CNN has published an unbelievably brazen and dishonest smear piece on Julian Assange, easily the most egregious article of its kind since the notoriously bogus Assange-Manafort report by The Guardian last year. It contains none of the “exclusive” documents which it claims substantiate its smears, relying solely on vague unsubstantiated assertions and easily debunked lies to paint the WikiLeaks founder in a negative light.
And let’s be clear right off the bat, it is most certainly a smear piece. The article, titled “Exclusive: Security reports reveal how Assange turned an embassy into a command post for election meddling”, admits that it exists for the sole purpose of tarnishing Assange’s reputation when it reports, with no evidence whatsoever, that while at the Ecuadorian embassy Assange once “smeared feces on the walls out of anger.” Not “reportedly”. Not “the Ecuadorian government claims.” CNN reported it as a fact, as an event that is known to have happened. This is journalistic malpractice, and it isn’t an accident.
Whenever you see any “news” report citing this claim, you are witnessing a standard smear tactic of the plutocratic media. Whenever you see them citing this claim as a concrete, verified fact, you are witnessing an especially aggressive and deliberate psyop. The Ecuadorian embassy was easily the most-surveilled building in the world during Assange’s stay there, and the Ecuadorian government has leaked photos of Assange’s living quarters to the media in an attempt to paint him as a messy houseguest in need of eviction, so if the “feces on the walls” event had ever transpired you would have seen photos of it, whether you wanted to or not. It never happened.
SCOOP: New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. w/ @kguerrerocnn https://t.co/OqC9GBsIKl
— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) July 15, 2019
“New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London,” the article begins.
In its very first sentence the article invalidates all the claims which follow it, because its use of the word “potentially” means that none of the documents CNN purports to have contain any actual evidence. It’s worth noting at this time that there is to this day not one shred of publicly available evidence that any of the Democratic Party emails published by WikiLeaks in 2016 were in fact “hacked” at all, and could very well have been the result of a leak as asserted by former British ambassador Craig Murray, who claims to have inside knowledge on the matter.
The glaring plot holes in the Mueller report’s assertions about Russia being the source of the 2016 WikiLeaks drops have already been ripped wide open by journalist Aaron Maté’s meticulous analysis of the report’s timeline in an article accurately titled “CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims“. The CNN smear piece, which claims to “add a new dimension to the Mueller report”, is entirely relying on this porous timeline for its reporting. Plot holes include the fact that Mueller claims (and CNN repeats) that the Russians transferred the emails to WikiLeaks on or around July 14, which Maté notes is “a full month after Assange publicly announced that he had them.”
CNN kicks off its smear piece with the inflammatory claim that “Assange met with Russians and world-class hackers at critical moments”, mentioning both “Russians” and “hackers” in the same breath in an attempt to give the impression that the two are related. It’s not until paragraph 43 and 46, long after most people have stopped reading, that the articles authors bother to inform their readers that the “hackers” in question are German and have no established connection to the Russian government whatsoever. The “Russians” counted among Assange’s scores of visitors consist of RT staff, who have always consistently reported on WikiLeaks, and a “Russian national” about whom almost nothing is known.
The article falsely labels Assange a “hacker”, a defamatory claim the mass media circulates whenever it wants to tarnish Assange’s reputation. Assange, of course, is a publisher. WikiLeaks publishes materials which are given to it, it doesn’t “hack” them.
That is a LIE that's been debunked over and over. We published ONE article about the emails that were RELEASED already, just not TWEETED about yet, because WikiLeaks had been releasing them like clockwork and we paid attention. It's called journalism, they should try it sometime.
— Nebojša Malić (@NebojsaMalic) July 15, 2019
CNN also repeats the long-debunked lie that RT “published articles detailing the new batches of emails before WikiLeaks officially released them” during the 2016 election, citing no evidence because this never happened. RT reported on a WikiLeaks release in October 2016 after it had been published by WikiLeaks but before the WikiLeaks Twitter account had tweeted about it, and western propagandists willfully conflated WikiLeaks publications with tweets from the WikiLeaks Twitter account in order to make it look like RT had insider knowledge about the publications.
In reality, RT was simply watching the WikiLeaks site closely for new releases in order to get an early scoop before other outlets, because Podesta email leaks had been dropping regularly.
“That is a LIE that’s been debunked over and over,” tweeted RT America editor Nebojša Malić in response to the smear. “We published ONE article about the emails that were RELEASED already, just not TWEETED about yet, because WikiLeaks had been releasing them like clockwork and we paid attention. It’s called journalism, they should try it sometime.”
