A “Truther” Looks at the Juan Thompson Story – Fired by Greenwald and the Intercept for Making-Up Sources

by Scott Creighton

Glenn Greenwald is a hypocrite? meh

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept, a news organization founded on the publication of the “leaked” “Edward Snowden” files, has fired an African American journalist named Juan Thompson for making-up stories, quotes and sources in his articles. Sound familiar to anyone? According to the Intercept, Juan engaged in a “pattern of deception” relating to several headline stories over the years he worked there. The only thing they didn’t accuse him of was trying to make money off leaked emails from a pretend whistle-blower (How many emails? 50,000? A million? Glenn on the no-fly list? Glenn hanging out in New York? I’m so confused.)

I guess Glenn’s hypocrisy does have a limit. Either that or they had no more fake security slides to sell this week.

Former Intercept reporter Juan Thompson invented quotes, storylines and even sources, Editor-in-Chief Betsy Reed said Tuesday in a note to readers.

Reed wrote that Thompson, who started working at the site in November 2014, engaged in “a pattern of deception,” including creating fake email accounts to impersonate people. Huffington Post

As many of you know, I was declared one of the original “Snowden Truthers” by Salon magazine on June 19, 2013. Along with Naomi Wolf, Jon Rappoport and Webster Tarpley, I was called out for having questions about the legitimacy of the “Edward Snowden” story from the beginning. Digging a little deeper and exposing chinks in the manufactured hero’s story made me some kind of paranoid conspiracy theorist in their eyes.

One of the first conclusions  I came to early on was that “Edward Snowden” was a psyop designed to promote the notion that we had to “have the conversation” about the balance between more security and less personal freedom. As I had pointed out, just before the “Snowden” story broke with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras (both of whom went to work for a billionaire at Intercept) hundreds of major corporations went to Washington in order to push them to pass CISPA which at the time was hailed as the Bill of Rights for the privatized security state or Big Brother as many critics called it.

Thanks to Glenn Greenwald’s fake “Snowden” story-lines, we now have CISPA enacted via the USA Freedom Act and CISA.

Juan Thompson has been fired from the Intercept because, according to them, he made up sources out of whole cloth and invented quotes from some real people whom he had never met.

It seems like Juan’s fabrications usually went to the “stirring up racial discord” side of things, but not always. It also seems he was just a lazy hack who made up stuff to keep from having to do the hard work of reporting.

Back during the Dylann Storm Roof psyop, Juan reported that his cousin told him that Dylann was normal until he started listening to ‘white power music’ (radicalized) and got mad when a girl he was attracted to started dating a black guy (radicalized and racist). According to the Intercept, Scott (“Fiddler On The”?) Roof never existed. Oddly enough, Juan Thompson’s bullshit article is still available on the Intercept website. Go figure. I guess it still serves a purpose as a reference to all those mainstream race-baiting articles out there featuring “Scott Roof” so they couldn’t erase it entirely.

Scott Roof, who identified himself as Dylann Roof’s cousin, told me over the telephone that “Dylann was normal until he started listening to that white power music stuff.”  He also claimed that “he kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked starting dating a black guy two years back.”..

“Dylann liked her,” Scott Roof said. “The black guy got her. He changed. I don’t know if we would be here if not …” Roof then abruptly hung up the phone. Juan Thompson

Problem there is, Scott doesn’t exist.

After speaking with two members of Dylann Roof’s family, The Intercept can no longer stand by the premise of this story. Both individuals said that they do not know of a cousin named Scott Roof. Intercept

There is a series of corrected articles that the Intercept has listed on a notice to their readers from their editor, Betsy Reed.

Retracted:
Retracted: Dylann Roof’s Cousin Claims Love Interest Chose Black Man Over Him

Corrected:
Corrected: Footage of Police Violence Puts Heat on Chicago Officials
Corrected: Black Lives Matter Activists Blocked From Entering Trump Campaign Rally
Corrected: St. Louis Grapples — and Fails to Grapple — With the Matter of Murdered Black Women
Corrected: St. Louis Residents Fight to Keep Spy Agency From Taking Their Homes

Juan would go through the hassle of making up fake names and email addresses for some of his sources in order to keep the Intercept from figuring out what he was doing. But like Betsy says, she should have been diligent and checked his work more closely.

