Washington Post can’t stop faking the news: U.S. electrical grid “penetration” story a complete fabrication

In a desperate effort to discredit Donald Trump and create mass hysteria across America’s gullible left, the Washington Post has, for the last several months, deliberately engaged in a shameless campaign of fabricating fake news stories.

Even as each story is proven to be based on pure fiction, the Washington Post rolls out yet more fake stories to try to justify their previous fake stories. The latest example of that came on Friday, when the WashPost completely fabricated another delusional paranoia episode in a story that claimed “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say.” Click here for the current version of that story (which has already been radically altered from the original story).

Fanning the flames of delusional paranoia even higher, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy “…took the rhetoric to a whole new level by asserting a diabolical Russian plot to shut down the U.S. electrical grid in the middle of winter…a move that would most certainly kill off half the state’s population in an instant,” reports Zero Hedge.

Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept adds this observation:

The article went on and on in that vein, with all the standard tactics used by the U.S. media for such stories: quoting anonymous national security officials, reviewing past acts of Russian treachery, and drawing the scariest possible conclusions (“’The question remains: Are they in other systems and what was the intent?’ a U.S. official said”).

The media reactions, as Alex Pfeiffer documents, were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations of Putin’s menacing evil.

Reuters even picked up on the story, reporting the same false narrative the Washington Post fabricated, claiming: “A malware code associated with Russian hackers has reportedly been detected within the system of a Vermont electric utility.”

The problem with all this? The Washington Post’s original story was completely fabricated.

The Washington Post made it all up

They made it up. This is how the Washington Post now engages in “journalism.” As Zero Hedge explains:

Alas, there was just one minor problem, namely that the entire article was completely fabricated.  Apparently the esteemed “journalists” of the Washington Post didn’t even bother to contact the Burlington Electric Department to confirm their bogus story…and why should they…it fit the “Russian hacking” narrative so perfectly therefore it must be true, right?

Well, apparently not.  The quick spread of WaPo’s “fake news” story forced the Burlington Electric Department to issue a clarifying statement assuring worried residents that, indeed, their electricity grid had not been hacked, but rather a single “laptop not connected” to the grid had been found to have a malware virus.

In other words, the electric grid wasn’t “penetrated” by Russian hackers. What really happened is that somebody found a virus on a laptop.

Yeah, that’s it. And the virus they found can be downloaded by anyone. It’s not a super secret Russian spy virus. It’s just a readily available off-the-shelf virus on a regular laptop that wasn’t even connected to the grid.

Washington Post alters headline, adds editor’s note admitting the entire story was bogus

Caught in yet another totally fabricated lie, the Washington Post began to backpedal on its original story. It also added this editor’s note:

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.

In other words, the Washington Post just “made s##t up” and called it “news.”

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept immediately ripped the WashPost for getting caught yet again completely fabricating false news:

There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all its computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.

Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so Burlington Electric had to issue its own statement to the Burlington Free Press, which debunked the Post’s central claim (emphasis in original): “We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization’s grid systems.”

So the key scary claim of the Post story — that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid — was false. All the alarmist tough-guy statements issued by political officials who believed the Post’s claim were based on fiction.

Even worse, there is zero evidence that Russian hackers were even responsible for the implanting of this malware on this single laptop. The fact that malware is “Russian-made” does not mean that only Russians can use it; indeed, like a lot of malware, it can be purchased (as Jeffrey Carr has pointed out in the DNC hacking context, assuming that Russian-made malware must have been used by Russians is as irrational as finding a Russian-made Kalishnikov AKM rifle at a crime scene and assuming the killer must be Russian).

As the actual truth emerged once the utility company issued its statement, the Post rushed to fix its embarrassment, beginning by dramatically changing its headline.

The Washington Post now exists as a propaganda fiction rag that routinely fabricates delusional scare stories as click bait

The Washington Post is now officially a “click bait” rag. The “journalism” conducted by the paper is laughable and insulting to any intelligent person. They didn’t even bother to call the Burlington power company to confirm anything before running their fabricated scare story that dredged up fictional “facts” out of thin air.

The WashPost did do us one big favor in all this, however: It demonstrated yet again how mainstream media publishers are the kings of “fake news.”

This isn’t a one-time thing, either: The WashPost keeps getting caught again and again, knowingly and deliberately fabricating false news to scare America half to death. I’ve dubbed this practice “journo-terrorism,” and in an article describing journo-terrorism, I explain the real agenda of the Washington Post, NYT and CNN:

Their job in the leftist ecosystem of psychological warfare is to unleash vast fields of mental landmines that innocent American stumble into, setting them off and blasting apart their cognitive constructs. Once the old belief systems are eliminated, new beliefs are inserted through “info-doctrination” — i.e. repeated, daily news streams consisting of fear and lies that create “trigger conditions” in the minds of those being hypnotized.

It’s fascinating that planting actual land mines on battlefields is often considered a “crime against humanity,” but when journo-terrorists plant cognitive land mines across the psychological battlefield of America, it’s all “fact checked” into reality by Politifact, Snopes or the Washington Post. Suddenly the land mines are perfectly acceptable to the leftists. It is these land minds that are right now responsible for the massive psychological trauma being experienced by the crying, wailing leftists whose brains have been shattered by journo-terrorism from MSNBC, CNN, the NYT, the LA Times and so on.

That’s why I continue to call for the prosecution of anti-American journo-terrorists who are deliberately working to subvert America through the spreading of bogus, fabricated propaganda that’s knowingly created to harm America’s interests and terrorize its citizens.

We must stop the psychological terrorism being carried out by radical left-wing journo-terrorists

Journo-terrorism is psychological warfare, and it is being deliberately carried out every single day at the Washington Post, NYT, CNN, MSNBC and other “fake news” media outlets. These acts of journo-terrorism pose a grave danger to the American psyche and are deliberately pursued to undermine our Republic through the spreading of false fear.

These acts of journo-terrorism by the Washington Post are not mistakes. They are deliberate. They are premeditated. They are scripted with an intended purpose… and that purpose is rooted in subversion and the ginning up of baseless hysteria for political aims.

Free speech aside, the Washington Post is now knowingly yelling “fire” in a crowded room… even when there’s no fire. They’ve gone far beyond anything resembling “free speech” and have solidly become subversive enemies of the American people. Let us hope the new administration will do something to stop them before they are able to carry out more damaging propaganda campaigns against the American psyche.