“Yes that is fake news,” tweeted RT’s Ivor Crotty. “I was the editor on the team that monitored wikileaks and by Podesta 6 we knew they tweeted at 9am EST each day (1pm Dublin) – so we checked the database by reverse searching and discovered a new dump, tweeted about it, and the conspiracy theorists jumped.”
“RT already addressed this in 2016, convincingly if you read the sequence of events they lay out: the Podesta emails appeared on the WikiLeaks website before WikiLeaks sent a tweet about it,” Maté tweeted at CNN’s Marshall Cohen. “Ignoring that allows for the conspiracy theory you propose. It’s ridiculous to suggest that RT-Wikileaks ‘were coordinating behind the scenes’ based on the fact that RT tweeted about the Podesta emails AFTER they appeared on WL’s site, but BEFORE WL tweeted about them. You’re implicating RT in a conspiracy… for doing journalism.”
It’s not possible to research the “RT had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks drops” conspiracy theory without running across articles which debunked it at the time, so the article’s authors were likely either knowingly lying or taking dictation from someone who was.
“Spanish newspaper El Pais on July 9: ‘Spanish security company spied on Julian Assange’s meetings with lawyers‘. Add little security state propaganda and 6 days later you get from CNN: ‘How Julian Assange turned an embassy into command post for election meddling’,” noted Shadowproof managing editor Kevin Gosztola in response to the CNN smear, a reminder of how a little narrative tweaking can turn a story on its head in support of the powerful.
This would be the same CNN who told its viewers that it’s against the law to read WikiLeaks, with Democratic Party prince Chris Cuomo lying “Remember, it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents; it’s different for the media, so everything you learn about this you’re learning from us.” The same CNN which falsely reported that Assange is a pedophile not once, but twice. The same CNN which has been caught blatantly lying in its Russiagate coverage, which has had to fire journalists for misreporting Russiagate in a media environment where that almost never happens with Russia stories, which has deleted evidence of its journalistic malpractice regarding Russiagate from the internet without retraction or apology.
So this latest attempt to tarnish Julian Assange’s reputation from CNN is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that the article contains exactly zero of the “exclusive documents” which it says validate its claims and insinuations. Nor is it surprising that CNN is using invisible evidence which almost certainly came into its hands through a government agency to give weight to its smear. But the sheer volume of disinformation and deceit they were able to pack into one single article this time around was just jaw-dropping. Even for CNN.
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42 responses to “New CNN Assange Smear Piece Is Amazingly Dishonest, Even For CNN”
The people who looked like fools for saying that Hillary was a lock are still trying to save face.
That CNN lies is just as sure as commenter BCOPE is a hired troll. Sociopaths always turn to character assassination to discredit a story. They attempt to kill the message by killing the messenger. So Caitlin is targeted for character assassination to undermine the proper defense of Julian Assange. It’s a clear indication that Caitlin’s journalism is seen as a viable threat by the ruling sociopaths. Why? Because in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Love your stuff, Cait … but the allegations of being a hacker are quite true, and should be a badge of PRIDE (I teach computer security, so all this “Russian hacking” hits close to home) … of course, these are being used to tar him with the negative connotations of the word.
Julian wrote “Strobe,” one of the first port scanners for enumerating services running on a remote computer over the network. It’s now no longer in widespread use, but it was really one of the first of its kind, and he was a pioneer there, too.
See the copyright notice at the bottom of https://linux.die.net/man/1/strobe …
This morning NPR interviewed Michael Isikoff on his theory of how the Russians planted the story that Seth Rich was supposedly murdered to retaliate for him leaking DNC documents to WikiLeaks. Yes, the Russians are the ones who invented this crazy conspiracy theory. Russia, Russia, Russia – always the bad guys meddling in our democracy!
The fact is we do not have to be surprised anymore by the mainstream medias, especially since 9-11.
That day, they told me there were wreckages of airplanes in the Pentagone and in a field in Pennsylvania and , despite my best efforts, I did not see those wreckages at all.
No wonder we are in the return of the days of Noah just before the Second Coming of Jesus. So much people are of bad faith, exactly as it was the case in the days of Noah, Noah being the only man of good faith.
And when people are of bad faith, it is a complete waste of time arguing with them.
I pray the Rosary to hasten the return of Jesus because I have really really really seen enough of this bullshit era.
