Dina Temple-Raston

Our taxpayer dollars seem to be at work finding the culprit of the Boston terror attack last Monday. But on taxpayer-funded NPR, counterterrorism reporter Dina Temple-Raston was already guessing this was domestic not foreign.  “The thinking, as we've been reporting, is that this is a domestic or extremist attack,” Temple-Raston declared on the April 16 All Things Considered.

So, besides the pressure cooker bomb, whose directions on building it can be found on the Internet, what evidence shows that this is probably domestic terrorism?  Where’s the manifesto?  Who’s claimed responsibility?  All are question marks at this point, so what’s with the incessant speculation by some in the media.  Yes, it could be a crazy right-winger, or an al-Qaeda operative, but what ever happened to a simple narrative of there was a bombing, it’s awful, people died, and federal authorities are investigating the matter? But Temple-Raston heavily implied this matches with past acts of right wing – and domestic – terror:

NPR's Dina Temple-Raston did her best to cast a Muslim fired by the State of Ohio in a sympathetic light on Monday's Morning Edition, describing him as a "college professor" dressed in a "tweed jacket, button-down shirt, [and] thick round glasses," but failed to mention his other firing from a Ohio college for violating their sexual harassment policy. Temple-Reston also featured an expert who attributed Ohio's actions against the professor to "elevated levels of Islamophobia."

The correspondent, who donned a headscarf and posed as a Muslim woman as part of a sting operation against U.S. border control agents earlier in 2011, and co-wrote a book with ACLU executive director Anthony Romero back in 2007, first introduced the professor, Omar al-Omari, with her "tweed jacket" description and added that he is a "big coffee drinker." She then played two sound bites from the professor, who described how he had been singled out by trainers at a seminar for law enforcement officers who, according to the journalist, had "offered specific examples of what they said was Islamic radicalism in Ohio."

NPR counter-terrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston walked into a testy confrontation recently when she spoke to a YWCA "Women of Distinction" luncheon in Darien, Connecticut. A local journalist was amazed that she would insist on no video or audio taping of her remarks there. The journalist, Jim Cameron, wrote about the fight on his blog. He was upset that print reporters could cover it, but he couldn't record for a cable-access TV channel:

A day before the event, at my request, the Y sponsors circled back to me with more information. Apparently her agent was wrong. It was not an NPR rule about no taping, it was Ms. Temple-Raston's rule. Clearly, the Juan Williams case (of NPR staffers speaking off-air) has had a chilling effect on those NPR staffers' outside, money-making speaking gigs.

NPR's Dina Temple-Raston touted Attorney General Eric Holder's reluctance to give detainees at Guantanamo Bay military trials during a segment on Monday's All Things Considered. Temple-Raston and host Michele Norris only featured sound bites from the Justice Department head, omitting clips from supporters of the military tribunals.

Norris began by noting the Obama administration's "major reversal" in their decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 suspects in military court. After playing a clip from Attorney General Holder's recent press conference, where he announced the move, the host turned to the correspondent and recounted how " in late 2009...Holder announced that these five conspirators will be tried in New York City in a civilian trial. So today's decision officially reverses that."

Temple-Raston, who conducted a sting operation against U.S. border agents earlier in 2011 by wearing a headscarf and posing as Muslim woman, mainly acted as stenographer for the attorney general, though she did acknowledge the mismanagement of the rollout for the civilian trials plan:

An NPR correspondent recently went incognito for a sting operation aimed at exposing U.S. border agents who target Muslims for "interrogation" at the Canadian border.

Employing the same tactics used by James O'Keefe to bring down top NPR executives, counterterrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston draped herself in a headscarf, drove to the northern border, and recorded her encounter with a U.S. border agent. [Click here for audio.]

"An agent from Customs and Border Protection was sitting in what looked like a little toll booth," recalled Temple-Raston on the March 10 Morning Edition, who gave the agent no indication that he was being recorded. "He asked me to remove my sunglasses and peered into the car. I was wearing a headscarf and so was Kathy Jamil. He asked why we'd been to Canada."