Stephen Cohen of The Nation is consistently one of the best commentators on the Russiagate affair.
He just published another excellent piece analyzing “How Did Russiagate Begin?, which canvasses some possibilities and leans toward the explanation that it was (and is) an operation by U.S. intelligence agencies unhappy with the possibility that Trump will defuse our increasingly fractious relationship with Russia.
The whole article deserves attention, but one point he makes in passing is worth expanding. Cohen notes:
In March 2018, the current [CIA] director, Gina Haspel, flatly lied to President Trump about an incident in the UK in order to persuade him to escalate measures against Moscow, which he then reluctantly did. Several non–mainstream media outlets have reported the true story. Typically, The New York Times, on April 17 of this year, reported it without correcting Haspel’s falsehood.
The reference is to the Skripal affair, in which the Russians, allegedly, used a nerve agent to poison a defector and his daughter. The Brits responded with heavy sanctions, and the U.S., after some hesitation, did the same. The story in the NYT said Trump agreed to the action only after Haspel showed him pictures, supposedly supplied to her by the British government, of collateral damage from the poisoning in the form of hospitalized children and dead ducks.
The deception received a flurry of attention in the Russophile blogs after the NYT story appeared, but since then — silence. No comment from the NYT, the CIA, or the White House.
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