Before she moved on to CNN, Natasha Bertrand worked as a reporter for Politico. At Politico Bertrand served as the deep state intermediary and mouthpiece for the Dirty 51 former members of the intelligence community who sought to kill the New York Post’s Biden laptop stories in the service of the 2020 Biden presidential campaign (at the specific request of Antony Blinken). What a rotten crew.
Bertrand’s October 2020 Politico story “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” We cited Bertrand and her story — and not in a flattering light — some 25 times in posts that are compiled here.
When I saw Bertrand’s name on the CNN story reporting the low-confidence DIA assessment of the effectuality of our strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, I applied a 100 percent discount to its substance. Bertrand had been called back to service by her friends in the deep state to undermine Trump in a shining moment of victory. Bertrand’s CNN story might have been good for a flashback, but is otherwise worthless. The companion New York Times story under the bylines of six reporters is more of the same. Happy days are here again!
The White House itself has now collected a set of assessments (with links) in “Experts Agree: Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated.” Apart from members of the administration, the White House list includes an impressive set of sources with knowledgeable assessments of Operation Midnight Hammer.
Miranda Devine refers to several of these more reliable assessments of the operation in her column “Trump derangement syndrome drives deep-state leakers, CNN to treasonous lengths to deny prez a victory.” Kimberly Strassel does likewise in her weekly Wall Street Journal Potomac Watch column “https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-bombs-the-leak-machine-strike-on-iran-nuclear-facility-cnn-report-ae8e892d”>Trump bombs the leak machine.”
Adam Kredo adds an interesting footnote in the Free Beacon story “Classified Report That Suggested Iranian Nuclear Program Still Intact Likely Relied on Faulty Info From Iranian Sources, Former Intel Officers Say.” Anyone seriously interested in a fair assessment of where we are now can’t do better than David Albright and Spencer Faragasso’s Post-Attack Assessment of the First 12 Days of Israeli and U.S. Strikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities.” Highly recommended.
