S7: Episode 25 - Gareth Porter

Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola are joined by journalist Gareth Porter to discuss the media malpractice surrounding "Bountygate," which was manufactured to extend the war in Afghanistan. Gareth has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of the Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book, The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis, was co-authored with John Kiriakou and published in February. For the Grayzone, Gareth how the Pentagon "failed to sell the Afghan government's bunk 'Bountygate' story" United States intelligence agencies. The New York Times published a report that was like a bad spinoff to the Russiagate stories they churned out. As it turned out, the Afghan intelligence service known as the National Directorate Security (NDS) was the source of unsubstantiated claims that Russia offered Afghan militants bounties to kill U.S. troops. "This is absolutely the worst so-called intelligence, not real intelligence, scandal of modern history," Gareth contends. "It surpasses Iraq and Iran by a fairly comfortable margin." During the interview, Gareth describes the culprits responsible for pushing this fabricated "bombshell." He addresses the fallout from the alleged story and then focuses on the malpractice by the Times and other media outlets, which have declined to do the kind of follow-up reporting that he has done. In fact, because they seem to recognize it is embarrassing, details that would effectively show the Times committed malpractice were buried in the back pages of the printed edition of their newspaper.