Former Trump administration intelligence official and best-selling author, Cliff Sims, has offered a rare glimpse into the 5th column’s propaganda machine – namely, how former Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand concocted the report that ’50 former intelligence officials’ said the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
“Want to know what it’s like to deal with some journalists who “cover” the Intel and NatSec communities at the highest level, but actually serve more like mouthpieces of the permanent security state?” Sims asked, kicking off a Wednesday Twitter thread.
Continued (emphasis ours):
Oct. 16: @RepAdamSchiff suggest the laptop might be a part of a Russian effort to “smear” Biden.
Oct. 19: @JohnRatcliffe says there’s NO intel to support Schiff’s lie.
The press played it like it was a “battle.” History has proven who was a liar & “politicized” their position.
Oct. 19, then-@politico reporter @NatashBertrand preps a story about 50 former Intel officials claiming the Biden laptop story is Russian disinfo.
I warn her that it is NOT and point her to Ratcliffe’s statements.
She writes it anyway and gives Democrats the headline they want.
[ZH: for more on Bertrand, (actual) journalist Glenn Greenwald has pulled back the curtain on this particular operative on many occasions…]
Back to Cliff Sims:
Oct. 28: @NatashBertrand calls claiming @JohnRatcliffe “went off script” with his comments about Iran, the implication being that they actually weren’t trying to hurt Trump.
She had two anonymous “senior officials” as sources.
I push back hard with two main points…
1. The intelligence was clear about Iran’s intention to hurt Trump. The country’s top counter-intel official had even called them out publicly months before. Here’s his statement from Aug. 7, 2020, relaying the Intelligence Community’s assessment of what Iran was up to.
2. How could Ratcliffe go “off script” when it’s his script? We were still writing his remarks in the motorcade on the way to the press conference, right up until moments before he went on stage. The whole angle of the story made no sense. @NatashaBertrand said didn’t care.
At this point I took the rare step of asking to speak to her editor, who was @blakehounshell, before the story published.
I explained to Blake what I outlined above, and reminded him that @NatashaBertrand had also been wrong about the Biden laptop.
It got a little heated…
At some point, exasperated that the truth didn’t seem to matter when @NatashaBertrand was fixated on building a narrative, I snapped and said it was “garbage reporting.”
@blakehounshell replied that I was a “garbage person.”
And @politico published another misleading story.
March 2021, Biden’s own Office of the DNI released the Intelligence Community’s Assessment of foreign threats to the 2020 election.
As I’d told @NatashaBertrand and @blakehounshell back in 2020, they assessed that Iran sought to hurt Trump.
Proven right, again.
But @CNN hired @NatashaBertrand and the @nytimes hired @blakehounshell.
None of them — Schiff, the former Intel officials who lied about the laptop…the journalists involved — have ever admitted they were wrong.
And these headlines remains on @politico to this day.
/end
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