Dave posted yesterday about Richard Silverstein’s embarrassing climb down over his unfounded and frankly ridiculous claims about the Prisoner X debacle.
The New York Times’s Israel correspondent, Jodi Rudoren, filed her report on this story and it ran in the New York Times. In this she mentions Richard’s false claims that Prisoner X was Iranian. This is what she wrote specifically about Richard Silverstein:
Richard Silverstein, an American blogger, claimed in 2010 that Prisoner X was Ali-Reza Asgari, a former general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and a government minister, who had previously been reported to have defected to Israel and cooperated with Western intelligence agencies. On Tuesday, Mr. Silverstein acknowledged his error, saying his source apparently was part of “a ruse designed to throw the media off the scent of the real story.”
On her Facebook page I asked the following:
Brian of London: Quoting Richard Silverstein’s retraction devalues your piece. As we have proved repeatedly at Israellycool, Silverstein will believe ANYTHING he is fed with zero verification IF it matches his anti Israel agenda.
As we have conclusively proved he is utterly incapable of any independent verification of facts, has been wrong many, many times and continued courtship from the likes of your organ just makes you look stupid because, frankly, he couldn’t look any dumber.
To which she has now replied with the following pretty clear denunciation of Richard Silverstein. It’s clear the only thing she was doing was highlighting the lies and misinformation that he managed to spread.
Jodi Rudoren: To Brian John Thomas and others who have questioned my inclusion of Richard Silverstein’s reporting. I didn’t quote him as an authority, but simply referred to him because of his role in the development of the news story. Until yesterday, some people thought the prisoner was Iranian, which was based on his report. We needed to say that, and then of course needed to say he had acknowledged he was wrong. Including this does not indicate some kind of endorsement of his writing or viewpoints.
This is a spectacular public acknowledgement of the dangerous quality of Richard Silverstein’s proclivity to rush to repeat any lies he is fed by any anonymous source if he thinks they will damage Israel.
Let us hope it signals an end to all main stream media using him as a source of authority on anything more than what he ate for his breakfast.
