Send In The Clowns

Bob Newman

Two of the most frequent questions I am asked regarding my work as a military science and terrorism analyst are: “Why are your analyses and predictions so accurate?” and “How are you able to break so many stories before anyone else?”

Granted, some of the stories I’ve broken, which are oftentimes picked up by the mainstream media weeks or months later and reported as if they just broke the story, manage to stun certain people and organizations.

One such story was when I reported U.S. submarines were clandestinely posted off the coast of North Korea with orders to stand by to sink any ship exiting a North Korean port that intelligence said was carrying illicit nuclear weapons technology or components to another rogue state, such as Iran.

This blew a lot of people’s minds because it meant I knew where some of our subs were, what their mission was, and that the president had authorized the Pentagon to instruct their crews on the fact that they could be ordered to commit an act of war at any moment upon a country with which we are not at war. Three months after I reported this situation, a Japanese newspaper verified it upon interviewing one of the U.S. envoys involved in the multilateral talks between the North and South Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians and Americans.

I was immediately asked how I knew the president of the United States had secretly decided to make it U.S. policy to sink commercial vessels believed to be ferrying nuclear arms material between North Korea and an illegal buyer.

I’ve bugged the Oval Office, of course.

Not really. I have methods and sources just like any other investigative journalist. It’s just that mine are better than most.

OK, so I have publicly broken stories and made 46 accurate analyses and predictions in the war on terror in 38 months. Why are so many people so amazed at this? There are many people who are very good at their jobs, which are jobs I have absolutely no idea how to do and, frankly, might very well never be able to learn.

I mean, a friend of mine is a retired scientist who helped make a probe fly through a comet’s tail to collect data. Now how the hell did he do that?

My point—and I do have one—is that if you have decades of experience doing a certain thing, and many others in the same line of work simply can’t match your record of success, their weaknesses tend to make you look even brighter.

Maybe you have detected them and maybe you haven’t, but the media is packed with pretenders who have conned their way in front of cameras and microphones by padding their CVs and developing a slick delivery to those who don’t know any better.

So it’s not that I am some sort of war-on-terror Nostradamus; far from it. It’s just that I am very fortunate to have been given opportunities many others never received, and I’ve learned how to parlay that experience into information people want. Typical Marine Corps self-confidence and initiative haven’t hurt, either.

And if the media keeps sending in the aforementioned clowns, who speak in broad generalities and know how to dazzle the easily impressed with glittery but meaningless military jargon, I will no doubt continue to look all the more clever, for which I must thank the rubes with whom I share the airwaves, ink and cyberspace.

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Bob Newman, a decorated, retired US Marine, is host of the “Gunny Bob Show” on Newsradio 850 KOA in Denver, and host of “Inhuman Newman’s Anger-Management Hour” on 630 KHOW, also in Denver. His “Global Positioning Statement,” a daily insider’s update on the war on terror, is carried by various Clear Channel radio stations from coast to coast. A ground-combat veteran, he is the director of international security & counterterrorism services for The GeoScope Group and is the military science & terrorism columnist for The Denver Daily News. He can be reached at bobnewman@clearchannel.com.

bobnewman@clearchannel.com