Editor of Major German Newspaper Says He Planted Stories for the CIA

[untermensche]

Easy to say.

Changing jobs involves trauma. The loss of friends, many times the loss of a house and desired place to live.

On one hand you have a major upheaval to your life. On the other is lying about a story given to you by a very nice person working for the government. It's over in a day.

Easy to say that major upheaval is what people faced with this should do.

It is major upheaval either way, one way is compromising your ethics, and the ethics of your profession, which will follow you for the rest of your life. The other is a temporary inconvenience that can be turned into a positive by blowing the whistle on the ethical violation you have been asked to perform. I know which one I would take. I also know that I am not going to trust a journalist who is willing to compromise their professional ethics and integrity for the sake of their job.

I can certainly feel for the guy if he truly was faced with such a dilemma, but there is no way I am going to trust him to be telling the truth now when he just revealed that he has been lying throughout his professional career. He was either lying for years, or he is lying now, either way he is a liar, and not to be trusted when he claims to be telling the truth. Not without substantial supporting evidence that proves his truthfulness.

It is definitely upheaval to quit your job and then try to find another.

It is no upheaval in your life to just submit a story as your own. It may haunt your conscience later, or it may not. But it is no upheaval of your entire life.

It is easy to understand how people could just hold their nose, submit the story, and move on with their lives.

It is not easy to understand how somebody would rock the boat, abandon the place they have been working and building relationships, and willingly go through the trauma of changing jobs.

 

[Jayjay]

His book is apparently not reveal anything specific either, based on the reviews I've read.

He reprints parts of some of the articles he wrote and explains where he got the information.

The articles are generally smear pieces revealing things like Qaddafi was trying to manufacture chemical weapons.

He got the information from German intelligence. His claim is that German intelligence is in many ways, not all ways, just an arm of US intelligence, a claim not that hard to believe.

So, instead of submitting articles on CIA's behalf, he actually only got information? And not from CIA at all but BND?

If you put it like that, the story seems rather underwhelming. Basically this guy was just a lazy editor who didn't bother to do his own research.

 

[untermensche]

He reprints parts of some of the articles he wrote and explains where he got the information.

The articles are generally smear pieces revealing things like Qaddafi was trying to manufacture chemical weapons.

He got the information from German intelligence. His claim is that German intelligence is in many ways, not all ways, just an arm of US intelligence, a claim not that hard to believe.

So, instead of submitting articles on CIA's behalf, he actually only got information? And not from CIA at all but BND?

If you put it like that, the story seems rather underwhelming. Basically this guy was just a lazy editor who didn't bother to do his own research.

German intelligence is not in the business of inciting war or justifying it. It does not have the military to back up those desires.

One nation longs to bring every conflict into the arena of violence where it overwhelmingly dominates.

When all you have are better weapons and not better ideas you always push for war as the solution to differences.

As we have clearly seen over the past 14 years of non-stop war.

 

[KeepTalking]

It is major upheaval either way, one way is compromising your ethics, and the ethics of your profession, which will follow you for the rest of your life. The other is a temporary inconvenience that can be turned into a positive by blowing the whistle on the ethical violation you have been asked to perform. I know which one I would take. I also know that I am not going to trust a journalist who is willing to compromise their professional ethics and integrity for the sake of their job.

I can certainly feel for the guy if he truly was faced with such a dilemma, but there is no way I am going to trust him to be telling the truth now when he just revealed that he has been lying throughout his professional career. He was either lying for years, or he is lying now, either way he is a liar, and not to be trusted when he claims to be telling the truth. Not without substantial supporting evidence that proves his truthfulness.

It is definitely upheaval to quit your job and then try to find another.

It is no upheaval in your life to just submit a story as your own. It may haunt your conscience later, or it may not. But it is no upheaval of your entire life.

It is easy to understand how people could just hold their nose, submit the story, and move on with their lives.

It is not easy to understand how somebody would rock the boat, abandon the place they have been working and building relationships, and willingly go through the trauma of changing jobs.

