In August 2016, Politico reported top Democrats held a conference call discussing damage control surrounding future releases from WikiLeaks, apparently deciding to collectively allege the leaks will include fabricated content. In a desperate and sloppy attempt to create a link between Russia and Donald Trump, Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald wrote an article titled “Dear Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I am not Sidney Blumenthal.” The article claimed the publication Sputnik and Trump coordinated an attack on Hillary Clinton.

In reality, Sputnik news editor and Georgetown graduate Bill Moran rushed to publish a story about a WikiLeaks email in which Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal copy and pasted an Eichenwald article about Benghazi and sent it to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Moran misidentified the writer of the piece as Blumenthal, and quickly wrote and published a story about it. Trump tweeted the article, and cited it during a speech at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Once Sputnik became aware the article had misinterpreted the email, they removed it. Eichenwald, without researching what had happened, claimed Trump citing the article was proof of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia. Eichenwald’s article was used by Clinton partisans as evidence WikiLeaks had released fake documents. 

Moran attempted to reach out to Eichenwald to correct his story. Eichenwald blocked him on Twitter, and the two engaged in bizarre correspondence via email, which was later published by Paste Magazine and confirmed as legitimate by Eichenwald.

According to the email thread, Eichenwald offered to help Moran find new work at The New Republic, in between threatening Moran if he went public that Eichenwald’s article is completely baseless. “Go public, and you’ll regret it,” Eichenwald wrote, according to Paste, which discusses whether Eichenwald’s correspondence equates to bribery and threats towards Moran. 

“I guarantee you one thing: there is already a file on you in one of the security intelligence divisions of the FBI. You have been playing in a sandbox surrounded by very large, and mostly unseen, players, engaged in games you don’t recognize.” Eichenwald added, ““There are some things I know but I can’t tell you, but what I will say is that, as far as American intelligence agencies are concerned, the event involving this manipulated document is far from over,” he continued. “America is in the middle of a large-scale cyberwar with Russia; if you don’t know this, you need to read the coverage of what is going on, including the statements from the White House.”

Despite the veracity of Eichenwald’s article being challenged, Newsweek has not removed or amended the article to suggest it is entirely based on pure speculation, and that the evidence suggests the claims made in the article are false. But, shoddy journalism has become the norm this election year as mainstream media outlets resort to propping up Clinton’s candidacy, using Trump and Russia as convenient excuses for their overt bias.

Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.

https://observer.com/2016/10/clinton-journalist-has-meltdown-after-his-russian-conspiracy-theory-is-debunked/

 

 

=========================

 

I am Vladimir Putin: The first victim of McCarthyism 2.0

Intentional misreporting of facts by ordinarily credible journalists and mainstream outlets can have far reaching human impacts - here's my story.

“I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least that is what Vladimir Putin seems to believe.”– Kurt Eichenwald

 

I am Bill Moran, a former writer and editor for the DC bureau of Sputnik News. I grew up in Arizona, graduated from Georgetown Law, pushed ballot initiatives on college affordability, worked on political campaigns (even sent fundraising emails for Hillary Clinton earlier this election cycle), and am your average ambitious 29-year-old who always had a secret hope to become a print journalist.

When I received an offer to become a web writer with the outlet in February – at a time before the world had lost its collective marbles – it was a dream come true. It is something that I worked hard at, even coming in on my days off, to make sure we were putting forward as much high-quality content as possible. That work paid off: I became the weekend editor at the outlet’s DC Bureau this July.

I now face the reality that this job that I so enjoyed and I believe I was very good at is now in the past.

On Columbus Day, I made an embarrassing mistake. I noticed a series of viral tweets attributing words to Sidney Blumenthal on the Benghazi scandal. The original WikiLeaks document, to which the original article linked, was lengthy – 75 pages. I reviewed the document in a hurry, but I did not read all of them.

