{"id":57489,"date":"2021-04-16T13:23:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T18:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57489"},"modified":"2021-04-16T13:23:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T18:23:57","slug":"journalists-learning-they-spread-a-cia-fraud-about-russia-instantly-embrace-a-new-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57489","title":{"rendered":"Journalists, Learning They Spread a CIA Fraud About Russia, Instantly Embrace a New One"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Journalists, Learning They Spread a CIA Fraud About Russia, Instantly Embrace a New One<\/a><\/h3>\n

The most significant Trump-era alliance is between corporate outlets and security state agencies, whose evidence-free claims they unquestioningly disseminate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A US soldier in Afghanistan\u00a0CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

That Russia placed “bounties\u201d<\/strong> on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was one of the most-discussed and consequential news stories of 2020. It was also, as it turns out, one of the most baseless \u2014 as the intelligence agencies who spread it through their media spokespeople now admit, largely because the tale has fulfilled and outlived its purpose.<\/p>\n

The saga began on July 29, 2020, when The New York Times<\/em> announced<\/a> that unnamed \u201cAmerican intelligence officials\u201d have concluded that \u201ca\u00a0Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties\u00a0to Taliban-linked\u00a0militants\u00a0for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan \u2014 including targeting American troops.\u201d The paper called it \u201ca significant and provocative escalation\u201d by Russia. Though no evidence<\/em> was ever presented to support the CIA’s claims \u2014 neither in that original story nor in any reporting since \u2014 most U.S. media outlets blindly believed it and spent weeks if not longer treating it as proven, highly significant truth. Leading politicians from both parties similarly used this emotional storyline to advance multiple agendas.<\/p>\n

The story appeared \u2014 coincidentally or otherwise \u2014 just weeks after President Trump announced his plan<\/a> to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020. Pro-war members of Congress from both parties and liberal hawks in corporate media spent weeks weaponizing this story to accuse Trump of appeasing Putin by leaving Afghanistan and being too scared to punish the Kremlin. Cable outlets and the op-ed pages of The New York Time<\/em>s and Washington Post<\/em> endlessly discussed the grave implications of this Russian treachery and debated which severe retaliation was needed…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalists, Learning They Spread a CIA Fraud About Russia, Instantly Embrace a New One The most significant Trump-era alliance is between corporate outlets and security state agencies, whose evidence-free claims they unquestioningly disseminate. A US soldier in Afghanistan\u00a0CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES That Russia placed “bounties\u201d on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[135,5437,462,2324,496,512,1426,655,694,827],"class_list":["post-57489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-cia","tag-glenn-greenwald","tag-journalism","tag-journalists","tag-mainstream-media","tag-media","tag-misinformation","tag-propaganda","tag-russia","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57490,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57489\/revisions\/57490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}