Caitlin, I suggest you take a look at a post by “Sundance” at The Conservative Treehouse. It pertains to a revised legal filing in a libel case being pursued in Texas that asserts Julian Assange personally told Ellen Ratner, an occasional correspondent on Fox News, that he received the email leaks directly from Seth Rich and his brother. As “Sundance” puts it, “If this information is true and accurate, the DOJ claim of a Russian hack –based on assertions by DNC contractor, Crowdstrike– would be entirely false. Additionally the DC murder of Seth Rich would hold a far more alarming motive.” The post has numerous links that are worth a follow.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/15/lawsuit-claims-julian-assange-confirmed-dnc-emails-received-from-seth-rich-not-a-russian-hack/
While you’re at it take a look at Larry Johnson’s latest post on the set-up of General Michael Flyinn at the blog Sic Semper Tyrannis. Johnson is e-x-CIA. I first learned of the TCT post, above, when I read about it in David Habakkuk’s comment about it in Johnson’s thread.
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/07/follow-up-on-the-flynn-plot.html
The day that definitive proof that can’t be ‘denied’ comes forth that Seth Rich was the person who took the documents from Podesta and the DNC and then passed them on to Wikileaks and that he was killed as a result of it, will be the day that I will celebrate. We all know these to be the facts and I’m waiting for the day that the truth will be such that NO ONE can deny it. I’d also be pleased as punch to see those who KNOW why Seth was killed and by whom and who ordered it to spend the rest of their life behind bars. I also would be ecstatic to see Hillary implicated in this bullshit, along with Wasserman-Shultz and the rest of the criminal cabal in the Democrat party. Trust – I’m no ‘rightie’; I’m a leftist and I am disgusted by the liberals and the conservatives.
“In its very first sentence the article invalidates all the claims which follow it, because its use of the word ‘potentially’ means that none of the documents CNN purports to have contain any actual evidence.”
Allow me to pick some gnat sh*t out of pepper.
Use of the word “potentially” doesn’t mean “none of the documents … contain any actual evidence,” and the claims have not been invalidated because the word was used. However, the claims have not been validated, substantiated, or proven, and therefore should not be accepted as true.
It is the moving party – the party making the claim, allegation, or assertion – that bears the burden of proof. The burden of proof does not shift to the non-moving party UNTIL the moving party has met its burden.
Lying by the MSM is the standard operating procedure. As always it is about $$, their advertisers and playing ball with their government. If thy don’t do this they will not be ‘successful’ or rich. Being ‘successful’ and rich is much more important to most people than telling the truth.
If you are not aware of this you have not been paying attention.
In 2013, the “lawmakers” in DC legalized the US government propagandizing “The People”.
..
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/
..
The present-day result is that almost ALL of the MSM such as CNN, WaPo, NYT, etc. are merely extremely weil-paid government-propaganda distributors. Lying to The People is now all nice and legal.
No surprise here. I’m a late bloomer when it comes to media awareness, but even I realized some time ago that CNN and its ilk are propaganda mills for the Fortune 500 and their taxpayer-funded enforcement arm, the US government. I mean, just look at who owns them, who manages them, and who funds them (their advertisers), and who their sources, “experts,” and commentators are. You don’t need to be a genius to figure it out. You just need to start reading dissident and foreign news and opinion for the illusion of objectivity and balance to be broken. And that’s why the “conglomerate state” has been pulling out all the stops in its attempt to suppress dissenting points of view — by eliminating net neutrality, downranking search results, demonetizing sites, channels, and videos, and simply taking down entire blogs and accounts outright. If they can keep popular awareness of dissent low enough, the corporate propaganda machine can keep chugging along its merry way.
“I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant Lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption.” Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan . . . called the CIA claims “bullshit,” adding: “They are absolutely making it up.” “I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. “It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.”
Actors, Stages, and Scripts: https://seaclearly.com/2019/03/30/actors-stages-and-scripts/
“It’s not our job.“ Then, how damned long has this been a “Fact.”
“We are not investigators.” Then, what the hell are you, now?
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/09/ray-mcgovern-unaccountable-media-faced-with-dilemma-in-next-phase-of-deep-state-gate/
For some reason, Consortium News took down this linked article wherein the quotes of “It’s not our job“ and “We are not investigators” made further history.
““New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election…”
Or potentially of back numbers of MAD Magazine.
Just as likely.
Truth is Toast.
US Secretary of State, former Director of CIA, Mike Pompeo: We lied; we cheated; we stole.
https://www.activistpost.com/2015/01/cia-flashback-well-know-our.html
Fairly honest, for a CIA man. Of course he didn’t acknowledge the murders, the torture, the extortion, or the drug dealing.
