It is getting better. Check this out [Truthout trying to hide stealing a fraudulent article]

[William McKinley]

I am having a back and forth with Japan Today regarding their publishing of an article which appeared in Capitol Hill Blue that has subsequently been exposed to be false.

Japan Today did not get the article from Capitol Hill Blue though. They got it from Truthout.org, a leftist propaganda outfit.

I wanted to see if Truthout.org even had the story up on their site. I went to their main page, Truthout.org and checked. Nothing. I noticed a search box up at the top. So I took a phrase from the original article, sought significant quantities and hit search.

Bingo.

Here is what the resulting page looked like:

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Search results for 'sought and significant and quantities'
Refine search:

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Documents 1 - 10 of 18 matches. More 's indicate a better match.

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t r u t h o u t - Iraq Attacks Wound Seven U.S. Soldiers

... threat posed by Saddam in the run-up to the war. And the White House acknowledged Bush was incorrect when he said in January that Iraq recently had sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa. (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/070903D.shtml 07/08/03, 11552 bytes

t r u t h o u t - Robert Scheer | A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied

... uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." What the president did not say was that the British were relying on their intelligence white paper ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/070903C.shtml 07/08/03, 12192 bytes

t r u t h o u t - White House Admits Lying About Iraq Nukes

... weeks of denial, the White House Monday finally admitted President Bush lied in his January State of the Union Address when he claimed Iraq had sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.   The acknowledgment came as a British parliamentary commission questioned the reliability of ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/070903A.shtml 07/08/03, 24043 bytes

t r u t h o u t - US Ambassador: 'Nuclear Report Ignored' By Administration

... .   Bush, in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 23, declared that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."   After Bush's speech, Wilson said he contacted the State Department, noted that the ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/070803E.shtml 07/07/03, 15966 bytes

t r u t h o u t - The Selling of the Iraq War

... choice about the most important question a nation faces: whether or not to go to war. That is exactly what the Bush administration did when it sought to convince the public and Congress that the United States should go to war with Iraq.     From late August 2002 to mid-March of this year ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/070703A.shtml 07/06/03, 55335 bytes

t r u t h o u t - Diplomat: British Ministers Knew Evidence was Forged

... office of the Vice-President, Dick Cheney.   During eight days in Niger he discovered it was impossible for Iraq to have been buying the quantities of uranium alleged. "My report was very unequivocal," he said. He also learnt that the signatures of officials vital to any transaction ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/070103B.shtml 06/30/03, 12799 bytes

t r u t h o u t - 10 Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

... to the occasional lie of expediency but, in fact, almost never told the truth.     What follows are just the most outrageous and significant of the dozens of outright lies uttered by Bush and his top officials over the past year in what amounts to a systematic campaign to scare the bejeezus ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062903G.shtml 06/28/03, 16884 bytes

t r u t h o u t - Serious Questions for Tony Blair

... was attempting to build nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to the West.   The Government has stood by reports that Iraq "sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa". British officials say the intelligence was based on multiple sources, despite the IAEA ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062703G.shtml 06/26/03, 13840 bytes

t r u t h o u t - Byrd: 'The Road to Coverup is the Road to Ruin'

... the President who appears to me to be intent on revising history. There is an abundance of clear and unmistakable evidence that the Administration sought to portray Iraq as a direct and deadly threat to the American people. But there is a great difference between the hand-picked intelligence that was ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062503A.shtml 06/24/03, 22919 bytes

t r u t h o u t - Rep. Waxman | Forged Iraq WMD Evidence

... on This Week, you repeated this statement, claiming that you made multiple inquiries of the intelligence agencies regarding the allegation that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from an African country. You stated:   George, somebody, somebody down may have known. But I will tell you that when ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061303B.shtml 06/13/03, 19626 bytes

Notice that the third result is a match for Doug Thompson's article.

But wait, there's more.

I click on it- and what do I find? It now goes to a completely different article, from the Washington Post. In other words, they had it up, and they took it down to make it look like they didn't have it.

