Trust in U.S. media is at a record low:
The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released Wednesday found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.)
One reason is that U.S. media are either not reporting important events, are misreporting them, or are very late in covering twisted plots that even a lowly blogger can get right just as they happen.
On August 7 2020 Moon of Alabama reported on a Ukrainian operation designed to lead to the arrest, in Ukraine, of soldiers who had fought on the side of Donbas during the Ukrainian war on its east:
People who had claimed to work for the Russian oil conglomerate Rosneft, but used a fake Rosneft domain for their emails, had hired Ukrainian/Russian veterans who had fought on the pro-Russian side in the civil war in the Ukraine.
The men were told that they would guard oil fields in Syria and in Venezuela. They received some money and were given tickets prepared for them for a flight from Minsk to Turkey. Those tickets were booked by an Ukrainian travel agency in Kiev which seems to have been founded solely for that purpose. But when the mercenaries arrived in Belarus they were told that the flight had been canceled. They were put into a local hotel and told to wait a few days for another flight.
The Ukrainian secret service then informed Lukashenko that a group of Russian mercenaries were in his country to launch a coup during the upcoming election. Lukashenko has publicly acknowledged that the information about the group had come from the Ukraine. Belarus arrested the men and the Ukraine immediately demand their extradition.
the original idea had been to make the plane with the former soldiers land in the Ukraine during its flight from Minsk to Turkey. The former soldiers would then have been arrested.
But some entity on the Ukrainian side – some says its president's office, others blame the CIA – sabotaged the original plan to create a ruckus in Belarus. After Russian media uncovered the whole plot Belarus released the veterans and let them go back to Russia.
On September 21 2020 Moon of Alabama flogged the New York Times over misreporting the story:
[The August 7 version of the] story has since been confirmed by the Ukrainian side (see below).
But today's New York Times report does not tell that story at all. It makes it seem as if Lukashenko changed his mind about the 'Russian coup' not because he gained knowledge of the real plot, but because he was under pressure from election protests.
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The NYT makes it look as if the Ukrainian intelligence service and the CIA were not involved at all and as if the revealed Ukrainian plot has not been real. The change in the 'Russian coup' story is attributed solely to the changing needs of Lukashenko.That is of course bollocks. The Ukrainian plot was real. We know that because officials from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, which is supported by the U.S. State Department, have officially admitted it and because the Ukrainian media have been all over the story.
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There is zero doubt that the Ukrainian plot, which was planned and executed together with the CIA, was real.
More than a year after Moon of Alabama provided an extensive account of the whole plot CNN is today (re-?)publishing the very same story as an "Exclusive" report:
EXCLUSIVE by Matthew Chance and Zahra Ullah, CNN
Three former high-ranking Ukrainian military intelligence officials described exclusively to CNN how they orchestrated the extraordinary operation aimed at luring suspected war criminals out of Russia to face prosecution for atrocities committed in eastern Ukraine where separatists backed by Moscow have been fighting for years.
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It was apparently of interest to US intelligence too, although US officials deny having a direct role. According to the Ukrainian intelligence officials, the Ukrainian-led operation got US cash, technical assistance and advice from the CIA on how to draw the Russian mercenaries in.A senior US official told CNN those claims are "false."
The CNN report is sprinkled with Ukrainian propaganda. But there is otherwise nothing in the 'Exclusive' story except the last sentence quoted above which, according to the old adage "never believe anything until it is officially denied", is a confirmation of the CIA's extensive involvement in the plot.
Considering that it took me only the better part of two days work from behind my desk to get the whole story right a full year ago this sentence in the CNN story is somewhat frustrating:
CNN spent weeks in Ukraine, verifying and reviewing accounts of the operation and speaking to the men who were on the inside.
Weeks of paid vacation for a story that was a just a web search away … Nice job if you can get it.
The Russian authorities have acknowledged the CNN report and call out the Ukrainian government and the CIA over it:
The CNN report disclosing the circumstances of an attempt to kidnap Russians in Belarus in 2020 confirms that Ukraine's secret services, in fact, commit acts of state terrorism, a spokesman for Russia's federal security service FSB told the media on Wednesday.
"The [Ukrainian] authorities are not interested in an impartial investigation of this affair. Because if it is investigated properly, all the facts that were mentioned a year ago and which CNN has now confirmed serve as fresh evidence Ukraine commits acts of state terrorism by the hands of its secret services. This is an accusation at a level of an international criminal court. There is no getting away from this."
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"We remember perfectly well what happened then: our citizens were in fact lured into Belarus by the GUR [main intelligence directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry] and the security service SBU under the guidance of the United States' CIA. …"
Intent one of the plot – to get the Russian veterans in front of an Ukrainian court – has failed.
Intent two of the plot – to create panic in the government of Belarus just as the CIA's color revolution there was gaining steam – also failed.
But what has failed even more is the U.S. media reporting of the whole story.