Falsely Defending 'Intelligence Summit'
Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 27 WorldNetDaily article by Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa Lappen asserts that allegations that Michael Cherney (misspelled here as "Cheney"), the "industrial magnate and Israeli philanthropist" who helped fund the "intelligence summit" featuring Bill Tierney's interpretation of tapes featuring Saddam Hussein, has ties to the "Russian Mafiya" have been "already disproved and dismissed." The only evidence presented to support the claim is a link to a Jan. 11 FrontPageMag article -- also written by Ehrenfeld and Lappen -- purporting to make that case. But Ehrenfeld and Lappen fall short here too, with claims such as "Over the next several years, courts, law enforcement agencies and even Interpol exonerated Cherney of all rumored illegal activities across Europe and Israel" unsupported by any actual evidence to back them up and alleged "massive official documentation proving Cherney’s innocence" not specifically cited.

The FrontPageMag article also notes that Cherney was to receive "the first Distinguished Service Award granted by the Intelligence Summit." As National Review's Byron York noted, Cherney's organization, the Michael Cherney Foundation, is listed as the Summit's only "Platinum Sponsor," meaning Cherney contributed at least $100,000 to the event. So essentially, he was paying to give himself an award, a fact unnoted by Ehrenfeld and Lappen.

The writers also claim that the "intelligence community" was "attempting to discredit this conference." Yet conference participants have engaged in credibility-damaging behavior, such as Tierney's claim that God has helped him find purported weapons sides in Iraq, as we've noted and even conservatives such as NR's York also pointed out.

This, incidentally, is the first mention of Tierney and the "intelligence summit" in a WND article.

UPDATE: This info has been added to our article on Tierney.