27 April 2014, 10:33 AM IST
Those of you who've been following the crisis in the Ukraine closely will know that the Obama administration has been threatening an armed intervention on behalf of the Ukraine nationals against the alleged Russian military presence in the area. While Russia and the US are going back and forth denying each others' allegations of fabricating stories as an excuse to establish their respective military presence in the area, this is one instance of undisputed fabrication that has come to light.
On April 20, the New York Times published an article titled Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia which stated that photographs from eastern Ukraine proved that the 'green men' (referring to the gunmen who had seized Ukrainian government sites) were actually Russian military and intelligence forces.
The article highlighted that
- The photos were endorsed by the Obama administration
- Ukraine's state security service had identified one of the men in the photographs to be one Igor Ivanovich Strelkov - an operative with the Russian military intelligence who'd been in Georgia in 2008 was also in these photos taken in Ukraine in 2014
These are the photos they published with the article; in the print version, they were black & white.
You'll note that the resolution of these images is not very good, but enough apparently for the US State Department. Their spokeswoman Jen Psaki put out a statement saying "There has been broad unity in the international community about the connection between Russia and some of the armed militants in eastern Ukraine, and the photos presented by the Ukrainians last week only further confirm this, which is why US officials have continued to make that case."
Now, any photos that form the basis (or even a small part of it) for a 'broad unity' in a belief that can result in economic sanctions and/or armed intervention would definitely have been verified and studied with all the technological and professional prowess at the disposal of the US State Department - or so you would expect. On the contrary, in this case, it appears the images published were actually re-sampled to a lower resolution.
The truth came out a day after the article was published when clear high resolution versions of these same photos (you can see them here, here, here and here) were found online and the error went viral on communities like Reddit.
At this point, other news networks started looking into the veracity of these images independently (something that the US State Department and the New York Times should have done). The BBC noted that "In the 2014 photos, the man's greying beard appears to be black, while in Georgia six years ago, the slimmer-looking man shown has a reddish beard."
It further observed that the Russian Special Forces patches on the men's uniforms (which the New York Times cited as proof of identity) "can be bought on the Internet for less than $5."
While this raises a lot of questions on the New York Times' credibility, what's more disturbing is the manner in which they decided to craft and publish the article. Instead of scrutiny, they went ahead and contextualized it as evidence - possibly to be the first in a race to get the news out first.
Now, here's where it gets interesting.
The following day, at a press briefing, Ms. Psaki was questioned by journalists on the veracity of these photos. Here's some excerpts from the briefing. (You can read the whole manuscript on the US State Department's site)
QUESTION: How strong is the case, do you think, that these photographs make?
MS. PSAKI: Well, we've stated the case pretty strongly publicly before these photos were out there, before we were talking about them, in terms of our belief that there's a strong connection between Russia and the armed militants that we've seen in eastern Ukraine and Crimea and other places. So this is more just further photographic evidence of that.
QUESTION: Right. But I mean, how certain are you that these photographs show people, individuals who are – who have links to Russia, who were involved in Georgia in 2008 and now are involved in Ukraine in 2014?
MS. PSAKI: Well, what we're – what we see in the photos that have been, again, in international media, on Twitter, and publicly available, is that there are individuals who visibly appear to be tied to Russia. We've said that publicly a countless number of times. I will let you all draw the conclusions yourself as to whether these are individuals who look similar or not to other events.
QUESTION: Right. But you keep calling it evidence.
MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: Do you think that this is evidence that would stand up in a court of law?
MS. PSAKI: I don't think it's a legal – we're not making a court of law case here. We're just showing that this is photographic evidence that indicates the connection we've been talking about for weeks now.
This raises a few other doubts - mainly about why Washington would give the New York Times photographs that they knew were not 'evidence'.
One theory is that they knew the Times would print it without further scrutiny and Washington would score propaganda points and have a 'legitimate' excuse to denounce Russia. A second theory suggests that the Times knew these weren't really evidence, but was working with the government to further a political agenda. Both are disturbing.
This, by the way, is the second time that the US has been caught in a hoax in as many weeks. Two weeks back, in Geneva, Secretary of State Kerry spoke strongly against the Nazi leaflets that demanded Jews in Ukraine register - which also turned out to be a hoax.
So, that's two US fails in a row. Now what?
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