The MSM’s credibility took another hit today, as the New York Times quietly issued a correction about their claims that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that the Russians ‘hacked’ the 2016 presidential election. The REAL number is only 4 agencies held such views.
Consortium News reports:
The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking of Democratic emails – is false.
In the Times’ White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting what all 17 intelligence agencies supposedly knew to be true.
However, on Thursday, the Times – while leaving most of Haberman’s ridicule of Trump in place – noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”
The Times’ grudging correction was vindication for some Russia-gate skeptics who had questioned the claim of a full-scale intelligence assessment, which would usually take the form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a product that seeks out the views of the entire Intelligence Community and includes dissents.
The reality of a more narrowly based Russia-gate assessment was admitted in May by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan in sworn congressional testimony.
Journalist Ben Norton tweeted out the correction today.
NYT quietly issued a huge correction: only 4 intelligence agencies approved "Russia hacking" assessment, not all 17https://t.co/b5OxCm3EB3 pic.twitter.com/5vtTFOHJLS
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 29, 2017
This on the heels of another left-wing media outlet retracting a fake news Russia story. CNN, facing a $100 million lawsuit was also forced to delete and retract a story Friday evening about congressional investigators allegedly focusing on a Russian investment fund whose top executive met with a Trump transition team. (Via Washington Examiner)
