CNN last week got their hands on a classified document stolen from the National Security Agency. That’s a felony punishable by ten years in prison, by the way.

The stolen document guessed that the efforts by Israel and America to neutralize Iran’s nuclear weapon program had set back the program by only “a few months.”

CNN and the rest of the media cabal could hardly contain their glee. They celebrated the failure of America and Israel.

Hardly mentioned in CNN’s report was that the document itself noted that its conclusions were merely “preliminary” and were expressed with only “low confidence.” 

This week, a more considered report was published by the Institute for Science and International Security (which, ironically, has been going by the acronym ISIS since long before the ISIS terrorists came around).

ISIS – the good one – is a non-partisan think tank and investigatory group. If anything, it might lean a bit to the left, as its financial supporters include left-leaning organizations such as the McArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on ISIS’s findings. (The Journal’s report is behind their paywall here, but you can click into ISIS’s underlying report here.)

ISIS concluded that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been “effectively destroyed.”

That conclusion is supported in their report by extensive review and detailed analysis of the attacks and the videos, aided by intimate knowledge of the layouts of the Iranian facilities and interviews with international inspectors of those facilities.  

In some particulars, the ISIS report shows that the stolen preliminary report as characterized by CNN is simply wrong on the facts about what facilities were attacked, and how.

Apart from CNN, everyone else knows that the Iranian program has been hit very hard. The Israelis concluded that the Israeli and American efforts have set the Iranian program back “many years.” The U.S. Director of National Security, a dove who downplayed Iran’s nuclear ambitions a few months ago, reported yesterday that the Iranian facilities have been “destroyed.” President Trump himself reported last week that the facilities have been “obliterated.”

The head of the CIA said yesterday that Iran’s program had been “severely damaged” and would require “several years” to rebuild. Even the head of the nuclear watchdog at the U.N. – not exactly an Israel fan club – reported that the damage had to be “very significant” in view of the “the explosive payload utilized and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges.” Well, duh.

Meanwhile, Iran has congratulated itself on its “decisive victory.” The Ayatollah proclaimed that Israel has “almost collapsed and been crushed” and America has been delivered “a slap in the face.”

CNN has not gone that far, yet. But as of this writing, the stolen, erroneous NSA preliminary report is still on CNN’s website – with little of the contradictory reports mentioned.  

Why do the media (with the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal in this case) distort or even lie about facts, to make Iran look good and strong and make America look bad and weak?