You gave him a comment correcting his narrative and he blocked you instead of adding to his story? @BillMoranWrites@kurteichenwald

— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) October 12, 2016

I was the sole staffer at the DC bureau due to the holiday. I wrote 12 stories in a 12-hour shift, assigned and edited five other stories from two writers submitting remotely, managed the front page graphics, monitored breaking news, and posted to Twitter every 10 minutes and Facebook every 20 minutes.

I was moving too fast and I made a mistake – a mistake that I remain embarrassed about making. I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette after scheduling our social media accounts, stopped halfway through, thought “why hasn’t anybody else picked this up?” gave the document a second review, realized my error, and proceeded to delete the story.

The story was up from 3:23PM EDT to 3:42PM EDT and received 1,061 views before being removed – I’d like to apologize to weekend readers for making that mistake no matter how honest an error it was.

I am now Vladimir Putin. At least that is what Kurt Eichenwald and Newsweek pretend to believe.

“Putin and his Kremlin cronies must have been dancing with delight” – Eichenwald

Mr. Eichenwald proceeded to write a story, published at 7:45PM EDT, titled “Dear Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I am not Sidney Blumenthal” in regards to my mistake. I have shown several law school friends Eichenwald’s article – I never saw people laugh so hysterically while frowning at the same time.

In his article, Eichenwald suggests that this is “even more proof” of a Russian cyberwar by a “Russian government-controlled” (not true, only funded) outlet that has altered (a point he repeats several times) WikiLeaks documents before passing along the information to Donald Trump and that his anonymous intelligence source says that this all “require[d] high-level review” and that thinking anything else happened is “absurd.” 

"Sorry I spread a massive conspiracy theory, I'm retracting my nonsensical article" will be good. https://t.co/KfawsmaWlj

— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) October 12, 2016

The problem is that Mr. Eichenwald, Newsweek’s editorial staff, and the publication’s general counsel know that this narrative is grossly in error. On Tuesday, I contacted Eichenwald and Newsweek’s editors informing them of substantive errors in their article and the true story – I also contacted Eichenwald by Twitter, explaining the details very calmly, for which he blocked my account. On Wednesday, I was fired. A colleague of mine pushed back on Eichenwald for blocking me and failing to change his article.

In response, Mr. Eichenwald sent me a message questioning once again what happened. I explained it, once again, to him. He responded back that night – “Let me give you a call this evening. We can talk through your situation (not an interview, a helping hand).”

If you are now thinking, “Dude, why didn’t you just sell out, ignore the truth, and work this for a steady gig with the chance of breaking into the mainstream media?!” – I’m still thinking that as I write this, and thought about it throughout the one hour and six minute conversation I had with him the next day.

It turns out, per an email from Mr. Eichenwald, I could have been a political reporter at New Republic in response to an email informing him of my intent to make this issue public.

“I took you at your word that the events were as you described and reached out to The New Republic on your behalf. They have a political reporter’s job open. But at this point, I can’t attest to your wisdom anymore nor do I completely trust you,” said Eichenwald in an email at 1:03PM on Monday Oct. 17. 

At 1:40PM Mr. Eichenwald said, “One last friendly piece of advice: I wouldn’t waste time on the New Republic job. You’re qualified for it and these jobs disappear.”

Eichenwald then proceeded to eliminate the quid pro quo by saying, at 1:51 PM, “Wait … I dropped a word in my last email. When I say ‘I wouldn’t waste time on applying for' – I mean do apply soon, because the job is great and it will disappear soon.”

Pardon my language, but “f--- me, right?” I could have been a political reporter with The New Republic. I have a friend who is still desperately telling me to take that gig rather than have this article published.

As for the contents of the phone conversation with Mr. Eichenwald, they will not be disclosed at this time barring an attempt to attack and discredit me at which time I will be forced to divulge my notes written at the time of the conversation which represent neither Kurt Eichenwald’s best moments nor my own. Personally, I feel that the world can use less hysteria, not more.

