Transcripts from the "fake terrorist videogame" Hearings now available
May 12, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

(This is a follow up to a previous story, where we detailed how a Committee from the US House of Representatives was shown an amateur comedy video as evidence of terrorist use of videogames for recruitment).This post has been updated

Thanks to Liz Losh, we now have the transcripts of the Hearing of the House Select Intelligence Committee on Terrorist Use of the Internet for Communications.

No much is learnt from the transcripts (apart from confirming the little knowledge that the "experts" advising the government have on videogames). The transcripts do not describe the videos that were shown, only the words that were spoken by people present at the meeting. Therefore, it is impossible to confirm from them that they were shown the SonicJihad video (this was confirmed, however, by both the reports from the Associated Press and Reuters). Since we know from these reports that SonicJihad's video was actually shown there, it is likely that this is the part of the transcript that correspond to what was said before presenting it to the committee:

First of all, the transcript does not show the name of the expert (it only shows "MR. "). If this happens to be some sort of transcript convention to refer to a previous speaker, please let me know.

It would seem that "MR. " is talking about the Special Forces expansion pack for Battlefield II (and not a plug-in, even though he may have used that term because he was talking to an audience not familiar with videogames). The expansion pack, however, sells for $29.99 both on the downloadable and boxed version, so we have a discrepancy here (the transcript mentions a $25 price). In addition to this, the video is presented as an "advertisement" for the game.

That is, pretty much, all that can be concluded from the transcripts. As you can see, it does not add much information.

Incidentally, there are a couple of interesting details. When a Congressman asks for the name of the American company that developed Battlefield II, the expert (Mr Rodman (?)) is extremely careful not to mention it (it is EA). He does not want to piss off a local corporation by associating them with terrorism but has no problem to be irresponsible enough to grab the first Arab-themed game video that he finds online and present it as evidence of a terrorist conspiracy.

In addition to this, we learn from the transcript that some Representatives are smart and ask the right questions (sadly, the "experts" fail to properly answer them). Pay attention to what Rep. Hold (D-NJ) asks:

If you had any doubts that Mr. Rodman has no expertise on the subject that he is supposed to be an expert on, I hope that was enough evidence. He cannot name US games where Muslims are presented as enemies and dodges the question by reminding everybody about the evil conspiracy ("as soon as the code is released they will modify it and change the game for their needs."). However, what is trully unacceptable is the fact that this so-called expert say "ANY video game that comes out" (my emphasis). How could somebody be so irresponsible to give the impression that terrorists are modifying multiple games for propaganda purposes? Doesn't this person know that he is talking to lawmakers? How could he talk about multiple games being modified, when he only was able to provide one example... and it ended up being pathetically wrong. I am not sure if there is a law against incompetence but if this is the kind of people that has the ears of the US government, I am not surprised at all that they have led to a war with no evidence at all. Has somebody prevented the members of the committee that they have been presented with false evidence? Are Mr. Rodman and his bosses going to ever again be paid taxpayers dollars for providing more of their shamefully inaccurate intelligence? So far, I have no evidence but that the answer to these questions is negative, unless somebody does something.

That's pretty much what I have to say about this. If you still want to get more information, you may want to read GamePolitics.com's interview with SonicJihad, the creator of the "evidence" of terrorists using games to recruit players. Interestingly, SonicJihad keeps blaming Reuters as if they were responsible for the embarrassing confusion. The blame is not on the journalists (even if they are poor journalists because they failed to mention America's Army as a counter example of US videogame-based propaganda. Still, they are on the field journalists, they usually just report what they see. It is up to the "real" journalists from the media to use the wires as materials. They are the ones sitting on desks, who should have time to double check facts. Sadly, most of them simply cut and paste whatever they are fed).

The story now seems to have been picked up by some mainstream media (SonicJihad mentions at Gamepolitics that he has been contacted by CNBC and ABC and other online publications. However, as of today, searches at Google News and Technorati do not show too many mentions to stories focusing on the false evidence).
Download transcript #1 (this is where Battlefield II is discussed). You may also download the second part of the transcript (however, I was not able to find any reference here to the SonicJihad trailer).

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