What is the name of the CNN guy? Cohen, isn’t it? Isn’t it a jewish name?
Assange seems to be quite a threat to the zionist empire which is ruling the Western world.
Fortunately, according to many prophecies, the Second Coming of Jesus in very near. And I pray the Rosary for His Coming to be as soon as possible.
I have really really seen enough. It is becoming unbearable. Lie after lie since the great lie of 9-11.
Keeping my Rosary close.
CNN is simply a propaganda organ for the rich and powerful. It’s the corporate news outlet. You can’t trust anything they day to be the truth.
Typo. Day should be say.
And Jeremy “H”unt gratuitously announces the UK-Canadaian liberation of journalists from criminal penalties for free & fair reporting he, the wannabe Prime Minister of UK, excludes Assange branding him a “criminal”. Oh what an abject prat he is;!
Just more CIA inspired and dictated lies to add to the mountain already built by these professional liars, smearmongers, and black propaganda merchants. They wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them on their fat, over-fed, over-paid, and under-worked posteriors.
For “CNN” read “Conveyers of Nonsense and the Non-factual.”
Two people on a special list of persons not to be searched come in and remove (allegedly) a hundred hard drives and you paper that over with your passionate rebuttal that Jules didn’t smear feces on a wall? You say that CNN is out of line because they didn’t even use the words “reportedly” or “…CNN claims that….” Despite the fact that Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo is quoted as saying he did. Just in case you missed it I’ll provide you links that do use the words that assign guilt to the feces smearing miscreant after I finish trashing your propaganda to bring you up to speed. No need to thank me…..it’s my pleasure. You whistle past the graveyard by righteously asserting that in one sentence the words “hacker” and “russian” are placed too close together for your semantic comfort and that some delineation isn’t defined until later paragraphs, and that’s your “A Ha” moment? Never once do you deny that Müller-Maguhn is well known for his hacking abilities. Never once to you mention …caught on video….a guy comes to the embassy door with a mask on and not for a second does your supposed “journalistic” imagination piqued as to why in the world would anyone not want to have their face shown. Never once do you mention that two people on a not to be searched list come in and remove (reportedly) a hundred hard drives do you ask “hmmmm…I wonder why a guy not affiliated with Wikileaks publishing of stolen material need a hundred hard drives for?” You don’t ask those question because either A) you fervently don’t want to know or….more likely B) you know exactly why.
Your house of cards…..just as the President’s* and Jullian’s houses….with each release of data, of confirmed logs, with video evidence are falling apart. Oh, but the feces you say. Oh but you have strident denials from RT you say. Imagine that. Why don’t you just face it and admit that you hitched your wagon to the wrong pony.
I’m just wondering Caitlin, do you get paid in Euros or Rubles?
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/12/18307626/julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador-cat-poop
https://www.theroot.com/julian-assange-kicked-out-embassy-for-smearing-feces-on-1834007073
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-assange-smeared-his-feces-on-ecuadorian-embassys-walls-president-says/
Your entire argument consists of you trying to paint WikiLeaks associates trying to protect identities as something nefarious, which is a completely baseless thing for you to do. WikiLeaks sources and associates not wanting their identities known and WikiLeaks staff protecting WikiLeaks data is normal journalism. You’ll have to try harder.
My argument(s) are multi pronged which I’ll say to your credit are deftly parried by you and your ilk to the extent that the Oceania’s Minister of Truth would be greatly pleased. With amusement I marvel at your child like innocence and yet I’m revolted by your willful ignorance where you pretend that RT is one of the great spires of independent journalism. It isn’t Cate, but of course you know that. Control and directed by your friends of your dear Uncle Vladimir. You could even put on your journalist cap, the one you sent all those cereal box tops away for, and interview actual independent Russian journalists except well, most of them are dead. Died having published stories in stark opposition to the ones you prodigiously excrete and most certainly stories that never saw the light of day off a RT transmitter. So please just stop. I’d no sooner listen to RT…..or you….for objective journalism than I would Hannity.
The gum chewing girl and the cud chewing cow….there is one difference I must allow. The intelligent look on the face of the cow, but with you it’s the difference between you and actual journalists. With a deft magician like wave you trot out a story from your boy down in Brazil and the Intercept saying CNN fired their journalists. You immediately prescribe that to of course their incompetence (to be sure) and of course that means they’re corporate lackys…..just his and your opinion nothing more. But you see Cate, their incompetence eventually got them canned because they had to answer to someone…an editor, a supervisor. You? You’re just another pretty face that gets to say whatever Jullian tells you to and you call it the truth? Grow up. You don’t have to answer to anyone except perhaps your handler out of the GRU. (allegedly) The other parts of your screed I’ll dismantle like a drunk guy playing Jenga later. ‘Cause baby I’m just getting warmed up.
oh and Caitlin can you hear that…..tick tock tick tock….times running out for Jullian and all those journalists that keep writing stories how he’s the bastion and guiding light of freedom.
