Latest ‘ISIS Camp in Mexico’ Story is Completely FAKE

(Before It's News)

J.R. Smith
21st Century Wire

There’s good money to be make in fake news.

Earlier this week on April 14th, a nameless ‘news story’ appeared on the “Corruption Chronicles Blog” section of the website Judicial Watch, which claimed “ISIS Camp a Few Miles from Texas, Mexican Authorities Confirm.” The website claims that ‘an ISIS base’ exists approximately 8 miles from the US-Texas border in an area known as ‘Anapra’ just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

(IMAGE: Judicial Watch Blog)

Upon closer inspection, it’s clear that this story is fake.

The following day, even FOX News distanced itself from the story, reporting that US law enforcement agencies denied there was any truth to reports that ISIS militants had set up a training base in Mexico. El Paso-based local news affiliate ABC-7 also contacted multiple federal border agencies. They all said the same thing: the report is unverified, and there is no ISIS in Anapra, or Juarez.

Today, the US State Department also weighed-in, calling the claims “unfounded”.

“COUNTDOWN TO TERROR’ – ISIS Propaganda, Made in the USA (Source: Video Still)

This did not stop a number of right-wing, fear mongering and opportunistic media outlets from running with this latest fake ISIS story, with some US-based outlets even producing their own fake ISIS beheading videos designed to hype-up the fear surrounding this fake story (as if we needed any more fake ISIS videos made to scare the US population into submission).

If one actually reads into the original Judicial Watch ‘report’, it soon becomes apparent that nothing in it is actually real. The blog post cites “sources in the Mexican military”, and further alludes to an “unnamed Mexican Army officer” and a Mexican “police inspector”.

Based on the over-the-top sensationalism and the lack of any substance in the story, most intelligent Americans might write it off a just another fake ‘ISIS in Mexico’ story, but for cash-obsessed media businesses, a wild story like this, whether true or not, will automatically generate tens of thousands of dollars in online ad revenues overnight. Beyond the obvious financial gains however, the real function of a planted story like this is political.  By invoking the ISIS threat, it energizes the far right-wing in America which further polarizes the political spectrum. Here we can see how a planted news story is custom designed to advance a fear-based agenda, where media outlets work hand-in-glove with the US government’s military establishment to secure more funding and foreign intervention in the Middle East, as well as more funding for the Department of Homeland Security in the US.

The Judicial Watch decoy story cites multiple vague sources including “Mexican intelligence sources”. This might be the first mention of “Mexican Intelligence” in US media ever, as it’s widely accepted that Mexico is not known for having any ‘intelligence’ body that is not already co-opted by organized drug cartels. Regardless, Judicial Watch and its media affiliates have no reservations about passing off lines like these to their readers:

“Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States, the same knowledgeable sources confirm.”

Notice the phrase, “the same knowledgeable sources confirm.” This vague wording is all it takes to fool any reader who is already predisposed to swallowing a certain flavor of either pro-war and Islamophobic propaganda. Unfortunately, the story quickly cascaded through what many would classify as the right-wing tabloid media, led by the highly dubious Washington Times (not to be confused with real media outlet The Washington Post), The Blaze and also by ‘alternative’ media outlet Infowars.

The Judicial Watch blog post then goes on to build-up an imaginary case stating, “During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1^st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.”

Of course, no such “ISIS documents” or “prayer rugs” were ever presented by the Mexican authorities. So the logical conclusion should be fairly certain to anyone by now: they do not exist.

Not content with the initial fake news story, Judicial Watch doubled-down with a “follow-up” story contrived in order to add credence and reinforce the original fake story planted earlier on Tuesday.  The follow-up is impressively entitled, “FBI Holds “Special” Meeting in Juárez to Address ISIS, DHS Not Invited”, and again, claims to have scooped this off of a “high-level intelligence source”, who must remain anonymous for “safety reasons”. Here they claim that another anonymous source has leaked to Judicial Watch about “a secret FBI meeting to determine who is providing information to Judicial Watch”.

There are only two possibilities here. Either the editor at Judicial Watch is being fed fake information by his “anonymous intelligence sources’, or the editor is making it up. Either way, you cannot call it journalism. Perhaps worse, is the fact that other alternative media outlets unquestionably ran with such a wild fish story.

All anonymous, and all secret. This has all the makings of a classic circular media psy-op. Judicial Watch continues, stating that:

“To the east of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, cartel-backed “coyotes” are also smuggling ISIS terrorists through the porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas.”

Almost hidden away at the very bottom of the same propaganda article in the Washington Times, a tacit admission is printed confirming that the story is not real, stating that Mexican authorities dispute the Judicial Watch invention:

“The government of Mexico dismisses and categorically denies each of the statements made today by the organization Judicial Watch on the alleged presence of ISIS’s operating cells throughout the border region, particularly at Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua – El Paso, Texas,” Ariel Moutsatsos-Morales, Mexico’s minister for press and public affairs, told The Washington Times.

The irony here is almost comical, as this official denial by the Mexican government and Moutsatsos-Morales – is the only real item to be found throughout this whole invented ISIS drama.

Last August, Judicial Watch issued a similar non-story which “reported” that:

“ISIS operating from Ciudad Juárez, was planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED). High-level U.S. federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources confirmed then that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border had been issued.”

They go on the be even more vague, saying, “Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies were placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning the imminent terrorist threat.”

