Well, this is quite the interesting development. Remember in 2012, Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller tried to take down Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) by claiming he was involved with prostitutes? And how he tried to shop the story around, and almost no reputable media organization would touch it?
So the story fell apart after one of the prostitutes admitted she was paid to lie about it, and Tucker suddenly went silent with any updates.
Now, over a year later, the Washington Post has a bombshell update.
In a letter sent to Justice Department officials, the senator’s attorney asserts that the plot was timed to derail the political rise of Menendez (D-N.J.), one of Washington’s most ardent critics of the Castro regime. At the time, Menendez was running for reelection and was preparing to assume the powerful chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
According to a former U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of government intelligence, the CIA had obtained credible evidence, including Internet protocol addresses, linking Cuban agents to the prostitution claims and to efforts to plant the story in U.S. and Latin American media.
....
According to the former U.S. official familiar with the intelligence, the information suggested that Cuban operatives worked through business allies and lawyers in the Dominican Republic to create the fictitious tipster.
The former official said the U.S. intelligence community obtained information showing that Cuban operatives allegedly attempted to lend credence to the timeline of the prostitution allegations by tracking flights on Melgen’s private plane that Menendez made for visits to the elite Casa de Campo resort, where the eye doctor has a home.
And what does ultimate asshole Tucker Carlson have to say about this?
Tucker Carlson, editor in chief of the Daily Caller, said in a phone interview that it would be a major shock to him if the Cuban government spooled out a story that his reporters ran with — but that it’s also a hard claim for him to verify.
“I really can’t assess it without more information,” Carlson said. “It’s bizarre on its face, but also fascinating.”
Fascinating isn't quite the word I would use. More like "made-up bullshit".
Also, read what Dave Weigel had to say about how none of the irresponsible "journalists" involved ever suffered any repercussions for their "reporting".
It's a remarkable story of blunders and hubris, and here's the kicker -- no one has suffered any repurcussions. Last night, I tweeted the last lines of Martosko's final story, and he tweeted back at me with a question: "Shall we go through your catalog next?" In a subsequent tweet, he clarified that he was talking about my 2010 resignation from The Washington Post over crude e-mails I'd sent to a private journalist/writer listserv. In his mind, running multiple false stories that may have been planted by Cuban intelligence was no different then being caught sending crude e-mails. Resigning and apologizing for a mistake? No different then being suckered by sources, putting a bunch of possible libel online, taking a new job, and never returning to the story.
Credit to the people who pushed this story in the first place. They needed to flog it to people who would run it without reservation, and whose readership would believe anything.
Update: More
Weigel, on the
why:
But on the way out the door, it's worth considering what the Cubans—if they were behind the story, as Menendez and investigators now think—hoped to get out of the operation.
....
In November 2012, when the Daily Caller ran its first story on the anonymous prostitutes who claimed to have serviced Menendez, the senator was being re-elected to a full term. He was next in line to run the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if two things happened—if his party held the Senate, and if John Kerry became secretary of state. Jackpot, jackpot.
All of a sudden, the top Democrat on Foreign Relations was a Cuban-American with a deeply felt and idiosyncratic support for continuing the embargo on the Castros' state. Next in line were California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who had called the embargo "deeply foolish." But really, any Democrat would be less resolute on the embargo than Menendez.
So basically, Cuba policy.