Gareth Porter | The Libertarian Institute

Hezbollah Bomb Plots: The Latest In Mossad Disinformation

by Gareth Porter | Aug 28, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

This article was originally featured at The Grayzone and is republished with permission. Israeli officials have exploited the massive explosion at the Port of Beirut this August to revive a dormant propaganda campaign that had accused the Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah of storing ammonium nitrate in several countries to wage terror attacks on Israelis. The Israeli intelligence apparatus had planted a series of stories from 2012 to 2019 claiming Hezbollah sought out ammonium nitrate as the explosive of choice for terrorist operations. According to the narrative, Hezbollah...

How the Pentagon Failed To Sell ‘Bountygate’ Hoax to U.S. Intelligence

by Gareth Porter | Jul 9, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The New York Times dropped another Russiagate bombshell on June 26 with a sensational front-page story headlined, “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says.” A predictable media and political frenzy followed, reviving the anti-Russian hysteria that has excited the Beltway establishment for the past four years. But a closer look at the reporting by the Times and other mainstream outlets vying to confirm its coverage reveals another scandal not unlike Russiagate itself: the core elements of the story appear to have been fabricated by Afghan...

Pentagon’s Phony Iran ‘Evidence’: New Rationale for US Intervention?

by Gareth Porter | Jun 6, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

Last week a senior Pentagon official accused Iran of having sabotaged four oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman on May 12 and of firing a rocket into Baghdad’s Green Zone on May 19. Iran executed these events, he said, either directly or through regional “proxies.” But instead of creating sensational headlines, the briefing by Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, the director of the Joint Staff, was a flop, because it was clear to reporters covering it that he could not cite a single fact to back it up. The story got only the most cursory coverage in major news outlets, all of which buried Gilday’s...

Do Iranian ‘Threats’ Signal Organized U.S.-Israel Subterfuge?

by Gareth Porter | May 23, 2019 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

President Donald Trump’s national security team has been leaking “intelligence” about Iranian threats for a week now in an attempt to justify escalating tensions, including moving American air attack assets to the Persian Gulf. But a closer look suggests that National Security Advisor John Bolton and other senior officials are trying to pull off an intelligence deception comparable to the fraudulent pretense for war in Iraq. There’s also credible evidence that Israel could be playing a key role in this subterfuge. This deception has served to defend not only a U.S. military buildup in the...

The Real Motive Behind the FBI Plan to Investigate Trump as a Russian Agent

by Gareth Porter | Feb 13, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

The New York Times and CNN led media coverage last month of discussions among senior FBI officials in May 2017 of a possible national security investigation of President Donald Trump himself, on the premise that he may have acted as an agent of Russia. The episode has potentially profound political fallout, because the Times and CNN stories suggested that Trump may indeed have acted like a Russian agent. The New York Times story on Jan. 11 was headlined, “F.B.I. Opened Inquiry into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia.” CNN followed three days later with: “Transcripts...

How Trump Thwarted Calculated Israeli Effort to Keep U.S. in Syria

by Gareth Porter | Jan 14, 2019 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The Pentagon was not the only party pressing Donald Trump to keep troops in Syria last year. It turns out the Israeli government and its supporters in Washington were working very hard to get the Trump administration to use America’s military presence there to support an Israeli campaign of airstrikes aimed at threatening war with Iran. The Israeli strategy was aimed at dividing Russia from Iran and thus putting pressure on Tehran to withdraw its military personnel from Syria. A campaign by a pro-Israel think tank actually succeeded in getting such a policy ready for Trump’s approval last...

The Shaky Case That Russia Manipulated Social Media to Tip the 2016 Election

by Gareth Porter | Oct 15, 2018 | Featured Articles, Politics

In their long recapitulation of the case that Russia subverted the 2016 election, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times painted a picture of highly effective Russian government exploitation of social media for that purpose. Shane and Mazzetti asserted that “anti-Clinton, pro-Trump messages shared with millions of voters by Russia could have made the difference” in the election. “What we now know with certainty: The Russians carried out a landmark intervention that will be examined for decades to come,” they write elsewhere in the 10,000-word article. But an investigation of the...

How the Department of Homeland Security Created a Deceptive Tale of Russia Hacking US Voter Sites

by Gareth Porter | Aug 29, 2018 | Featured Articles, Politics

The narrative of Russian intelligence attacking state and local election boards and threatening the integrity of U.S. elections has achieved near-universal acceptance by media and political elites. And now it has been accepted by the Trump administration’s intelligence chief, Dan Coats, as well. But the real story behind that narrative, recounted here for the first time, reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created and nurtured an account that was grossly and deliberately deceptive. DHS compiled an intelligence report suggesting hackers linked to the Russian government...