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Sources
Intelligence analysts must pay close attention, of course, to provenance. What is this or that source's record for accuracy, for reliability. What kind of trough might this or that source be feeding from; and what agenda might she or he have? Discriminating readers of the corporate media, and especially the Times, should do the same with respect to journalists. When they see the byline of David Sanger they need to examine his record.
Those who look back to before the U.S./UK attack on Iraq will discover that Sanger was heavily promoting the existence of WMD in Iraq as a certainty. In a July 29, 2002 article co-written with Thom Shanker, for example, Iraq's (non-existent) "weapons of mass destruction" appear no fewer than seven times as flat fact.
This Sanger/Shanker article, apparently fed by intelligence sources, came just nine days after the head of British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, was briefed by CIA chief Tenet at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Three days later, on July 23, Dearlove told then Prime Minister Tony Blair that the coming attack on Iraq was a done deal.
We did not know this until May 2005 when The Times of London was given the text of what became known as the Downing Street Memo -- the minutes of the briefing that Dearlove gave Blair on July 23, 2002. No one has disputed its authenticity. Here's an excerpt:
"C [[Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6]] reported on his recent talks in Washington [[with George Tenet, CIA director at CIA headquarters on July 20, three days earlier]].
"... Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.
"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy...
"More instructive still, in May 2005, when first-hand documentary evidence from the now-famous 'Downing Street Memorandum' showed that President George W. Bush had decided by early summer 2002 to attack Iraq, The New York Times ignored it for six weeks until David Sanger rose to the occasion with a tortured report claiming just the opposite.
"The title given his article of June 13 2005 was 'Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made.'"
Against this peculiar reporting record, I was not inclined to take at face value Sanger's Jan. 6, 2017 report "Putin Ordered 'Influence Campaign' Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says." Or the report he authored, with Michael Shear the following day, "Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds."
And Therein Lies the Rub
... or the rubbish, as the British might say. The fable of the Russian hack has now gone the way of Russia-Trump collusion. (See, for example: "Mueller's Forensic-free Findings.")
When will New York Times readers catch on to David Sanger's story telling? Sadly, there are plenty of Pulitzer presstitutes particularly on Russiagate, but Sanger is the archdeacon of them all by far the most accomplished at the art.
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