’”

Other CIA officials admitted to planning several fake videos featuring former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, one of which would depict the leader engaged in sexual acts with a teenage boy.

“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” said one of the former officials. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”

According to one official, the video ideas were eventually scrapped due to the CIA officers, who spent their careers in Latin America and East Asia, not understanding “the cultural nuances of the region.”

“Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East — nobody cares,” a third former CIA official said. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”

The article does however admit that one specific psyop was successfully implemented, linking to a document from the Rand Corporation that explains the program.

“According to histories of the 2003 invasion, the single most effective ‘information warfare’ project, which originated in the Pentagon, was to send faxes and e-mails to Iraqi unit commanders as the fighting began, telling them their situation was hopeless, to round up their tanks, artillery and men, and go home,” the article states. “Many did.”

While the aforementioned videos were never released, the much looked over admission of such psychological operations raises questions in light of the recent ISIS beheading videos.

Only days after Infowars’ questioned several discrepancies in the James Foley beheading video, top British forensic experts concluded that the video was likely staged using “camera trickery and slick post-production techniques.”

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