NBC correspondent Richard Engel admitted that in 2012 he and fellow crew who visited Syria to compile a report about the fighting near Damascus and intensification of military forces of Israel and Iran on the borders of states, was kidnapped not by foreign Shiite groups but by someone else.
Engel said that together with his colleagues he was attacked by a group of armed men tried to convince him first that they are representatives of the Shiite military units also fought in Syria from Iran, then that they are loyal to the government of Bashar al-Assad, but later two years after his release, discussing the situation with US intelligence agencies, Angels came to the conclusion that his abductor was the so-called "Free Syrian Army."
Writing that his own investigation began a month ago, and was prompted by questions from the Times, Engel added: "The group that freed us also had ties to the kidnappers."
As previously wrote PRAVDA.Ru, a transitional government of the Syrian opposition, in its ranks "light up" former or current supporters of "Al-Qaeda" and IS, actively supported by the United States, and more recently funded directly by them.
One can only imagine the shrieks of agony and anger that emanated from the Times's Renzo Piano-designed headquarters on Manhattan's West Side as reporters and editors scrambled to rush their long-planned scoop into publishable shape, hours behind NBC and even further behind the Huffington Post's media columnist Michael Calderone, who broke the news of Engel's revision.
The Times essentially seconded Engel's re-reported version but added piquant details, notably that NBC News stuck by the Shiite militia version in the weeks after the kidnapping, even as contrary evidence mounted from U.S. government and other sources.
Read article in Russian on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru
Also read Syria and the West's stupidity