Confirmed: US Representatives shown parody videogame as evidence of terrorist activities
May 9, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Update: Liz Losh has managed to get the transcripts from the sessions. We will make them available shortly.
What follows are several sources that point out to a very troubling fact. Unlike what was first thought, Reuters did not misreport on what happened at the Hearing on Terrorist Use of the Internet. What actually happened is that US Representatives were shown a parody video as real evidence that terrorist groups were using videogame mods to recruit young members. In other words, US lawmakers are being advised by incompetent contractors that mistook an amateur video with dialogue from South Park creators for an al Qaeda recruiting video. While news agencies have reported on the Hearing, none have yet published about this fake evidence. As you will see, we initially had doubts -as many people on other blogs and forums- that the parody video was indeed presented as real evidence. Many of us thought that what happened was that Reuters misreported the facts. But after watching the video myself, I concluded that it does match the description on both the stories from Reuters and the Associated Press. Based on this, I conclude that, in fact, an amateur parody video was shown by contractors to US Representatives as evidence of a non-existent terrorist propaganda tool. This goes well beyond a funny anecdote: it is another clear example on how the US Government is not being rigorous on their so-called War on Terror. Read what follows to learn more about this troubling story.

Let me first recap what has been happening on the blogosphere relating to this topic.

On Thursday, May 4, 2006, Reuters published a story entitled Islamists using US video games in youth appeal. The story, written by David Morgan, covered an Open Hearing on Terrorist Use of the Internet for Strategic Communications that took place on May 2, 2006.

According to the Reuters story, lawmakers were shown evidence of terrorist groups modifying games in order to recruit members. I quote from the Reuters story:

On May 5th, a reader at the Dvorak forum by the name of julieb identified the video shown at the hearing not as something crafted by terrorist but as a parody created by a gamer fromm the Planet Battlefield forum identified as SonicJihad.

On her post, julieb said:

The fact is that the Reuters story indeed says that the alledged terrorist videogame included voice over saying "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters". That line is, in fact, a line from the Team America World Police movie, a comedy produced by the creators of South Park. Here is a link to the movie's script (you will find the exact same line of dialogue that, according to Reuters, was attributed to a videogame created by terrorists) It is also included on SonicJihad's video, which also fits the description provided by the Reuters story. The video can be viewed here (be warned, it's over a 100 megs).

Interestingly, once this was found out, everybody blamed Reuters for bad reporting. julieb criticized the journalist, SonicJihad criticized Reuters, BoingBoing.net suggested that the whole thing was a hoax and even our blog, Watercoolergames, blamed Reuters for this.

It is interesting that we all blamed Reuters. It was the most likely explanation. After all, the alternative would have been much worse: that US Congressmen were shown a parody video as evidence of real terrorist activities. Elizabeth Losh tried to contact the US House of Representatives for a transcript of the hearing. However, so far, she has not heard from them.

For most of the day, I looked for another source that would confirm that actually the parody videogame was shown by contractors to US lawmakers as proof of terrorist propaganda. It was not until I downloaded SonicJihad's video (I tried 5 times, it's a huge file) that I was able to confirm that. On May 4th, Katherine Shrader from the Associated Press, published a story entitled "Pentagon surfing thousands of Jihad Sites. I quote from her article:

This description perfectly matches the SonicJihad video. Those same words are included in the video, three times first, and they are later repeated many more times. Based on this evidence, I do conclude that the SonicJihad video was indeed shown to US lawmakers. This is not, as we first thought, misreporting from journalists. This shows that the US Government is being fooled, once again, by fake evidence of terrorism. The US Government is using parody videos featuring dialogues from South Park creators to decide their policy. Interestingly, so far no major news agency is yet reporting on this fact. Serious games do not get more serious than this.

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