Hard to imagine that is a priority at a website created by the phony “Edward Snowden” psyop and all of those fake “leaked” Power Point slides.

Juan Thompson cited this lack of oversight in his defense along with the notion that he was trying to protect his sources by making up sources (LOL)

He also mentioned his cancer as an excuse. Cancer causes fraud? Cancer makes you lazy? I did not know that. How insensitive of me.

An Intercept spokesman said a paragraph in the letter provided to HuffPost was not included in the original email to Reed. Thompson apparently tweaked the email again when sending it to a CNN reporter.

In the email, Thompson said he is undergoing radiation treatment for testicular cancer in St. Louis, and doesn’t have “access to my notebooks (which I took for most stories) to address these matters.”

“Moreover, after finally looking over the notes sent to me, I must say this: I had a habit of writing drafts of stories, placing the names of ppl I wanted to get quotes from in there, and then going to fetch the quotes,” he wrote in the email to Reed.

Thompson acknowledged being “sloppy,” while suggesting The Intercept should have provided more oversight. “I’m a cub reporter and expected a sustained and competent editor to guide me, something which I never had at your company and something with which The Intercept continues to struggle as everyone in this business knows,” he wrote. Huffington Post

Points for Juan on that one. Yes, most of us journalists out here know there’s not much oversight over at the Intercept when it comes to journalistic integrity. How long did they say “Edward Snowden” managed to hide from everyone including hundreds of reporters in that tiny little area at the Moscow airport? A month? (LOL) Yeah, got it.

What Juan should have said was he wanted to see all the emails between “Edward Snowden”, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in the months leading up to Glenn’s big breaking story of 2013 and if he didn’t get them, he would subpoena them in a wrongful termination lawsuit. That would have shut them up pretty quick. Because you see, if the Intercept was founded on a bunch of lies being written by Glenn Greenwald about a fictional character, then how the hell do they have the right to fire him for doing the exact same thing?

I know at least a couple lawyers who could make a case out of that one.

Hey Juan! Better call Saul. You got a case if you got the balls to take it. My guess is you don’t.

You guys might remember, this isn’t the first time the Intercept lost some employees.

Matt Taibbi and editor John Cook left the business early on citing editorial differences with the ownership and the rest of the staff. I guess they didn’t like making up stories that served the interests of the people and institutions they were supposedly there to expose. Matt never really explained himself. I guess the billionaire’s non-disclosure agreement was iron-clad. Either that or he got some money to keep quiet.

Ultimately, no one here at American Everyman is surprised by these developments.

Someone making up stories at the Intercept that support whatever CISPA pushing/gun-snatching/divide and conquer psyop is taking place at the time?

Not really news in my opinion.

Glenn Greenwald is a hypocrite?

meh

I would say Juan is in a unique position if he wants to take advantage of it. Perhaps he should have “hacked’  the server before leaving like “Snowden” did at the NSA (look up Catch 22 – Snowden spilled his guts) and got all the emails between that character and Greenwald for his defense (blackmail?)

Of course, “Snowden” never did that either, did he?

My bad.

The point is, dishonesty seems to be a core value at the Intercept regardless of what Betsy tries to tell her readers.

Aside from the whole “Snowden” thing, the billionaire oligarch that hired Glenn to sell the fake “leaks” was and is a big supporter of regime change in Ukraine and as many of you know, Glenn was front and center pushing all sorts of lies about that situation not that long ago.

So they have a long sordid history of neo-liberal journalistic activism over there.

The cite was founded on the principle of dishonesty for profit so it’s understandable that one of their young reporters practiced it. It’s their corporate model. Their mission statement. Their guiding light. Juan was simply a manifestation of that principle.

Seems to me, Glenn should have made Juan employee of the month rather than firing him. But that’s just me and I’m a “Snowden Truther” so take it for what it’s worth.

But you’ll never find me lying to my readers to make a stronger point in my work. And that’s a fact. I don’t need to. I don’t do propaganda. I don’t get paid well by a billionaire globalist like Glenn does. Instead, I have integrity and to some of us out here, that’s still the gold standard in this industry.

But I guess that’s what it means to be a truther.

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