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Walter Pincus

The Washington Post reporter who, in John Kiriakou's account of the Gary Webb affair, took the CIA's side of the cocaine story and put it on the paper's front page — wrong, and Kiriakou believes knowingly so.

Walter Pincus appears in John Kiriakou’s account of the destruction of Gary Webb as the specific mechanism by which the CIA’s denial reached print.

Describing how the Washington Post and the New York Times responded to Dark Alliance, Kiriakou says the two papers “essentially said on their front pages that Gary Webb had made the entire story up”, and names the reporter: “Walter pinkus an esteemed reporter for the Washington Post got the side of the CIA and put that on the very front page of the Washington Post saying that none of this was true this was just an anti- CIA uh tie raade and that nobody should pay any attention to it.”[1]

His judgement follows immediately, and distinguishes error from complicity: “well Pinkus was wrong Pinkus probably knew he was wrong but published anyway the bottom line here is that both the Washington Post and the New York Times leapt as quickly as they could to the defense of the CIA.”[2]

See also

References

  1. John Kiriakou, 2025-03-1207:56 on YouTube · Transcript
  2. John Kiriakou, 2025-03-1208:28 on YouTube · Transcript

Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.