Report back to handler, repeat,
report back to handler. You have over played your hand. Too many mentions of Russia, usage of term « your boy », misogynistic condescension. These do not an argument make. Tick tock, hurry along.
Dude be trippin . . .
so some ecuadoran official, in the midst of a process to stab assange in the back, made a spurious claim. that’s your “evidence”. somebody pay you for this?
“I’m just wondering Caitlin, do you get paid in Euros or Rubles?”
I’m pretty sure that you yourself get paid in dollars or sterling. From the length of your post, I suspect that you are actually a western government employee being paid out of my taxes.
Ever hear of “persona management software”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntrepid
I don’t believe for a minute that Julian smeared faeces, but if it were proved that he did I would take it as evidence of his depression and despair brought on by years of living with the possibility or even probability that he would be spending the rest of his life in solitary in a US hell-hole prison.
The MSM continue to ignore Craig Murray’s (almost) confession that he was the means by which the DNC material got from the DNC to Wikileaks. This is proof positive of what these outlets really are – Deep State collaborators.
Does any main stream media outlet tell the public the truth anymore? It seems that every one of them is solely dedicated to one or more governmental agencies or some corporate grifters.
“This….is CNN”
https://youtu.be/aYgzmP4iNZQ
Caitlin, oops, remove that one, I guess my grab of JACKO, from CNN early years didn’t pick uo. Wait, I’ll grab it
….https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jTWY14eyMFg&t=274s
Sorry, the second one is CNN, tho the first one is Caitlin on getting guidance, so, cool. But everyone should join me art Twitter, been there a while, telling people that CNN is done, over, RIP. This Assange ‘scoop’ is their Guardian ‘Manafort Visits Assange’ story. It reads just as fake. CNN has ALWAYS been fake, see YouTube for their first few years.
CNN, ’nuff said.
CNN, like The Guardian, like the Washington Post, like ABC, like all of them are just filth. Whores and stenographers for Empire and Imperialism. Anyone who opposes the 0.01℅ and their greedlust is smeared, lied about, and demonised by their mouthpieces, namely the mainstream media. This is the role of these Immoral creatures: to protect the system and the powerful. Beyond contempt.
If Julian Assange DID smear S**T on the Walls, I say Good For HIM!!!
It was a political protest statement on the way he was being treated and the BS Lies the Press and the Governments are saying about him.
It could be defended as a Political Art.
You do realise, don’t you, that just by getting us to argue about “whether Julian did or didn’t smear feces on the walls”, they have you doing what they want.
I remember telling a story from 1999, and the punch line was that CNN lied. The story was about the WTO protests in Seattle. I had heard of them, knew people wanted them to be big, but I was on the other side of the country and it seemed a long way to go for just another protest. So, I’m at work the morning the WTO conference was to open. At lunchtime, I used the company computer to check for news. That was back before such things were always logged, on your permanent record, and used against you whenever needed. First I went to CNN. They had their lady White House Correspondent on a front page story saying emphatically that the police were not shooting protesters with rubber bullets. I then looked, and CNN had no other stories about protesters claiming to be shot. Thus, it was strange, because in CNN land the police chief was issuing a firm denial of something that had not been reported. Very Interesting. Then I remembered that the protesters had been saying they had their own website called IndyMedia that would provide coverage. I went to Indymedia, and on their front page was a big picture of a conference room table that was absolutely covered with rubber bullets that the protesters had picked up from the streets. And of course more pictures of rubber bullets and of protesters showing the large bruises from being shot with rubber bullets, just as icing on the cake.
So, in my story from 1999, the punch line was that CNN was lying. And got caught at it. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
And if you are younger than me and don’t know what I’m talking about with the Seattle WTO protests, well then you should ask what else haven’t they told you about. 🙂
Great anecdote, Alexandria. The thing that really grates is that, 20 years on, they’re still doing it. And they’re still able to do it because so many sheep keep tuning in and drinking the Kool Aid. The heroic endeavours over the decades of honest journalists like Caitlin have barely made a dent in the propaganda and the PTB just get more and more brazen. I don’t think anything will change until the masses get out onto the streets with pitchforks.
Never believe anything until you hear the official denial.