In February, 2006, Herb Greenberg joined Jim Cramer in spinning their SEC subpoenas, and Jim discards his casually. What they do not mention is that upon receiving his subpoena, Jim Cramer had immediately begun selling large amounts of TheStreet.com, without informing the public of his subpoena (according to his own lawyer, Jim Cramer had never previously sold TheStreet.com stock).

Herb Green goes into a flop-sweat over his SEC subpoena.

Becky Quick invited me on CNBC. I expected another CNBC spin-job and was not disappointed. Becky began with a half-truth about an Overstock accounting restatement, failing to mention that it was a restatement up (in other words, Overstock’s auditors had decided that Overstock had kept its books too conservatively – I am not sure if I have ever heard of such a “corporate restatement”).

Becky seemed put-off at my correction, then proceeded to bicker in an attempt to sound like a hard-headed journalist. Unfortunately, as you will see, in her eagerness she began tripping over her own statements, simultaneously accusing me of orchestrating a federal investigation and not knowing the first thing about it. Anticipating that something like this was going to happen, and having grown tired of going on CNBC and having them talk over me in order to prevent my actual claims from getting aired, I slipped into a Morchai Vanunu routine.

If you forgot who Mordechai Vanunu is, this is he (and yes, I had prepared the sign before showing up at the CNBC studio in San Francisco).

Having done everything they could to twist, distort, and suppress the story, in late March, 2006 CNBC wonders with faux innocence why 60 Minutes would be picking up the story.

Herb Greenberg (“The Worst Business Journalist in America”) appeared on TV with his fluffy dog to criticize my recent announcement that I celebrated receiving an SEC subpoena. In that press release I had written, “I may be the first CEO in history to celebrate receiving an SEC subpoena.” Herb thought this was outrageous, and said so. He also opined regarding what the SEC subpoena was and was not about: he was just guessing.

A year later, in true “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” fashion, Herb would write a story claiming that I had tried to cover-up my receipt of an SEC subpoena.

On April 26, 2006 Charles Gasparino delivered this story regarding SEC Chairman Chris Cox’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As a prefatory comment, however, I should note that as far as I can tell, Charles Gasparino is the only honest reporter at CNBC (Donny Deutsche is honest but he is not a reporter, and Becky Quick is a reporter, but she does not go out of her way to be honest or dishonest).

There is, I believe, something important to be learned from this fact. Most Wall Street reporters I meet seem soft. A few are dumb (don’t ask Joe Nocera, Roddy Boyd, or Tim Mullaney to whip up a batch of jet-fuel for you) but most are just soft. They may be capable of writing critical pieces regarding this or that executive or company, if spoon-fed the requisite details by their hedge fund sources, but they are constitutionally incapable of thinking critically about the Establishment from whence they spring.

Hence, for example, as previous posts have shown, CNBC adopted a Party Line that recognized no distinction between short selling and naked short selling, insisted that Patrick Byrne’s beef is just that his stock went down, short selling always builds strong bones and teeth for America, and anyone questioning this received wisdom must be wacky wacky wacky. This Party Line was parroted with fervor by Herb Greenberg, Jim Cramer, Joe Kernan, Dan Colarusso, and the rest of the CNBC gang.

Charles Gasparino, on the other hand, is a tough working-class Italian guy from the Bronx. He is not soft and, as as a result, he had the character to speak up. This makes Gasparino seem extraordinary. In fact, however, I think he is how normal journalists were, one or two generations ago.

Charles Gasparino reported on an upcoming Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to which he, evidently, had been invited to offer guidance.

Dan (“We have buckets of ink and barrels of cash to crush them”) Colarusso serves his normal obfuscatory function by confusing the legal act of shorting with the illegal act of naked shorting, spinning and downplaying (I call it the “short sellers build strong bones and teeth” speech).

Becky Quick lays off.

And then, when the news breaks of the NYSE following up with a crack-down of their own, the same morning gang which has derided, downplayed and covered up this issue suddenly is talking about “legal murder” of companies through stock manipulation.

In early November, 2006 CNBC finally manages to air a simple, straightforward report on the issue that I had fought to bring to their attention, without deriding it as being about me, Overstock, how many toasters we sold at Christmas and at what margins, etc.

By December 2006, the cover-up of widespread stock manipulation by favored hedge funds with friends in the financial press was starting to unravel among all thinking observers. Thus, Jim Cramer repositioned himself from a total skeptic who derided this as just some wacky theory of a malcontent CEO, to something Jim Cramer knew about all along and in which he had participated (because he is such a crucial part of the “smart money”). Which is, of course, precisely the claim I made about him in the Miscreants’ Ball.

As I have shown, in his writing Jim is up-front about his own law-breaking. However, the previous video, with its confession of participation in crimes, apparently embarrassed Jim when it became public. He continued to shift his position, now remaining vague about whether he is talking about himself, or about other people. (I am reminded of something I figured out when I was about 10: When adults espouse psychological theories about how others behave, they were generally talking about themselves. Please remember that hypothesis as you watch the following two clips.)

On March 2, 2007, Jim explained what he he did when he ran a hedge fund. Or is he just saying that this is what he saw when he ran a hedge fund? He stays just coy enough that it is hard to say, but after he gets it off his chest, he acts like a blow-hard with his colleague, trying, in my view, to to bury psychically what has just confessed publicly.

Then, on March 9, 2007, Jim Cramer explicitly stated on his TV show that hedge funds work with compliant members of the financial media to manipulate stock. In other words, he said just what I had been saying for two years, that he had been deriding.

When I first began to raise the issues being explored in DeepCapture, I was roundly and severely criticized, especially by CNBC, and especially by Jim Cramer. They did this though they (or at least, Jim Cramer) knew I was right. Once the issues raised by DeepCapture became impossible to ignore, Jim Cramer began dealing with his guilty knowledge by explaining these issues to the public, in the process saying precisely what I had been saying since 2004, for which I had been roundly and continuously criticized, especially by CNBC, especially by Jim Cramer. Thus, if the preceding pieces have a surreal quality, it means you were paying attention.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox appeared before a US Senate commitee to discuss the Bear Stearns implosion. Be sure to watch this video to the last second. To decode the Washington-speak, note that Senator Tester asked Chairman Cox about short selling, not naked short selling.