Gareth Porter

Reprinted from The Grayzone with the author’s permission. 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 … Continue reading “How the Pentagon Failed to Sell Afghan Government’s Bunk ‘Bountygate’ Story to US Intelligence Agencies”

Reprinted from The Grayzone with the author’s permission. The approval by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of a June 19 resolution calling on Iran to comply fully with agency demands for cooperation marks a new stage in the long-running Israeli campaign to isolate Iran over alleged covert nuclear weapons activities. The IAEA has … Continue reading “Israel Leverages Dubious ‘Nuclear Archives’ To Secure New IAEA Demands on Iran”

Reprinted from The Grayzone with the author’s permission. The FBI has publicly justified its suppression of dissenting online views about US foreign policy if a media outlet can be somehow linked to one of its adversaries. The Bureau’s justification followed a series of instances in which Silicon Valley social media platforms banned accounts following consultations … Continue reading “FBI Launches Open Attack on ‘Foreign’ Alternative Media Outlets Challenging US Foreign Policy”

Reprinted from The Grayzone with the author’s permission. The U.S. assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani in January touched off a new wave of disinformation about Soleimani, with Trump administration allies branding him a global terrorist while painting Iran as the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism. Much of the propaganda about Soleimani related … Continue reading “Washington’s Tall Tale of Iranian-Al Qaeda Alliance Based on Questionably Sourced Book, The Exile“

President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling … Continue reading “With Apparently Fabricated Nuclear Documents, Netanyahu Pushed the US Towards War With Iran”

The United States is experiencing an upheaval from the Coronavirus pandemic that is deeper than anything in modern American history, and military and civilian Pentagon elites have responded to it in a way that seems certain to further magnify the broader corrosive impact of the crisis on their enormous power. It has further widened the … Continue reading “Fallout From a Navy Captain’s Heroism: The Possible Emergence of a New Idea of ‘National Security’”

Donald Trump’s failure to act decisively to control the coronavirus pandemic has likely made the Covid-19 pandemic far more lethal than it should have been. But the reasons behind failure to get protective and life-saving equipment like masks and ventilators into the hands of health workers and hospitals run deeper than Trump’s self-centered recklessness. Both … Continue reading “National Security State Left US Defenseless Against Coronavirus”

The administration of President Donald Trump may escape the most recent conflict with Iran without war, however, a dangerous escalation is just over the horizon. And as before, the key factors driving the belligerence are not outraged Iraqi militia leaders or their allies in Iran, but Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Israeli Prime … Continue reading “Pompeo and Netanyahu Paved a Path to War With Iran, and They’re Pushing Trump Again”

For the past three years the new narrative of Russian interference in U.S. elections has bound corporate news media more tightly than ever to the interests of the national security state. And no outlet has pushed that narrative more aggressively – and with more violence to the relevant facts – than The New York Times. … Continue reading “The NYT Insidious Ongoing Disinformation Campaign on Russia and Elections”

The U.S. news media’s coverage of the Iran nuclear issue has been woefully off-kilter for many years. Now, however, those same outlets are contributing to the serious crisis building between Washington and Tehran. Iran has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal by resuming the stockpiling of low enriched uranium, removing the cap … Continue reading “How Corporate Media Are Fueling a New Iran Nuclear Crisis”