Unfortunately for them, their search engine's cache still has it. At least for the time being. Others should replicate what I have done here for verification. I am sure they will be 'fixing' this slip up hastily.

[STARWISE]

His latest slings and arrows:

William Rivers Pitt: The Insiders Are Coming Out

By William Rivers Pitt
Jul 8, 2003, 06:50

For many, many months now, we have endured what is known in the common political lexicon as an 'Imperial Presidency.' The term denotes an administration that keeps its secrets, says nothing to the press worth reporting, lies with impunity beneath the veil of those secrets, and threatens retaliation against anyone who might stand in the way. When done properly, an Imperial Presidency becomes a powerful, unstoppable force. When an Imperial Presidency is guarded in Congress by political allies who hold the majority, it becomes almost completely unassailable.

Think about it. When was the last time we got a straight answer out of the Bush administration? When was the last time anyone with real power demanded answers from the folks in the White House? In the vacuum, we wind up getting answers like the one Don Rumsfeld delivered on February 12, 2002 when faced with pointed press questions about terrorism:

"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."

These boys could give lessons to Orwell. Without anyone in Congress slinging subpoenas, and with a press cowed by the threat of removal from the White House beat, there is no way to take an Imperial Presidency to task for its actions when deliberate gibberish is the rule of the news day.

There is no way.unless the White House insiders come out and start talking. Suddenly, that is exactly what is happening.

On June 26, I conducted an interview with 27-year CIA veteran Ray McGovern. McGovern served every President from Kennedy to Bush Sr., and delivered a wide spectrum of insight and data regarding both the September 11 attack and the second Iraq war. One key question McGovern answered dealt with the rapidly expanding scandal surrounding Bush administration tampering with evidence of Iraqi weapons.

The story has been taking a slow boil for months now, ever since the end of the war. The justification for attacking Iraq, as presented by the administration, was that Saddam Hussein had thousands of tons of deadly weapons practically falling out of his ears. Day after day came the dire reports from Bush, from Cheney, from Rumsfeld, from Rice, from Powell before the UN, from dozens of hired administration guns who saturated the airwaves with stories of looming doom in the shadow of September 11.

The weapons never showed up. Stories began to swirl about Vice President Cheney taking unprecedented trips to CIA headquarters for the purpose of leaning on the intelligence analysts so he would get the damning Iraq weapons reports the administration needed to justify combat. Stories began to swirl about obviously forged evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program that was deliberately used by Bush to justify war, despite the fact that everyone in the White House knew the evidence had been crudely faked. To counteract these stories, the Imperial Presidency laid blame for all of this on the CIA.

When I questioned McGovern on the impact these developments were having on the American intelligence community, McGovern made a prescient prediction:

"To the degree that esprit de corps exists, and I know it does among the folks we talk to, there is great, great turmoil there. In the coming weeks, we're going to be seeing folks coming out and coming forth with what they know, and it is going to be very embarrassing for the Bush administration."

A New York Times article from Sunday July 6 quoted former US ambassador Joseph Wilson as saying, "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Wilson was the man sent to Niger in February of 2002 to assess the validity of documentary evidence that claimed to describe an attempt by Iraq to procure materials for the development of a nuclear weapons platform. "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place," said Wilson in the Times.

Wilson certainly reported his findings to the White House, because he was asked to make the Niger trip by none other than Dick Cheney. Despite this fact, the faked Niger evidence was used dramatically by George W. Bush in a speech that directly connected September 11 to the alleged Iraqi weapons:

"We have experienced the horror of September 11. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people. Our enemies would be no less willing -- in fact they would be eager -- to use a biological, or chemical, or a nuclear weapon. Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

The "mushroom cloud" comment was appalling to another administration insider. Greg Thielmann, Director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues in the State Department, told Newsweek at the beginning of June 2003 that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research had concluded the documents were "garbage."

"When I saw that, it really blew me away," Thielmann told Newsweek. When Thielmann found out that Bush had used the faked Niger evidence to justify war to the American people, he said, "Not that stupid piece of garbage. My thought was, how did that get into the speech?"

