There's a massive difference between making a claim and backing it with overwhelming evidence. Wikileaks did the latter with regard the Afghan war. There was a massive smear of Assange anyway so even here people seriously say things like he's doing propaganda for russia with zero evidence backing that but with the clear implication that you don't need to take account of the overwhelming evidence presented. And he published un-filtered source so you aren't viewing through any lens! Still the smear worked! That success cost about 1.5 trillion dollars, countless lives and is astoundingly immoral.

But yeah, that's the next go to smear that you're identifying there. Can't make "Bernie or Tulsi works for putin" stick because it's false? Go with he's anti-semitic. It's nuts.

I think we've got to hold anti-semitism smears without evidence backing them in about the same regard as disparaging people for being Jewish. Both are actually promotion of anti-semitism. When anti-semitism is a go-to smear it loses meaning and the real thing, the vile thing, the thing that is actually violent and dangerous that must be opposed draws strength far more so than some hideous human goose stepping in the ugliest fancy dress, for example.

Maybe you should look at individual claims about the CIA and what evidence supports them before deciding if an individual claim is justified or garbage.

Pompeo has said the leakers of the yahoo story should be jailed. Not something you say if there isn't rather a lot of truth behind it. Isikoff isn't known for being friendly to russia in his reporting. He's recanted much of it now but was pushing the Trump is compromised by Putin line based on the ridiculous Steele dossier. May have been first cab off the rank there, I don't recall.

Something else that surprised the hell out of me recently was that the FBI never saw the Democrat party servers claimed to have been hacked by Russia. Only private contractors saw the evidence, contractors hired by the same crook-lawyer who fabricated the Trump has a private server connected to alpha bank insanity. Everyone has been repeating the democrats were hacked by the russkies and wikileaks published it with very, very scant evidence in support of it.

It'd be easy to weave conspiracy theories about it but waiting for more evidence to hold people to account is fine. And maybe I'm getting conspiracy minded in my old age because I'm not completely convinced that Epstein committed suicide either, I'd like more evidence for that before accepting it as fact as well. Has anyone actually asked Bill Gates about his story that he hung out with Epstein because Epstein had access to donors? Like "Who on this planet can you not get a meeting with given you're the richest guy in the world for the past 2? 3? decades? Seriously who can Epstein introduce you to who won't take your phone call Bill?" [1] Why has no interviewer asked him that? Why hasn't the media reporting on Bill's excuses for hanging with Epstein pointed out that this question is unanswered whenever they write about it? It just doesn't seem like quality journalism does it?

[1] There may be a good answer. Bill may have done nothing at all wrong. It's just hard to understand how it makes sense and needs further explanation at the minimum.