Remind me to never hire you for a job that requires any amount of ethical responsibility. I once rocked the boat at a place where I worked, and where I was beginning to build my current career, just because I was asked to falsify hours worked in a manner that would have actually been a benefit to me. I am generally reluctant to switch jobs on a whim, myself, but being asked to compromise my principles is a major issue that I will not tolerate for the sake of any job. I am sorry that for the journalist in question, and apparently yourself, things like ethics are a secondary consideration to job security.

Regardless, I feel I must reiterate that whether I agree with what he did, or why, he has admitted to a lack of journalistic integrity, and this makes it very difficult for me to trust that he is acting with integrity now.

 

[untermensche]

It is definitely upheaval to quit your job and then try to find another.

It is no upheaval in your life to just submit a story as your own. It may haunt your conscience later, or it may not. But it is no upheaval of your entire life.

It is easy to understand how people could just hold their nose, submit the story, and move on with their lives.

It is not easy to understand how somebody would rock the boat, abandon the place they have been working and building relationships, and willingly go through the trauma of changing jobs.

Remind me to never hire you for a job that requires any amount of ethical responsibility. I once rocked the boat at a place where I worked, and where I was beginning to build my current career, just because I was asked to falsify hours worked in a manner that would have actually been a benefit to me. I am generally reluctant to switch jobs on a whim, myself, but being asked to compromise my principles is a major issue that I will not tolerate for the sake of any job. I am sorry that for the journalist in question, and apparently yourself, things like ethics are a secondary consideration to job security.

Regardless, I feel I must reiterate that whether I agree with what he did, or why, he has admitted to a lack of journalistic integrity, and this makes it very difficult for me to trust that he is acting with integrity now.

You live in a dream world where choosing the stability of your family over doing work for your government that you can't verify is some huge ethical shortcoming.

You live in a dream world where the penalties for rocking the boat are not real.

Again, this is one small journalist. He wasn't the mastermind of anything or some major source.

He is talking about government coercion, granted coercion that wasn't a threat to his life, to use his space in the media to disseminate "information" the government claimed was important to disseminate.

Some here focus on the victim of the government coercion and side with the government.

That is a stance many people take.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, instead of submitting articles on CIA's behalf, he actually only got information? And not from CIA at all but BND?

If you put it like that, the story seems rather underwhelming. Basically this guy was just a lazy editor who didn't bother to do his own research.

And what evidence do we have that the information wasn't true?

Qaddafi was on the dark side for a while.

 

[KeepTalking]

Remind me to never hire you for a job that requires any amount of ethical responsibility. I once rocked the boat at a place where I worked, and where I was beginning to build my current career, just because I was asked to falsify hours worked in a manner that would have actually been a benefit to me. I am generally reluctant to switch jobs on a whim, myself, but being asked to compromise my principles is a major issue that I will not tolerate for the sake of any job. I am sorry that for the journalist in question, and apparently yourself, things like ethics are a secondary consideration to job security.

Regardless, I feel I must reiterate that whether I agree with what he did, or why, he has admitted to a lack of journalistic integrity, and this makes it very difficult for me to trust that he is acting with integrity now.

You live in a dream world where choosing the stability of your family over doing work for your government that you can't verify is some huge ethical shortcoming.

In the real world, if you are a journalist, then violating journalistic integrity is a huge ethical shortcoming. I'm sorry you don't feel that way.

You live in a dream world where the penalties for rocking the boat are not real.

No, I fully realize that whistle-blowing can cause problems for the whistle-blower, but he did not even have to go that far. All he had to do was refuse to play ball with whatever intelligence agency was trying to get him to compromise his ethics.

Again, this is one small journalist. He wasn't the mastermind of anything or some major source.

One small journalist who made the major mistake of repeatedly compromising his journalistic integrity. This is a reason to not trust him to be acting with journalistic integrity now. How hard is it to grasp that concept?

