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KURT EICHENWALD kurtewald@mac.com Re: Emails to Newsweek October 17, 2016 at 12:51 PM William Moran wm87@georgetown.edu Wait…I dropped a word in my last email. When I say “I wouldn’t wast time on New Republic” it was supposed to say “I wouldn’t waste time on applying for” — I mean do apply soon, because the job is great and it will disappear fast. On Oct 17, 2016, at 12:49 PM, William Moran <wm87@georgetown.edu> wrote:
I will check back within an hour or two On Monday, October 17, 2016, KURT EICHENWALD <kurtewald@mac.com> wrote:
One last friendly piece of advice: I wouldn’t waste time on the New Republic job. You’re qualified for it and these jobs disappear fast.
On Oct 17, 2016, at 12:38 PM, William Moran <wm87@georgetown.edu> wrote:
I read your email. I will think about what you wrote and check back in soon. Thank you.
On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 1:03 PM, KURT EICHENWALD <kurtewald@mac.com> wrote:
I give up.
Ok, this is my last communication on this. From here on out, it will be with Newsweek’s lawyer. William, I will start off by saying that as I promised, I took you at your word that the events were as you described and reached out to The New Republic on your behalf. They have a political reporter’s job open. But at this point, I can’t attest to your wisdom anymore nor do I completely trust you. So I’m washing my hands of being a go-between with the New Republic. I would urge you to apply for the job yourself. If you want to be in Washington journalism, coming out of the New Republic is a lot more credible than coming out of Sputnik which, based on what Western governments are doing today with RT (described below) might not be around in the near future.
Until now, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and try to protect you from your determination to commit an act of permanent career suicide. But you seem more dedicated to clearing the name of Sputnik — which is the only thing mentioned in the story — than yourself, who was NOT mentioned in the story. In fact, for the benefit of Sputnik, you want to announce to the world that YOU snagged anonymous propaganda off the internet and published it as fact. In other words, you seem willing to destroy your reputation by publicly identifying yourself as someone who performed an incredibly incompetent act, pay a lawyer to prove it, and accomplish nothing other than insure you will never work in journalism again. And again, as I told you, this will just circle around to force me to disclose that the original source of all this was a Russian disinformation campaign. I have been trying to protect you from yourself on the belief that you could be telling the truth. I will go down what I told you one more time. Based on all of what I am about to say, I will show you at the bottom what I can write into the story. If this is what you want me to say, I will. But first:
1. Sputnik is a Russian news agency controlled by the government. Whether you choose to accept that or not, as I told you, it was cited as such by the Director of National Security, along with RT. Perhaps you did not notice, but the British today shut down the bank accounts of RT because of this designation, which are the financial transfer point for its english language operations. Sputnik is probably next. But if you wish to go to court and argue that the DNI is wrong, feel free. Everyone who works at a Russian controlled entity is not told about it — this is spy craft, not rumor mill.
2. As I told you, the reporting I have from the intelligence community is that the original snipped document came out of a Russian social media feed. It was propaganda. There is now a full trace-down going on spreading out to the connections.
3. That you picked up a Russian-based distribution and put it into a Kremlin controlled publication, which is exactly the path followed by Russian disinformation campaigns, is undeniable.
4. The story deemed the publication as an act of incompetence by Sputnik. Taking the Russian feed off the internet — even if, as you say, you did not know what it was — and printing it is an act of incompetence. I did not cite you as the one who performed the act of incompetence. It is you who wants to step forward and say you were the one who took unattributed anonymous stuff off of the internet and printed it. In terms of damage to your reputation, which is the standard under the laws you are citing, it is YOU who will be doing the damage, since at no point was your name mentioned. If you wish to argue in a court that publishing unattributed, anonymous and false snippets off of the internet is not cause for termination, you can do so.
5. Somehow you seem to believe that the references to Putin and the Russians meant — and that everyone would believe — that Putin himself was sitting at a keyboard typing. A Russian-government controlled news agency is the Russians. Just like the Voice of America is the Americans.
