Richard Engel 2012 Kidnapping was a Staged Fabrication According to Richard Engel

by Scott Creighton

Back in December of 2012, The “All Obama All the Time” network, NBC, staged a little fake news story designed to ramp-up hatred for the legitimate government in Syria in order to help President Obama’s push for military action in the country that had done nothing to us or their neighbors.

The storyline was simple: a popular foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, and 5 others were “taken hostage” by a group loyal to Bashar al-Assad and held hostage during the end of the first year of Obama’s attempted regime change operation.

They claimed after their dramatic, made for Hollywood “big shootout” rescue that they had been tortured and made to endure mock executions regularly during their 5 day captivity.

It was a big story for NBC as the “hostages” pleaded with the cameras from their confinement for the US and all other countries to do whatever it took to free them.

Of course, it was all a lie.

Who says so? Richard Engel and NBC news.

NBC News on Wednesday revised its account of the 2012 kidnapping of its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, saying it was likely that Mr. Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by a Sunni militant group, not forces affiliated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. New York Times

According to Richard Engel’s new accounting of what really happened during those 5 days, he was recently “shocked” to discover that his captors were really an FSA militia (the “moderates”) who Richard was there to glorify in the early days of the regime change operation. He went there to document the heroic “freedom fighters” in an attempt to garner support for them with the US population and what ended up happening was… they staged a kidnapping in order to make the Assad regime look sinister… thus ginning up even more support for the FSA terrorists working for the Obama administration.

Of course, Richard claims he and his fellow captives didn’t know they were actually Obama’s terrorist regime change contractors. However, he does in his latest accounting of the event, which up until now he has constantly blamed on Assad himself, he does claim it seems like it may have been the work of upper management from the FSA “moderates” and in fact he thinks they staged not only the kidnapping but also the phony firefight rescue which supposedly saved them from the evil Assad militia.

Some now claim that the gunfire was staged to convince us — the hostages in the van — that we were rescued, rather than just handed over…

We also were told by several Syrian sources that our rescue did not take place on the road by Foua as both our kidnappers and rescuers had told us, but took place closer to Maarat Misrin…

But based on all of our reporting, it is clear that we were kidnapped by a criminal gang for money and released for propaganda purposes. Richard Engel

They were clearly not kidnapped for ransom because no group ever claimed responsibility for the act nor demanded money for their return.

Two of the captors have been killed and the remainder have escaped. There have been no claims of responsibility and no requests for ransom. USA Today, 2012

And in an interesting shift, Engel first reported upon release that his captors tortured him and his friends and routinely subjected them to mock executions.

Engel said, however, that they endured “lots of psychological torture,” including being subjected to mock executions. USA Today, 2012

This is how the “tortured” group looked when they showed up for their close-ups:

It was nice of the kidnappers to provide the Richard Branson looking guy enough product to keep his flowing locks looking pristine wasn’t it?

Now, what’s interesting is the fact that Richard’s new version of events seems to gloss over the torture and mock executions part of his original story. I guess that’s because they still don’t want to present the “moderates” in too bad a light.

Richard Engel was an embedded “journalist” for ABC during the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq. What he did for the Syrian conflict was the same.

Richard Engel wasn’t taken hostage by anyone. They staged the whole thing from beginning to end. It was a lie. Propaganda.

In all likelihood, Engel and his fellow hostages enjoyed a 5 day mini-vacation in Jordan where they were prepped for the media onslaught to take place after his return to the camera during which time they filmed a couple videos where they pretended to be hostages sitting in some dilapidated little shack.

Then the story was supposed to generate support for the “freedom fighters” because Assad was so evil he was taking journalists hostage.

Today the story is about generating support for the “moderate freedom fighters” because they stood up to the rogue “moderate freedom fighters” and returned the journalists free of charge.

Manufacturing news like this is a deplorable act.

Making up fear mongering reports as is done all over the country is one thing. Staging events is another. It is the worst practice of the journalism profession and though it has been done many times in the past, it seems it is becoming almost commonplace.

I do not know what motivated Engel and NBC to reveal this pathetic attempt at yellow journalism in the first place. My guess would be that in the near future, or perhaps recently, someone else will be coming forward with information and this is simply their attempt at damage control.

Its just one more reason you can’t trust the corporate media with anything. Nothing they tell you is the truth. Nothing. What they report, their stories, are all bullshit. And that’s not just coming from a “conspiracy theorist”. That’s coming from their own organization.

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