He is talking about government coercion, granted coercion that wasn't a threat to his life, to use his space in the media to disseminate "information" the government claimed was important to disseminate.

Some here focus on the victim of the government coercion and side with the government.

That is a stance many people take.

I do not side with the government. I side with not trusting someone who has demonstrated a lack of ethics in their chosen profession, especially as that trust relates to that profession.

 

[untermensche]

You live in a dream world where choosing the stability of your family over doing work for your government that you can't verify is some huge ethical shortcoming.

In the real world, if you are a journalist, then violating journalistic integrity is a huge ethical shortcoming. I'm sorry you don't feel that way.

It is only your definition of journalistic integrity that says doing work for the government under duress is a big ethical shortcoming.

The ethical shortcoming is the government and it's agents that use coercion to get people to do things like this.

 

[Nexus]

Yes, the CIA is known to assassinate journalists. And because they tried to assassinate Castro, and you are revealing their tactics, they are going to try to assassinate YOU next! Better watch your back!

Your sarcastic rhetoric shows you don't have a good arguments here. But my point is obvious, its ridiculous to claim an organisation that murders people and overthrows elected governments wouldn't stoop as low as planting a story in the media because they fear backlash.

 

[Nexus]

I can certainly feel for the guy if he truly was faced with such a dilemma, but there is no way I am going to trust him to be telling the truth now when he just revealed that he has been lying throughout his professional career. He was either lying for years, or he is lying now, either way he is a liar, and not to be trusted when he claims to be telling the truth. Not without substantial supporting evidence that proves his truthfulness.

Its too bad you don't hold our intelligence agencies to the same standard since they have been shown to be liars as well.

 

[Jayjay]

Remind me to never hire you for a job that requires any amount of ethical responsibility. I once rocked the boat at a place where I worked, and where I was beginning to build my current career, just because I was asked to falsify hours worked in a manner that would have actually been a benefit to me. I am generally reluctant to switch jobs on a whim, myself, but being asked to compromise my principles is a major issue that I will not tolerate for the sake of any job. I am sorry that for the journalist in question, and apparently yourself, things like ethics are a secondary consideration to job security.

Regardless, I feel I must reiterate that whether I agree with what he did, or why, he has admitted to a lack of journalistic integrity, and this makes it very difficult for me to trust that he is acting with integrity now.

You live in a dream world where choosing the stability of your family over doing work for your government that you can't verify is some huge ethical shortcoming.

You live in a dream world where the penalties for rocking the boat are not real.

Again, this is one small journalist. He wasn't the mastermind of anything or some major source.

He is talking about government coercion, granted coercion that wasn't a threat to his life, to use his space in the media to disseminate "information" the government claimed was important to disseminate.

Some here focus on the victim of the government coercion and side with the government.

That is a stance many people take.

We only have his word that there was any "coercion" whatesoever. I find it more likely that he was just lazy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes, the CIA is known to assassinate journalists. And because they tried to assassinate Castro, and you are revealing their tactics, they are going to try to assassinate YOU next! Better watch your back!

Your sarcastic rhetoric shows you don't have a good arguments here. But my point is obvious, its ridiculous to claim an organisation that murders people and overthrows elected governments wouldn't stoop as low as planting a story in the media because they fear backlash.

I'm quite willing to believe that they do so, what I don't believe is that they used this guy to do it.

 

[Jayjay]

So, instead of submitting articles on CIA's behalf, he actually only got information? And not from CIA at all but BND?

If you put it like that, the story seems rather underwhelming. Basically this guy was just a lazy editor who didn't bother to do his own research.

And what evidence do we have that the information wasn't true?

Qaddafi was on the dark side for a while.

It's not about what's true, it's about what you can prove.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So, instead of submitting articles on CIA's behalf, he actually only got information? And not from CIA at all but BND?

If you put it like that, the story seems rather underwhelming. Basically this guy was just a lazy editor who didn't bother to do his own research.

And what evidence do we have that the information wasn't true?

Qaddafi was on the dark side for a while.

