George Jahn

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George Jahn is (2012) "Bureau Chief, Austria and Eastern Europe at Associated Press" based in Vienna.

Mossad Leaks

Jahn is a recipient of Mossad "leaks" or disinformation. Gareth Porter reports:

The possibility that Mossad killed the wrong Iranian scientist cannot be completely ruled out. But almost immediately after his murder, Israel sought to justify the murder of Rezaeinejad by presenting him as working on the covert nuclear weapons program Israel had been claiming for years. Associated Press correspondent in Vienna George Jahn reported on July 28 that an anonymous official of an anonymous "member state" of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told him Rezaeinejad had been participating in "developing high voltage switches," which he described as "a key component in setting off the explosives needed to trigger a nuclear warhead."
Jahn's anonymous source also gave him the abstract of a professional paper by Rezaeinejad, which Jahn reported "appeared to back that claim." Jahn went on to quote a source he described as a "former UN nuclear inspector," who said the title of the paper would make an "explosive application" of the switch "likely" and suggested that he had co-written professional articles with a specialist on "explosives testing," further confirming that view.
Two months later, on September 19, Jahn and his anonymous source from the unnamed member state were back at it again, this time with a purported "intelligence summary" claiming to identify the researcher who had allegedly collaborated with Rezaeinejad on making a "key component" of a nuclear weapon as Mojtaba Dadashnejad. The alleged collaborator was said to have been playing "a key role at the center of the Iranian nuclear project," according to Jahn...
But an investigation into the Rezaeinejad case reveals that Israel had used the AP's Jahn to carry out a deliberate disinformation campaign about the victim to justify his murder. Rezaeinejad left a record of published research which makes it very clear that he was indeed an electrical engineer, rather than a physicist, and that he had been working on basic electrical power engineering technologies.[1]

Spreading Dangerous Hoax

Glenn Greenwald criticizes the spread of a pernicious hoax about the Iranian nuclear program, a fabrication about its purported nuclear weapons program. This propaganda was meant to complement Benjamin Netanyahu's UN presentation where he posed with a silly drawing showing the near completion of an Iranian bomb. Greenwald writes:

It is, to put it as generously as possibly, completely reckless for AP to present this primitive, error-strewn, thoroughly common graph as secret, powerful evidence of Iran's work toward building a nuclear weapon. Yet from its inflammatory red headline ("AP EXCLUSIVE: GRAPH SUGGESTS IRAN WORKING ON BOMB") to the end of the article, this is exactly what AP did. And it did so by mindlessly repeating the script handed to it by a country which AP acknowledged is seeking to warn the world about the dangers of Iran. This is worse than stenography journalism. It is AP allowing itself, eagerly and gratefully, to be used to put its stamp of credibility on a ridiculous though destructive hoax.
...
As both Shirazi and John Glaser document, the AP writer responsible for this absurdity, George Jahn, has a history of similar behavior. That includes producing an equally hyped and equally absurd report back in May featuring a cartoon-like drawing that, as Jahn put it, "was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran's nuclear program who said it proves the structure exists, despite Tehran's refusal to acknowledge it."[2]

References

  1. Gareth Porter, How Mossad Justified Its Murder of an Innocent Iranian Electrical Engineer, Truthout, 17 March 2012.
  2. Glenn Greenwald, AP's dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation, The Guardian, 29 November 2012.