Another White House insider has come out in spectacular fashion. Rand Beers served the Bush administration on the National Security Council at the White House as a special assistant to the President for combating terrorism. Mr. Beers served in government for more than 30 years working in international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, intelligence, and counter-terrorism. He worked for the National Security Council under presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton. Beer's service to his country began with two tours in Vietnam with the Marine Corps.

In a June 25 2003 interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, Beers reported that the administration was failing dramatically to defend the United States against terrorism. According to Beers, al Qaeda presented a far greater threat to America than Hussein and Iraq, and that the Iraq war was a terrible and unnecessary distraction from what was truly needed to keep the nation safe.

In his Nightline interview, Beers said, "Well, I think, firstly, there is an inadequate amount of funding. There was a report about the House passing the fiscal year 2004 budget, yesterday. And the main point of the article is that most everybody, expect for the Administration, believes that there was an inadequate funding level in that budget. People voted for it because the alternative was not acceptable, to have no budget. That has been, to my knowledge, a continuous perspective that the Administration has had. They've been unable or unwilling to ask for sufficient funds to actually do the job. And then, they haven't followed through with the programs that actually would turn that money into activities in as rapid and forceful a fashion as I think that it should. One of the phrases that is used often within Washington is 'business as usual.' And I'm really concerned that this Administration, despite its rhetoric, has given the homeland security function a 'business as usual' mantra."

Beers' position as special assistant to the President for combating terrorism meant he saw everything and knew everything. He was on Nightline for one reason: He quit his job, walked out the door, and joined the John Kerry for President campaign as National Security Advisor.

Today, everything Beers knows about the manner in which the administration acted towards Iraq, towards Afghanistan, towards September 11, is also known by a Senator from Massachusetts who is running for President on a very large and public stage.

Ray McGovern was right. The insiders are coming out, and the trickle has become a flood.

Source: Truthout.org
William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times best-selling author of two books - "War On Iraq" available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," now available from Pluto Press at ," now available from Pluto Press ..."

[Southack]

In his op-ed piece, Wilson said, "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Wilson also said that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney asked the CIA if Niger had sold uranium to Iraq. Wilson said his negative answer was given months before Bush announced in his State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa.

"The vice president's office asked a serious question," Wilson said. "I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government."

Fleischer said the vice president's office knew nothing of Wilson's trip to Niger until the media reported the story.

"The vice president's office did not request the mission to Niger," Fleischer said. "The vice president's office was not informed of his mission. He was not aware of Mr. Wilson's mission until recent press reports accounted for it."

It is now old news that the report saying Iraq acquired uranium yellowcake from Niger is false, Fleischer said, but "The information about the yellowcake and Niger was not specifically known prior to the State of the Union by the White House."

[STARWISE]

Good find ... and I forgot to post the link to the thing above:

YubaNet

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Placemarker BTTT

[nopardons]

WOW !

[Swordmaker]

William, check out the Truthout.org page below:

Capital Hill Blue Retracts Story

Found this just before midnite.

[metesky]

Thompson's claim to having been scammed for 20+ years rings hollow.

This stuff is what makes FreeRepublic the best political site on the web.

[William McKinley]

This is strange enough to be fiction, isn't it?

[Dog]

William you rock!

Martha and Mo read post 36 on this thread.

[William McKinley]

See #99. If the person who showed up on the CHB forum is Pitt or not is really not even important at this time. What is important is the tidbit that came out because of that person showing up on that forum, namely that Pitt is the managing editor at Truthout. As post #99 shows, that is established beyond what someone put on their profile on the CHB forum.

[Dog]

William please add me to your ping list if you have one..

[William McKinley]

So they pretty much are admitting that the story was not theirs. They sold something that they did not have rights to sell, OR Thompson is not being truthful about any relationship he has with Truthout.

I don't think the latter is the case.

And if I was Thompson, I would be suing the hell out of Truthout, and trying really hard to find out if this Terrance J. Wilkinson pretender has any connections to Truthout.

[piasa]

As post #99 shows, that is established beyond what someone put on their profile on the CHB forum.

bttt

[Dog]

fyi..