The CIA should not be putting press in the newpapers under an independent name.

 

[KeepTalking]

In the real world, if you are a journalist, then violating journalistic integrity is a huge ethical shortcoming. I'm sorry you don't feel that way.

It is only your definition of journalistic integrity that says doing work for the government under duress is a big ethical shortcoming.

In a country with a free press, misrepresenting the source of the story, and acting as a propagandist for the government are certainly violations of journalistic ethics, feel free to argue otherwise. If the journalist in question were working in an oppressive regime with no freedom of the press, I would give him a pass, I would also know from the very beginning of his career that acting with journalistic integrity is not a viable option for him. The current government in Germany is not oppressive, it has a free press, the only duress was the perceived possibility that he might lose his job. To me this is not a good reason to give him a pass on journalistic ethics.

The ethical shortcoming is the government and it's agents that use coercion to get people to do things like this.

Both the government and the journalist are acting unethical if his current story is true. The problem lies in the inability to discern if the current story is true, given the journalists failure to act ethically throughout his career.

 

[KeepTalking]

I can certainly feel for the guy if he truly was faced with such a dilemma, but there is no way I am going to trust him to be telling the truth now when he just revealed that he has been lying throughout his professional career. He was either lying for years, or he is lying now, either way he is a liar, and not to be trusted when he claims to be telling the truth. Not without substantial supporting evidence that proves his truthfulness.

Its too bad you don't hold our intelligence agencies to the same standard since they have been shown to be liars as well.

Where do you get that notion?

There are two possibilities here:

1) The journalist is lying about the past, and is the only one acting unethically.
2) The journalist was lying in the past, and is telling the truth now, so both the journalist and government agency have acted unethically.

Either way, we know that at some point the journalist has acted unethically, so he cannot be trusted to act ethically now. This does not mean that I hold the government to a different standard, it just means that we need more than just a book from a journalist who has outed himself as a liar to determine if the government agency acted unethically in this case, or not.

 

[Axulus]

Has anyone even attempted to track down which article(s) this guy wrote or edited that are alleged to have been plants by the CIA? Isn't the most basic piece of evidence to first produce the stories in question? The second most important piece being the communications received from this alleged government contact?

All we have right now is some book some guy wrote and an article about it on a website that publishes anti-vax, anti-global warming, and rampant government conspiracy theory nonsense.

 

[untermensche]

You live in a dream world where choosing the stability of your family over doing work for your government that you can't verify is some huge ethical shortcoming.

You live in a dream world where the penalties for rocking the boat are not real.

Again, this is one small journalist. He wasn't the mastermind of anything or some major source.

He is talking about government coercion, granted coercion that wasn't a threat to his life, to use his space in the media to disseminate "information" the government claimed was important to disseminate.

Some here focus on the victim of the government coercion and side with the government.

That is a stance many people take.

We only have his word that there was any "coercion" whatesoever. I find it more likely that he was just lazy.

A government agent making requests from you is a form of coercion.

It forces one to make decisions they wouldn't have had to make otherwise.

The party at fault here is the government.

Despite the desire of some to blame the victim.

 

[Axulus]

We only have his word that there was any "coercion" whatesoever. I find it more likely that he was just lazy.

A government agent making requests from you is a form of coercion.

It forces one to make decisions they wouldn't have had to make otherwise.

No, not a government agent, a foreign agent. This would be like a US journalist getting a call from some guy in China saying that he works for a Chinese spy agency and that a story needs to be planted in the paper or else.

What you do if you receive such a call is immediately go to the police.

This whole thing is just one big laugh, I can't believe people are taking this seriously for one moment with the kind of evidence we've got here.

What a joke.

 

[Jayjay]

We only have his word that there was any "coercion" whatesoever. I find it more likely that he was just lazy.

A government agent making requests from you is a form of coercion.

For a political editor, interviewing government officials and applying due diligence in fact checking what they say is part of his job. To call it coercion is ridiculous, how else are you going to report on goings of governments if you don't get information from at least some government sources?