The Gateway Pundit debunked the fake “Russian bounties” reports almost immediately (well, before it the story collapsed in mid-April 2021 when the MSM had to retract):
[A[ New York Times story, which did not cite any actual examples of a “Russian bounty” being paid for the deaths of U.S. soldiers and offered little in the way of evidence besides unnamed “officials” and “sources”, was principally written by Eric Schmitt, who has been an employee of George-Soros sponsored Democrat Think Tank “Center for a New American Security“ (CNAS) since 2015. The New York Times did not reveal this affiliation in Schmitt‘s articles. It was not clear how working for a partisan Think Tank complies with NYT journalistic ethics.
CNAS was run by Obama-era Ukraine ambassador Victoria Nuland until 2019, a frequent guest at the Soros-funded Ukraine Media Crisis Center, ground zero for the Russiagate conspiracy. Nuland was closely involved with the Biden crime family’s Ukraine Burisma racket, George Soros’ manipulations in Ukraine and the plunged $5 billion taxpayer dollars into Ukraine as part of the “color revolution” 2014.
CNAS was also one of the prime sources for the hit job on Gen. Mike Flynn 2017. Eric Schmitt had already begun writing about Mike Flynn’s threat to the deep state in Dec. 3, 2016, warning of Flynn’s “desire to usurp what he viewed as Washington’s incompetent and corrupt elite.” Closely coordinating with Rep. Adam Schiff, Schmitt became one of the first reporters to begin the takedown of Gen. Mike Flynn on Feb. 12 with an article headed “Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down” and Feb. 14 with an article claiming “Trump Was Informed 17 Days Ago That Flynn Had Not Been Truthful on Russia”. Amazingly, Schmitt is still on staff at the “New York Times”.
Speaking to Fox News, California Congressman Devin Nunes said the “Russian bounty” allegations had “the same hallmarks” of the Russiagate conspiracy: “It’s the same reporters that ran with it. At first it’s a bombshell, and then after a few days you figure out the intelligence never even made it to the President’s desk.”
On [July 3rd, 2020], the New York Times had to acknowledge the Russian denials and issue a partial retraction, conceding that, “there is no evidence to date that Mr. Putin signed off on any program to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even independent experts say they strongly doubt he would have done so.”
More than six months after TGP’s initial reporting the mainstream media finally caught up with Gateway Pundit and admitted their original reporting was as fake as the Russia pee-pee tapes. The Daily Beast was one of the main perpetrators pushing this complete lie. Investigative reporter Aaron Mate later dropped this reality check on the fake news Daily Beast.
New: Russiagate disinformation outlet @thedailybeast suffers another blockbuster humiliation. pic.twitter.com/JNCXlag05q
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 15, 2021
And, once again, a mainstream media report based on outlandish lies to damage President Trump is found out to be complete garbage months later.
Indeed, NYT’s original story made no mention of CIA involvement in the narrative, citing only “officials,” yet this latest article speaks as though it had been informing its readers of the story’s roots in the lying, torturing, drug-running, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency from the very beginning. The author even writes “The New York Times first reported last summer the existence of the C.I.A.’s assessment,” with the hyperlink leading to the initial article which made no mention of the CIA. It wasn’t until later that The New York Times began reporting that the CIA was looking into the Russian bounties allegations at all.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 15, 2021
So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.
This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage, and may well have contributed to the fact that the agency will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden’s performative Afghanistan “withdrawal”.
In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it.
The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.
SUPERCUT:
A look back on how cable news went all in on the discredited Russian bounties story. pic.twitter.com/QaG9xAqiuR
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 15, 2021
This isn’t Operation Mockingbird. It’s so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.
This is bad. This is very, very bad. Democracy has no meaningful existence if people’s votes aren’t being cast with a clear understanding of what’s happening in their nation and their world, and if their understanding is being shaped to suit the agendas of the very government they’re meant to be influencing with their votes, what you have is the most powerful military and economic force in the history of civilization with no accountability to the electorate whatsoever. It’s just an immense globe-spanning power structure, doing whatever it wants to whoever it wants. A totalitarian dictatorship in disguise.
Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com