Understanding Why The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico and Buzzfeed Cannot Tell The Truth About Spygate

credit: sundance at cth

A terrific outline by Stephen McIntyre today [see here] provides a great place for CTH to outline the importance of the Wolfe leak and how far-reaching the consequences became in the reporting of the DC media.

McIntyre revisits how the FBI put together the Carter Page FISA application; and specifically highlights how parts of the application are purposefully built by the FBI using the Steele Dossier to fabricate something that doesn’t exist. The issue pointed out by McIntyre surrounds the designation for Steele’s primary sub-source.

By now everyone is aware the Steele Dossier was essentially just an assembly of loosely connected data points, innuendo, gossip and outright disinformation.  The sketchy dossier was, in essence, a file of tenuous opposition research that was assembled under a fraudulent premise of a valid intelligence gathering process.

The Steele dossier underpinned the FISA application.  The dossier, and the fabricated story within it, was used to get the FISA application.  As a result of the way the FBI officials specifically used the dossier to shape the FISA application evidence, the application itself is filled with misinformation.

Because the dossier lies, which transferred to the FISA application, have collapsed under scrutiny, the FBI defenders shifted to calling the underlying fraudulent information “Russian disinformation.”  This, they hope, will be their tenuously collapsing escape narrative; which needs to hold-up long enough to get rid of President Trump.

We all know the “Russian disinformation narrative” is nonsense, but it’s the only way for the conniving DOJ/FBI to escape; and it’s the only way for the Media to provide cover in the retreat.

The truth is the dossier was Clinton-DNC nonsense oppo-research; the FBI knew it from the beginning; and the DOJ-NSD was willfully blind.  However, that’s not the essential element for consideration here.  Instead think of the FISA application and dossier as two pieces of fraud that were not actually hidden, but well known to the media.

Go back to when the dossier was released in its fully assembled format in January 2017.  The entire thing was public.  The media had already received most of it from Steele in the run-up to the 2016 election; but it was essentially just unverified oppo-research.

Here’s the important part to remember….

In March 2017, SSCI Security Director James Wolfe leaked the fully unredacted Carter Page FISA application to journalist Ali Watkins.

As soon as Watkins received the dossier the media now held the Dossier (which was public) and the FISA application showing what the FBI and DOJ did with the dossier (the secret).

The dossier and the FISA application then became the cornerstone of all the DC reporting about the FISA content from March 17, 2017 forward.  It makes the media’s repeated denials of the Dossier as essential to the FISA application seem really bad in retrospect.

Think about this carefully and critically.

The media had the fully unredacted FISA application (but they cannot admit it).

The media also had the Dossier (which underpins the FISA).

The lies, manipulation, disinformation within the FISA application now frame every single report about what the FBI, DOJ and Intel Community were doing.  In essence, the fraud within the FISA application transfers into all the media reporting of the New York Times, Buzzfeed, Politico and the Washington Post about the FBI investigation.

As a consequence; and because the reporting was predicated/justified based on the evidence the media was physically holding, but could not admit; all of the FBI FISA lies transfer into the media.  As the FISA fraud collapses, so too does the media reporting which was based on the fraud.

The dossier was junk… it infected the FISA application.  The FISA application was junk… it was leaked…. and as a consequence infected the media reporting.  However, the media cannot admit how they wrongly reported on the FISA lies because they would have to admit they received the FISA through the James Wolfe leak.

How does this show up?

When the New York Times says the FISA application was based on Chris Steele’s primary sub-source; and they label the primary sub-source as a “Russia-based-sub-source”; they are reporting from the FISA application they are holding.  Their attribution is “according to a person familiar with the investigation”, but the underlying source material is their copy of the FISA application which makes the claim (which the New York Times cannot admit to having in their possession).

The information about Steele’s “Russia-based” primary sub-source transfers from the FISA application into the media’s uncritical reporting because they are relying on the FISA application and not accepting the FISA application was purposeful fraud to the FISA court.

This same type of information surrounded the Dossier claim about Michael Cohen being in Prague; and the media refused to accept/admit it was a false premise.

The bigger problem for the DC media is not as much how they used leaks from corrupt “people” within the FBI, DOJ and Intelligence Community; all carrying willful intent and self-interest; but also because the DC media is using corrupt and false evidence as the support for their reporting.  As a consequence the media is directly tied to the overall fraud.

DC media, specifically The NYT, Politico and Washington Post, cannot admit why they were wrong in their reporting without admitting how they were so grossly wrong; they received the leak.  The media cannot admit they received the leak without exposing James Wolfe.

If the media exposed James Wolfe, the larger story about why James Wolfe was never prosecuted would surface.  Thus the corrupt media, corrupt politicians and corrupt intelligence officials are tied together to the same fraud.

Can you imagine the ramifications if the New York Times were to admit they had a fully non-redacted copy of the Carter Page FISA application since March 2017?

Surely admitting they had the FISA application would explain why so much of their reporting ended up being factually false; but the bigger problem would be exposure upon the DOJ and DC politicians who were protected by hiding the James Wolfe leak.

The DC media is every bit tied to the “spygate” corruption as powerful senators, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the DNI and the aggregate Intelligence Community.

The purpose of the ‘fourth estate’ used to be holding public officials to account for their fraud and schemes.  However, as with this example the media hold a vested interest in maintaining the lies, fraud and disinformation they are supposed to investigate.

The irony is,…

…despite their unwillingness to admit it, WE KNOW.

And so we laugh at their inability to tell the truth.

Whoops.

Think about the scale of the reporting, and reporting on reporting, of anonymous leaks, false leaks, lies from “people with knowledge of the matter”, “government officials involved in the matter”, “people familiar with the matter”, “government sources” etc. all going in one unified and semi-coordinated direction – against the aggregate Trump administration.

We’re talking about thousands of hours of media TV pundits, thousands more columns written, and almost every scintilla of it based on originating intelligence sources -from the larger intelligence system- that are now being exposed as duplicitous and conspiratorial in the scale of their malicious intent.

This larger story-line has traveled in one direction. The narrative has only traveled in one direction. Each thread converging on codependent trails for collective stories all going in one direction. One big engineered narrative endlessly pushed. Think about how far the collective media have traveled with this story over the past four years?

Nothing within their collective need to will-an-outcome will change the media’s proximity to facts as the truthful story behind the DOJ and FBI corruption is exposed. The media are so far away from the place where the true story is they have no inherent capability to even begin to travel in the opposite direction, toward the truth.

The only way they could align with the truth is to admit that virtually every scintilla of their reportage over the past 48 months was inherently false or manipulated by the “sources” distributing the material for their reporting.

There’s not a single media outlet capable of doing that.

Think about a New York Times, CNN, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Yahoo News or Washington Post journalist now having to write an article deconstructing a foundation of four-years worth of lies they participated in creating.

Do we really think such a catastrophic level of corrupted journalism could reconstitute into genuine reporting of fact-based information?

EVER?

Impossible.

[…]  This catalogue of factual errors and slavish stenography will stand out when future analysts look back at why the “MSM” became a joke during this period, but they were only a symptom of a larger problem. The bigger issue was a radical change in approach.

A lot of #Russiagate coverage became straight-up conspiracy theory, what Baker politely called “connecting the dots.” This was allowed because the press committed to a collusion narrative from the start, giving everyone cover to indulge in behaviors that would never be permitted in normal times.  (Continue Reading)