The wording certainly sounds as if it were issued from Department of Homeland Security itself.

In essence, the whole story here is that a “warning bulletin was issued” about an “imminent attack on the border”. This was timed on the heels of the last summer’s highly politicized Immigration-Border Crisis. Reports even appeared which claimed that ‘ISIS Plans To Invade Mexico’. Back in August, September and October, these very same voices who were hyping the ‘ISIS in Mexico’ narrative were also shamelessly cooking-up the ultimate trifecta – connecting Ebola to ISIS and the US southern border.

Evil “Mosque-looking building” in Anapra, Mexico, most likely a night club.

Infowars.com daring crack reporter Joe Biggs went on to embellish the Judicial Watch’s story that wasn’t – during his ‘in-depth report’, by claiming he had discovered a possible ISIS hide-out – a suspicious “Large religious building surrounded by barbed wire”, and what he believed was a “Mosque-like structure” somewhere south of the border.

Biggs later drove around Anapra asking of local Mexicans, “Have you seen any Muslims around here?” If this were a SNL comedy skit, it would have been awesome, but the fact that Biggs is trying to pretend that’s it’s news – is beyond ludacrous. This kind brand of infotainment reporting will only be used to discredit alternative media in the future.

This type of fake news story is also commonly coupled with other right-wing media talking points like:

1. Fears of a ‘Sharia Law’ Takeover.
2. Obama is Behind ISIS
3. ISIS Bringing Ebola in US Over the Border

In late March another fake story began circulating exclusively through US right-wing websites claiming that, “Muslims Tried To Bring Sharia Law To Texas“. The real story was noting of the sort. It was built on the back of another fake story claiming that an “Islamic Tribunal established in Texas”, when there was no tribunal or ‘court’ established. Perhaps unknown to the right-wing media pundits is the fact that Islamic ‘sharia’ customs are applied the same manner as Jewish ‘Kosher’ customs, specifically with regards to family and social areas like marriage, funerals, usury and food preparation. Similar parallels can be made with Amish ‘laws’ and even with certain Christian, or Catholic social doctrines. No doubt egged-on by political operatives, Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne to construct a classic staw man argument where she erroneously claimed that somehow Irving’s modest Muslim community was attempting a ‘Sharia takeover’ by establishing an “Foreign Islamic Court” designed to override and supercede the US Constitution. She then passed a city-wide resolution against this new ‘threat’. The reward for Van Duyne was political – she won far-right votes by stoking fear in her own community. Watch:

The other popular conspiracy theory is that somehow, President Obama is secretly working with ISIS. This over-simplified, reductionalist narrative assumes that the President controls everything globally, even though this notion should have been put to bed after the reign of George W. Bush. “Obama is funding ISIS”, propagandists are able to politicize what is historically an apolitical issue – that US intelligence agencies and their allies have consistently trained and funded terrorists from numerous regions, including launching al Qaeda through Operation Cyclone, also supporting terrorist groups like Jundullah, the MEK, along with other terrorist groups in Iran, as well as in Central and South America, and recently with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and also with western cooperation with multiple terrorist fighting groups in Syria. By propagating the propaganda line that “Obama is behind ISIS”, it gets the CIA and other clandestine entities off the hook, and serves to further polarize an already ill-informed and divided America along false left-right lines.

Nothing happens by accident in American politics. The new fundamentalist vanguard in the Republic Party represents an extremist, far right-wing,PNAC world view, and it’s composed of men like Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR). Another key actor in this extremist enclave is California Rep.

CA Congressman Duncan Hunter.

Duncan Hunter (R) who was the first US politician to openly punt the sensational ‘ISIS is invading the US through Mexico’ tale in 2014. He took things even further, later claiming that ISIS would bring Ebola to the US via the border. “You simply have to secure the border and make sure that people we don’t want coming in the country whether they have Ebola or they’re terrorists, name your terrorist organization, they’re coming in through the southern border. This isn’t that complicated,” he said on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Oct. 15, 2014. Despite any evidence to support his claim, Hunter stuck by the fable insisting that, “at least 10 ISIS fighters” were caught by US border security officers trying to cross the US southern border. Hunter’s partner in creating this story appeared to be California Republican’s spokesman, Joe Kasper, who then claimed the DHS ‘denial’ of the ISIS arrested were somehow ‘proof’ that Obama was covering up the story. Kasper tried to shore-up his own straw man creation saying, “because foreign nationals with terrorists associations, captured on the border, doesn’t really play well for an administration trying to convince the world that the border is secure.”

The U.S. government would later confirm that Hunter’s claims were false. In other words, it was a lie. Just like all the lies before and after it, it was designed to instill fear in the media, and to further divide America along extremist political lines.

This latest bogus ISIS in Mexico story is just the latest in that new popular genre of propaganda being advanced by partisan charlatans and their corrupted media outlets.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Judicial Watch claims to be a ‘conservative and nonpartisan’ watchdog organization. In reality, it is mostly partisan, favoring the Republican Party and the far right-wing in America. Its supporters will point to its many activities and investigations over the years, and while Judicial Watch has certainly achieved many genuine successes as a legal and advocacy group in the past, it’s recent PR stunt, propagandizing about ‘ISIS in Mexico’ should cast serious doubts over its legitimacy as a media or ‘news outlet’.

(Edited by Peter Sterry)

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