6 Let’s take the relevant paragraphs one at a time from what I have to remind you is an opinion column: Page 1 of 5
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6. Let s take the relevant paragraphs one at a time, from what I have to remind you is an opinion column: "I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin —and, somehow, Donald Trump—seems to believe. And that should raise concerns not only about Moscow’s attempts to manipulate this election but also about how Trump came to push Russian disinformation to American voters.” As I told you, the info came out from Russian disinformation campaign, I am not saying Putin himself did it, and there is a russian effort to manipulate the election.
The third paragraph:
The latest emerged thanks to the incompetence of Sputnik—the Russian online news and radio service established by the government-controlled news agency Rossiya Segodnya—which took words written by me and attributed them to Blumenthal.
This is indisputable. Printing the false information - no matter how you claim it was done — was incompetent. If you wish to argue that it is you who performed the incompetent act, that is your choice and I will publish it, using the paragraph I have near the end of this email.
But the Russians had faked it all, taking a real document released by WikiLeaks and altering it to create a bogus story Again this is fact, whether you wish to say the faking took place at Sputnik or from the document feed. A classified report submitted last summer to the congressional intelligence committees and a September 23 letter from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence specifically identify Sputnik as a central participant in a Russian disinformation campaign designed to use hacking and other techniques to interfere with the American election while strengthening Moscow’s global influence.
Again this is fact Because of its important role in the Russian effort, Sputnik does not simply publish whatever it chooses, the government official tells Newsweek. Articles pertaining to politics in the United States and Europe require high-level review. It is not clear if Russian authorities conduct that review, the official says, but no article directly related to American politics would just be sloppily thrown into public view without careful consideration.
Here is your sole argument. You are saying, no, the article was thrown into public view without careful consideration — by you. This does not change what I was told.
American officials have recently been predicting that manipulated documents would soon be appearing in outlets like Sputnik, Page 2 of 5
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documents would soon be appearing in outlets like Sputnik, which, until now, has been a source of some real records.
Again this is fact “Altering stolen documents and introducing them to the public is not the stuff of spy movies. It is a proven tactic of Russian intelligence, and we expect it will happen here.” Again this is fact. Your best argument against this statement from national security experts is “I fell for it” when no one else in journalism anywhere in the world did.
Other altered documents have already been the basis of articles on Sputnik, the government official with knowledge of the intelligence agencies’ inquiries tells Newsweek Again this is fact You wrote: In an email titled "The Truth" from Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the adviser writing to undisclosed recipients said that "one important point that has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable" in what may turn out to be the big October surprise from the WikiLeaks release of emails from the account of Clinton Campaign Chair John Pedestal.
Again this is fact. You are saying, "I wrote “october surprise” based on an anonymous piece of manipulated information floating around the internet with provenance I did not know." In other words, your argument is, “Not only did I do something that violated every journalistic rule, but then I pushed it far beyond what the document actually said.” This false story was reported only by the Russian-controlled agency (a reference appeared in a Turkish publication, but it was nothing but a link to the Sputnik article).
Again this is fact Now, there is one alternative here. I can write:
“William Moran, the writer for Sputnik, said he based his article not on directives from the Russian government but on an anonymous tweet that used a clip of the image of the document. He said he accepted the anonymous tweeter’s description that this was from Blumenthal, and did so because he was rushed. However, as the government official with knowledge of the intelligence inquiry said, the original altered document that was tweeted onto the internet came from a location that has been identified as being connected to the Russian disinformation campaigns, and only the news outlet controlled by the Russian government published an article based on it.” That’s all I can say. Are you telling the truth? I have no idea. But you seem so eager to destroy your reputation forever, I doubt it more every day. You are even willing to shut down opportunities for other jobs by declaring yourself as having made an incompetent mistake merely so you can say Sputnik is not controlled by the Russian government, which the DNI has publicly said it is. My choices are, you are a fool who I am trying to protect or you are lying. From the first moment you contacted me, what I have been doing is trying to protect you from wrecking any chance you have of ever obtaining a job in journalism again by avoiding having you publicly state that you fished anonymous propaganda off of the internet and published it as fact. Had you not done so, you would not have been fired. If you wish to say that the Page 3 of 5
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publication of your act is what led to your termination, it makes no difference. Had you not performed the act, there would have been nothing to write about.
