As the media-deep state Russia Hoax unravels, two journalists deserve special attention: Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball. Isikoff, now chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, was the first to break the story that the FBI was investigating Carter Page. Hosenball, now a correspondent with Reuters, was first to break the story that candidate Donald Trump was being advised, as the Reuters headline tells us, “By Ex-U.S. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn–Who Favors Closer Russia Ties.” The “closer ties” that worry me, however, are those between America’s intelligence community (IC) and reporters like these two.
I first met Isikoff and Hosenball in Newsweek’s cramped Washington office in 2003. I was there promoting a book I had just coauthored with James Sanders on TWA Flight 800, the 747 that blew up off the south coast of Long Island in July 1996. I knew Isikoff largely through his reporting on the Lewinsky affair. Hosenball I knew for his role, witting or otherwise, as the CIA’s chief propagandist in the TWA 800 investigation.
In the way of background, in November 1997 the FBI showed a CIA-produced animation to discredit the hundreds of credible eyewitnesses to a missile strike on the aircraft. Hosenball fell hard for the CIA video. Under his byline, Newsweek ran a fully affirmative, nine-frame, full-color recreation captioned with the unlikely boast, “CIA Photos.”
Against the Left: A Ro...
Best Price: $2.84
Buy New $8.00
(as of 01:17 UTC - Details)
Hosenball assured his readers that what the witnesses really saw was not a missile but the fuselage of the burning, climbing plane rocketing upwards some three-thousand-plus feet after the fuel tank exploded. The CIA analysts convinced Hosenball that “infrared images captured by spy satellites” showed this preposterous scenario during the plane’s last 49 seconds.
This revelation may have come as news to the FBI. The bureau’s comprehensive summary issued just a week before Hosenball’s article did not once mention the word “satellite.” In a letter to then-congressman John Kasich two months after the press conference, the CIA quietly buried the subject: “No satellite imagery of the disaster exists.” Then as now, evidence only had to sound real to attract willing journalists. Had Hosenball been on the CIA payroll he could not have done more to legitimize the agency’s crude rewrite of history.
My goal in meeting with Isikoff and Hosenball was not to make enemies but to make converts. Unfortunately, I had no success.
When I wrote an article about this unpleasant encounter, I described Hosenball as British. My publicist and I took his nationality for granted given his accent. In his response, Hosenball mocked me for being careless with my facts. He was an American.
Yes, he was. What I did not know at the time was that Hosenball moved to England when he was 17 to attend school. After spending a year in England and three in Ireland, Hosenball moved back to England to become a reporter. This information comes from a 1977 British appeals court document explaining why the United Kingdom chose to deport the 25-year-old Hosenball “in the interests of national security.”
“The Secretary of State believes that Mr Hosenball is a danger to this country. So much so that his presence here is unwelcome and he can no longer be permitted to stay,” reads the document. Reportedly, Hosenball was “one of a group of people who are trying to obtain information of a very sensitive character about our security arrangements.” The document does not identify on whose behalf Hosenball was allegedly spying, but it affirms the government’s decision to deport him nonetheless.
