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

[Axulus]

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.

In many ways, it is much worse than just knowingly writing and/or publishing a fake story. It is doing so while under the influence of a _foreign agent_. At a minimum, this would freak most people out and they would immediately go to their own authorities to report it and request protection (if any threats were made). Such a scenario would be a huge outrage to the German public, and the individual in question would easily obtain the full support of the German public and German authorities. Are standards of ethical duty and duty to country so minuscule to this individual that a threat of job loss would override all of this, just to avoid some temporary discomfort?

 

[untermensche]

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?

He claims he was asked to publish something unchanged.

He had two choices. Publish it or not.

Not publishing it could possibly have consequences.

That is coercion.

 

[fromderinside]

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?

He claims he was asked to publish something unchanged.

He had two choices. Publish it or not.

Not publishing it could possibly have consequences.

That is coercion.

He was asked. He wasn't instructed. He should have practiced ordinary due reporter diligence then decided to publish unchanged or with edits with evidence in hand.

Unprofessional and unethical all from one superior's request. I'll bet he won the exacta too.

 

[Jayjay]

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?

He claims he was asked to publish something unchanged.

He had two choices. Publish it or not.

Not publishing it could possibly have consequences.

That is coercion.

Is that what his book actually says, or are you making it up? And if he does say so in his book, how does he prove it?

 

[untermensche]

He claims he was asked to publish something unchanged.

He had two choices. Publish it or not.

Not publishing it could possibly have consequences.

That is coercion.

Is that what his book actually says, or are you making it up? And if he does say so in his book, how does he prove it?

You can go to YouTube and listen to him say it.

And if he was asked in person and didn't record the conversation then there is no way to prove it.

 

[Jayjay]

Is that what his book actually says, or are you making it up? And if he does say so in his book, how does he prove it?

You can go to YouTube and listen to him say it.

And if he was asked in person and didn't record the conversation then there is no way to prove it.

So now it's youtube, and NOT his book where he says so? And doesn't offer any details like names that would prove it?

Which brings me back to the original point: it's very easy to make up non-specific story, but coming up with names, dates, exact details of which articles were written by CIA is a lot harder. It would be a major scoop, and the only reason he doesn't do it is because he is probably spinning a yarn.

 

[untermensche]

You can go to YouTube and listen to him say it.

And if he was asked in person and didn't record the conversation then there is no way to prove it.

So now it's youtube, and NOT his book where he says so? And doesn't offer any details like names that would prove it?

What I know of the book is what I heard him discuss in an interview I watched on YouTube.

You can listen as well.

His claim is the US stokes the fires of war.

Hard to believe since the US has been at war nonstop for only 14 years.

 

[Jayjay]

So now it's youtube, and NOT his book where he says so? And doesn't offer any details like names that would prove it?

What I know of the book is what I heard him discuss in an interview I watched on YouTube.

You can listen as well.

His claim is the US stokes the fires of war.

Hard to believe since the US has been at war nonstop for only 14 years.

I listened to the RT interview. The impression I get is that he is a blowhard with a wild imagination, and it's not hard to believe that this is the case because the world is full of people like him: conspiracy theorists, paranormalists, UFO experts, etc.

 

[untermensche]

What I know of the book is what I heard him discuss in an interview I watched on YouTube.

You can listen as well.

His claim is the US stokes the fires of war.

Hard to believe since the US has been at war nonstop for only 14 years.

I listened to the RT interview. The impression I get is that he is a blowhard with a wild imagination, and it's not hard to believe that this is the case because the world is full of people like him: conspiracy theorists, paranormalists, UFO experts, etc.

He isn't talking about anything amazing like UFO's or paranormal activity.

He's talking about something we know the government has done many times.

The Bush administration planted stories with a reporter at the NYT to justify the invasion of Iraq.

That is just one of the worst cases.

 

[barbos]

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.

CIA in Germany is not exactly foreign agent. Level cooperation there was only slightly less ridiculous than in case of GB and other English speaking countries.