So, tell me what to do: I will write the above statement into the article if that is what you want. The only reason I haven’t is because I want to believe you are telling the truth, and did not want to destroy your ability to get another job by identifying you as the person who made a gargantuan error that reflects terrible journalistic practices merely so you could clear Sputnik’s name. Or you can go forward yourself, announce this, destroy your reputation, and I will be compelled to print the above paragraph.
Ms. McKimmie — if your client is telling the truth, please urge him not to force me to print that paragraph, something that will destroy his reputation forever. But if everyone insists, I will do it.
Best, Kurt
On Oct 17, 2016, at 9:56 AM, William Moran <wm87@georgetown.edu> wrote:
Dear Miss McKimmie and Mr. Eichenwald, I intend on proceeding forward in the public about things that I know beyond equivocation to be true -- that I was the sole writer and editor at the DC Bureau for Sputnik on Columbus Day, that I made an honest mistake, smoked a cigarette, and pulled the story 19 minutes later without having received any phone calls or other transmissions from Mr. Eichenwald spurring that decision. Also, that I am not Vladimir Putin as this is precisely what Mr. Eichenwald's article implied... I am actually a random 29-year-old American journalist who grew up in Arizona.
Mr. Eichenwald, I considered much of what you said -- some of which when I replayed in my head (the visa story, the "file", and the question about me making foreign phone calls could be perceived as a threat of sorts mixed into a broader tapestry of a conversation with a variety of mixed motivations that I am not sure you have even come to grips with -wanting to help, but wanting the story to go away, wanting to warn but also wanting to intimidate. I have not decided, but in a response piece I likely will not get into that second paragraph. That puts memory versus memory and I don't think it is fair to cast somebody in their most negative light.
My greatest desire is not to attack you or make you experience any amount of the stress that I have over the past week, but rather to have the record be correct. That's my biggest instance.
I have not decided, but I imagine such a piece will have some qualifying statement to say that I don't accuse Mr. Eichenwald of malpractice in his initial reporting despite such an obscenely incorrect end point -- at least to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if you had a source that is normally reliable who told you something wrong. That is simply what happens during times of hysteria.
I am sure that I will be attacked and vilified -- if not by you certainly somebody else -- by taking this harder road. This situation may very well -- in fact, I bet it will -- ruin my life. I have considered that reality and your words, Mr. Eichenwald, but a harsh reality does not make fact out of fiction. People deserve to know the truth -- which is neither good nor bad, just not hysterical.
You may ask why I would do this for an outlet --I am, frankly, not doing I for the outlet at all. My colleagues have been blistered with claims of treason, physical threats, and pictures of dead children sent to them. These are just ordinary reporters living in fear.
There are a lot of good journalists working in good faith for these outlets. The broader question of foreign news outlets, even with local staff, is a good one for society to have, but one that again does not require vilification, assuming bad faith, and hysteria.
Further, I have gone through hell in the past week and the result of it was a report that you should have known was outside of bounds and to which you were informed of the true story, but refused inclusion of.
Conversely, a CORRECTION can be made to the story. It would make my life considerably easier and you could control the PR surrounding it. That would be a good thing because it would be a pursuit in furtherance of the truth. I will likely be sending a piece this afternoon or tomorrow morning so time in this regard is precious. You would then also be in a position to control whether it takes the form of an apology or simply that new information was learned subsequent to the initial reporting of your article and that inevitably sometimes sources are wrong and when new, conflicting facts are learned they are reported to further the public interest.
If you pursue that latter route and should need to confirm my identity I would be happy to visit with you to further that end
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If you pursue that latter route and should need to confirm my identity I would be happy to visit with you to further that end. Miss McKimmie, my attorney will contact you on Friday to follow up on this matter in the event that hat I am forced to go heavily into the public to correct the record. I thank you both for your time. Respectfully, William Moran II (208)242-8413
-Kurt Eichenwald Senior Writer Newsweek Contributing Editor VANITY FAIR 914-552-2588
-Kurt Eichenwald Senior Writer Newsweek Contributing Editor VANITY FAIR 914-552-2588
-Kurt Eichenwald Senior Writer Newsweek Contributing Editor VANITY FAIR 914-552-2588
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