It should be noted that Mr. Eichenwald warned me, in his most recent email, that I will be ruining my career and my life by providing this information, and I do not take that as a threat – that’s the truth.

The problem is that a new job does not convert fiction into fact. He got the story wrong. That’s really all.

Other factual errors or misrepresentations in Eichenwald’s article

First, his initial version suggested the outlet removed the article upon realizing the error. A later variant said Newsweek called us prior to the article’s removal – I never received a call. The current version says the article was removed after “Newsweek attempted to contact.” In an email, Mr. Eichenwald said that he did not lie but that he did not know where “internet contacts” go. I never received an email either – if anyone received a misaddressed email from Eichenwald, please come forward.

Second, the outlet is not “Kremlin-controlled.” I don’t talk to Vlad over my morning coffee. The outlet receives funding from the Russian government, but nobody has ever told me what to write.

Third, no documents by WikiLeaks were altered by the outlet which included a link to the article – the subject matter was simply misread based on a viral tweet. Mr. Eichenwald continues to assert that a document, not linking to WikiLeaks, was altered by a viral twitter account but upon research that post has been deleted – the national security significance of that account is something that I am not sufficiently competent on.

What do I get out of all of this?

I’ll be attacked viciously. I have written 813 articles for Sputnik, but the fact that I made a single mistake that was blown into hysteria through intentionally inaccurate reporting by Newsweek is what my name will forever be attached to in Google search queries. It’s still the truth, so that’s my wish.

It should also be noted that Sputnik, upon reviewing the situation, offered me my job back yesterday before knowing about this piece. I will not be accepting that offer, but thank them so much. I imagine I’ll be dealing with the press response on this for the next few days and then I’m going to take a nice long vacation.

This story originally appeared at sputniknews.com

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/363165-i-am-vladimir-putin-first/?ysclid=mt512hm01i29097156

 

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         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

 

Kurt Eichenwald is the New York Times bestselling author of four previous nonfiction books. His second, The Informant, was made into a movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh. In addition to his distinguished work as a senior writer at Newsweek and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Eichenwald spent two decades as a senior writer at The New York Times, where he was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also a two-time winner of the George Polk Award, as well as the winner of the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism and an Emmy Award nominee.

 

================

 

Kurt Alexander Eichenwald is a hate-filled 65-year-old paedophile, doxer, cyber bully, tentacle hentai connoisseur and distinguished lolcow who can usually be found posing as a "journalist" in an attempt to groom teenage boys into sending him n00dz and/or having hot unprotected pederast buttsecks. Aside from being a contemptible person, Eichenwald is also a hideously unattractive, balding, Jew-faced goblin who usually sets his profile photos to the middle-aged male equivalent of the Fat Girl Angle Shot and attempts to hide his blatant Jewiness by claiming to be "Episcopalian" when he isn't busy BAWWWWWing over how his relatives somehow ended up in Rosanne Barr's Easy-Bake Oven.

Eichenwald's antics have included paying a child pornographer several thousand dollars for who-knows-what, reviewing his own shitty books on Amazon, getting a man arrested for sending him a seizure-inducing .gif that he was dumb enough to actually click on, getting caught looking at hentai and then claiming that he and his kids just wanted to show his wife that tentacle porn exists, doxing an Oregon lawmaker and mocking a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Shooting because they didn't support gun control, and threatening to sue anyone who even makes mention of his aforementioned paedophilic attraction to young boys and excellent taste in Japanese cartoon pornography.

Kurt was formerly employed by The New York Times, Newsweek, MSNBC, Vanity Fair and a child porn site called Justin's Friends – although it appears that he has now been fired from every single fucking one of them for being an even bigger piece of dog shit than Brian Zaiger. You can help Kurt out by sending him all of the horrible job offers you have that even the border-hopping Mexican illegals weren't willing to accept.

 

https://edramatica.com/Kurt_Eichenbald