THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

The editor's note addresses the use of technical language in Lawrence's reporting: "The article was indeed fact-checked to ensure that Patrick Lawrence, a regular Nation contributor, accurately reported the VIPS analysis and conclusions, which he did," notes vanden Heuvel. "As part of the editing process, however, we should have made certain that several of the article's conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties. And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims." [...]

Via the magazine's review of the Lawrence piece, it has published pieces from two VIPS groups -- one from the folks on whom Lawrence relied for his hack-debunking piece, and another from a band of dissenters. "A number of VIPS members did not sign this problematic memo because of troubling questions about its conclusions, and others who did sign it have raised key concerns since its publication," reads the piece from the dissenters. They continue: "The implications of this leap-to-conclusions analysis of the VIPS memo--which centers on claiming as an unassailable and immutable fact that the DNC 'hack' was committed by an insider with direct access to the DNC server, who then deliberately doctored data and documents to look like a Russian or Russia-affiliated actor was involved, and therefore no hack occurred (consequently, ipso facto, the Russians did not do it)--are contingent on a fallacy," they write.

As for the VIPS personnel who Lawrence sourced for his column -- they write, in part, "In recent years we have seen 'false-flag' attacks carried out to undergird a political narrative and objective--to blame the Syrian government for chemical attacks, for example. Forensic evidence suggests that this tried-and-tested technique (in this instance, simply pasting in a Russian template with 'telltale signs') may have been used to 'show' that Russia hacked into the DNC computers last June."

There's more! The Nation commissioned its own, independent technical review of the Lawrence piece. Performed by Nathanial Freitas, this document takes tremendous pains to assess the minutiae in Lawrence's story, before reaching this conclusion:

Good-faith efforts to parse the available data to provide insight into the unlawful extraction of documents from the DNC in 2016 are admirable and necessary. All parties, however, must exercise much greater care in separating out statements backed by available digital metadata from thoughtful insights and educated guesses. Walking nontechnical readers down any narrative path that cannot be directly supported by evidence must be avoided. At this point, given the limited available data, certainty about only a very small number of things can be achieved. [...]

The soft-glove treatment of Russian President Vladimir Putin is a specialty of Stephen F. Cohen, a Nation contributing editor and the husband of vanden Heuvel. In a February piece, Cohen wrote of the intelligence community's assessment: "A summary of these 'facts' was presented in a declassified report released by the 'intelligence community' and widely discussed in January," wrote Cohen. "Though it quickly became axiomatic proof for Trump's political and media enemies, almost nothing in the report is persuasive. About half are 'assessments' based on surmised motivations, not factual evidence of an actual Kremlin operation on Trump's behalf." The column was essentially a harbinger of Lawrence's story: "Indeed, the group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity believes that the DNC documents were not hacked but rather leaked by an insider," wrote Cohen.

There's an inventory of Cohen's views on Russia on the Nation's site; it's a series in which he summarizes his discussions with radio host John Batchelor. He refers to himself in these summaries in the third person (much like the Erik Wemple Blog), as in this passage reacting to a new set of Russia sanctions: "Pointless and recklessly irresponsible new sanctions recently adopted almost unanimously by Congress against Russia are, as Cohen has long argued, evidence that the new Cold War is more dangerous than was its 40-year predecessor. Still worse, the sanctions, inspired more by unverified 'Russiagate' allegations against Trump than by anything Moscow has actually done recently, further prevent him from seeking cooperation instead of conflict with the Kremlin, as previous presidents did and indeed as President Trump has tried to do. "He writes them up as if they were dispatches," said vanden Heuvel about Cohen's radio write-ups. "They find their audience."

A charitable approach to Russia colors the Nation's review of the Lawrence piece. As opposed to actually weighing the evidence carefully and reaching a firm conclusion, the Nation has opted to assign more homework to its readers. [...]

Nationites long frustrated by the magazine's Russia tilt are unlikely to find satisfaction in vanden Heuvel's response. "This article was flat-out wrong and a tremendous disservice to honest discourse," says contributor editor Bob Dreyfuss. "The review by Nathan Freitas says that the article simply doesn't prove what it says it proves." A full retraction, says Dreyfuss, is in order.

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