Greenwald is claiming that Eichenwald is reporting that the emails leaked by Wikileaks are fake. In repititions of this claim he either refers to Eichenwald's article directly[0] or indirectly by linking to a tweet that mentions it. Greenwald's claim is a lie. Eichenwald never says that the emails are fake. Read the article. Greenwald certainly did. If you actually read the article in Newsweek you will learn that "manipulates" means that the Russians distorted the meaning and content of the documents in their propaganda, and Trump repeated the identical distortions nearly simultaneously. In fact, Eichenwald's story only makes sense if the Wikileaks version is unaltered, and this is implicit in his reporting.

[0]http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hil...

Thanks for the very reasonable and persuasive response. Based on Eichenwald's original version of the article (as linked by 'nostrademons' https://web.archive.org/web/20161010235349/http://www.newswe...), it does look like Greenwald was wrong, and that Eichenwald was instead claiming that the leaked documents were unaltered but intentionally being used in a misleading manner by taking quotes out of context.

This isn't in itself proof that Greenwald was lying, since this requires additional knowledge of his internal mental processes, but it leaves open the possibility. I still think the phrasing in Eichenwald's tweet implies alteration, but with knowledge of the specifics of the article I agree that it can be interpreted differently.

But as 'nostrademons' points out, the current version of the article reads differently. I'll switch to a Dec 1 archive.org link in case it changes again: http://web.archive.org/web/20161201141729/http://www.newswee....

This version starts with a photo caption that includes the words "faked document". It's been changed to include the words "altered documents" multiple times. While couched in a hypothetical, it explicitly says "the Russian effort to quote an altered email". I feel certain that that the new version has been written in a manner that encourages the reader to conclude that leaked emails may have been altered and should not be considered authentic.

I don't know if these changes were made by Eichenwald or by someone else at Newsweek, but I think the post-publication changes strengthen rather than weaken Greenwald's overall claim that there as a strong media narrative to discredit the authenticity of the leaked Podesta emails. While the original article seems accurate, I find the changes that were made to it to be substantial, disingenuous, and worrisome. I'd be very interested to know how these changes came about.

I had the same question as you and skimmed Eichenwald's article. He claims that his own words were attributed to someone else (Blumenthal) in these manipulated leaks, and subsequently parroted by trump. He had written a long article about Benghazi, and the email leak takes Blumenthal's quotation of that out of context, misattributing it.

It checks out, and at least on that point Eichenwald seems to be closer to the truth than Greenwald is (Greenwald hardly has anything to say in his own article about the details of the Eichenwald situation, only name-drops and sneers). It looks like this is Greenwald raising his hackles because he perceives his work with wikileaks to be under attack from Eichenwaldl.

Eichenwald's article is significantly rewritten from when it first came out, and you're probably not reading the version Greenwald was responding to:

First publication: Oct 10, 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20161010235349/http://www.newswe...

Today: http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hil...

Differences start around paragraph 6.

It's not "significantly rewritten". Some details were added and clarified. Most relevant is the fact that the most recent version, and all other versions (I read them all) make it completely clear that Eichenwald has no reason to think, and does not say, that the emails as leaked by Wikileaks are fake. So Greenwald is still lying, no matter which version you are looking at.

How Orwellian.