[Dog]

fyi..

[piasa]

Truthout.org, .net and .com are also owned by "Marc Ash"

[piasa]

truthout.us, however, seems to be free. :oD

[William McKinley]

See post #99. The circle is complete, without relying on the profile of the person who showed up on CHB.

[William McKinley]

No. A partner of his.

[piasa]

Found this on counterpunch (not exactly my kind of site) via a search:

May 14, 2002

Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication Reiterates the Big Lie About Palestine
by Jacob Levich

Truthout, an online newsletter and website boasting 250,000 subscribers, wants to outflank the distortions of mainstream media by disseminating news of interest to left-liberals. But its commitment to truth-telling seemingly stops short when it comes to Palestine.

On May 7, the Truthout newsletter linked to an Associated Press story about the Rishon Letzion suicide bombing. The AP report correctly refrained from identifying a perpetrator. (The party responsible is still unknown, although Hamas looks like the most likely culprit and the PA has since arrested 15 Hamas members in response.)

But Truthout flagged the story with a headline spun out of thin air: "Palestinian Authority Strikes Killing 15 Israelis."

Worse was soon to come.

Truthout (http://www.truthout.org) is, or at any rate purports to be, one of the hip new breed of independent news sources providing alternatives to the biases of corporate media. (Of these, the Indymedia operation is probably the most celebrated; the libertarian Antiwar.com is possibly the most useful.)

Truthout's editor, Marc Ash, claims the publication has no organizational affiliations and is entirely reader-supported -- though five staffers, and the server power necessary to support a quarter-million users, don't come cheap. Given its incessant showcasing of Beltway Democrats -- even career hacks like Daschle and Gephardt get flattering headlines whenever they say anything remotely progressive -- I've sometimes wondered whether it's actually a James Carville-style undercover operation, aimed at cajoling Naderites back into the Democratic fold.

(Suggestively, of all the questions I asked Ash about Truthout's history, purpose, and funding, the only one he was willing to answer was whether the publication is connected in some way with the Democratic Party. It is not, he said, and I'll take him at his word -- though I suspect a list of contributors might make interesting reading.)

At any rate, Truthout has frequently attacked the Bush administration for lying about its aggressive global agenda, and has criticized mainstream media for reporting those lies uncritically. Typically, however, an exception is made where Palestine is concerned.

After reading the May 7 number, I was one of many readers who emailed Ash asking for a correction. None was forthcoming. Instead, on the following day all 250,000 readers received an apologia via mass email -- one containing a lie so easily detectable that not even the wildest pro-Sharon propagandists would touch it.

"Yes, Hamas has claimed direct responsibility for this latest act of insanity," Ash wrote. "But do any of you honestly believe this could have happened while the IDF had Arafat under detention? It could not. Did you not notice that while Arafat was 'besieged' and exile was on the table the bombings stopped? Now he is once again a free man and the bombings have resumed."

This, of course, is a very serious charge -- if true, it would lend considerable moral weight to Sharon's claim that the IDF's recent invasion of the West Bank was a defensive operation. But it's wholly false. In fact, at least six suicide bombings took place between March 29, when Israel confined Arafat to his Ramallah compound, and May 1, when he was granted partial liberty.

The truth was easy to check -- it took me about 45 seconds on Yahoo. And it's pretty hard to believe that the editor of a daily newsletter covering international affairs could have been ignorant of the bombings, all of which received banner headlines in the newspapers.

What we have here, in other words, is a prime specimen of The Big Lie. Does it matter? Hell, yes. A lie that remains unchallenged quickly acquires the status of a "fact" which can be cited in service of further slaughter. Moreover, this kind of open contempt for journalistic standards and ethics plays neatly into the hands of traditional media types, who are always looking for reasons to dismiss alternative news sources as rumormongers and conspiracy theorists.

To date, despite repeated requests, Truthout has declined to run a clarification, explanation, or retraction. Says Ash: "I spoke the truth and I am glad."

After all, quoth jesting Pilate, what is truth?

Jacob Levich is an online editor living in Queens, NY.