Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon details a congressional investigation into potential shenanigans involving the Iranian nuclear agreement.
A member of the House Intelligence Committee has launched a probe into whether a leading architect of the campaign to sell the Iran nuclear agreement last summer coordinated with the White House to mislead the media and the American public, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The inquiry is part of a larger effort by lawmakers to discern the origins of a shadow campaign that top White House officials admitted to running in order to enlist journalists and experts to boost support for the agreement.
The latest probe, launched by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), centers on Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a left-leaning foundation that quietly bankrolled a core part of the White House’s campaign to sell the nuclear agreement.
Cirincione visited the White House almost 30 times in the past few years during the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, prompting Pompeo to launch a wide-ranging probe into Ploughshares’ efforts to slant reporting on the Iran deal, according to a copy of that inquiry obtained by the Free Beacon.
Ploughshares has been engulfed in controversy since the Free Beacon and other media outlets exposed its efforts to fund media organizations that provided favorable coverage of the Iran deal, including National Public Radio. The organization also held strategy sessions with White House officials to force support for the deal in Congress.
New information from the Pompeo inquiry shows that Cirincione downplayed his ties to the White House’s pro-Iran efforts to create the impression that he was a neutral foreign policy observer. Cirincione did several interviews at NPR and other outlets boosting the nuclear deal, and billed himself as a top source for reporters seeking information about the administration’s diplomacy.
