thing she did was start to call around to what she describes as the israeli hospitals that have facilities called room 4 facilities, the intake places where people who have been victims of sexual crimes, including assault and rape, where they would be examined and said not a single one of them reported they had any reports of sexual assault or rape on october 7. she started calling around to rape crisis hotlines and described how she -- she describes an intense conversation with the manager of the rape crisis hotline that part of israel where she was dumbfounded when he was saying he did not have any calls reporting any sexual assault or rape. she is saying, how is this possible? then she goes to a therapeutic

center that was established at a former high-end retreat center outside of tel aviv where mostly people from the nova raids where a couple hundred people were killed, a place where people could do alternative medicine, relaxation therapy. she goes there and her characterization was she sensed what she called a conspiracy of silence among the therapists because none of them were telling her, yes, we're treating people who were raped or experienced sexual assault. when she with to the official channels come the places where you would reach out if you're are exploring if there is a pattern, what then happened is she starts to look at who has been interviewed about alleged rapes during the october 7 attack and ends up going and re-interviewing a handful of people who already had made assertions that they witnessed rapes. some of these people had told

varying versions of their stories -- which in itself does not mean they did not witness something. these are people in the midst of an incredibly violent bisson. but more central to that is some of the people that "the new york times" relied on to assert there was a systematic, intentional campaign of rape weaponized by hamas are people who have no forensic or crime scene credentials. these are people who are not legally permitted in israel to determine rape. they relied on these individuals to make this claim that there was a systematic rape regime implemented. some of those people have well-documented track records of promoting very incendiary narratives about atrocities that occurred on october 7 that were for regular -- flagrantly false. what is the most ubiquitous figures that has emerged in israel's narrative that hamas

committed systematic rape is in architecture from new jersey who is living in israel now and is a member of the israeli defense forces unit. she was deployed to prepare women's bodies for burial in the bases of a tech facilities. she has been quoted as saying they saw widespread evidence of rapes and personally witnessed it, but sherry mendez also was quoted by "the daily" as saying a pregnant woman had a fetus cut out of her body and the fetus was beheaded and then the mother was beheaded. this is entirely false. we have gone through all of the official records that israel has put out on people who died that day. there was no pregnant woman killed that day. she also relied on a senior

official -- and ultra-orthodox private rescue organization. it has been exposed by haaretz is one of the promoters of false information and also that they contaminated the crime scenes by moving evidence around the actual professionals -- they also promoted the beheaded babies story. "the new york times," they can't find one who works in the rape crisis centers that are coming forward and saying, yeah, we saw this or have documentation. so they go to people who were known to a promoted false information and then they start relying on their testimony to paint this tapestry, this notion there was systematic rape regime. in the article, they do not ever disclose their key witnesses have serious credibility problems. this is at a minimum we are

looking at a "new york times" piece that failed to inform its readers about severe credibility issues among some of its premier witnesses. amy: i want to go to part of a podcast interview that anat schwartz did on january 3 conducted in hebrew. talking about the difficulties and pressures and reporting the story. >> the standard we have to meet may not be realistic. maybe it won't be this complete big story told from beginning to end, complex come has details and nuances and characters and maybe we are aiming too high. then there was the u.n. woman and the silence and a lot of preoccupation with it. so i said, we are missing momentum. maybe the u.n. is not addressing sexual assault because know how it will come out of the declaration about what happened

there it will no longer be interesting. as some point after one of the rewrites, we said, ok, that's it. i already informed the people in the israeli police were waiting to see what was going on. was "the new york times" not believing there were sexual assaults? i am also an israeli but i also work for "the new york times," so all the time i am in this place between the hammer and the anvil. and because that is anat schwartz said she fell between the hammer and the anvil, which, jeremy, you choose as the title of your piece. talk about the significance of that and the relationship between anat schwartz and the young reporter adam sella. >> another part of this story is that one of the main victims that was featured in this is referred to as the woman in the black dress. her family members are

individuals in the featured photo on the piece. another thing we have learned from israeli researchers is when anat schwartz and adam sella went to a woman that had taken photographs of the woman that day, they told the photographer that it was her duty under israeli to cooperate with "the new york times" and let them have all of her photos. public diplomacy is the meaning of the term. it is the notion that israel should engage in externally focused propaganda in order to win over international audiences, primarily western, united states and powerful countries, to israel's point of view. she is using this term to encourage someone to cooperate with "the new york times" not because the paper is the most important news organization in the world but because it is their duty. which talks about being caught

between the hammer and the anvil, what she is saying she is saying she is, between her duty to be honest and a journalist at her duty to serve the agenda of the israeli state. her partner in this, adam sella, is the nephew of anat schwartz's partner. they are not married. "the new york times" they requested our correction from us because we initially said it was her nephew -- which i think in the context of america and other countries you would say if you are some of his lifetime party would say this is my nephew. they are not blood relatives, fine. we corrected that. my question is, where the corrections in "the new york times was quote please? the paper has grave miscarriage rations of -- mi mischaracterizations of justice. in a moment when israel was intensifying after the break

pause where captives were exchanged, genocidal attacks against the people of gaza. this played a very significant role. the more we learn about this, the more we discovered that reporting tactics that "the new york times" use are certainly not up to the standards that the newspaper claims to be promoting. they will not issue any corrections on what has already been document it to be very problematic sins of commission and omission in this piece. amy: we're going to take a break and come back to this conversation. we are talking to jeremy scahill, senior reporter and correspondent at "the intercept." next up he will be joined by ryan grim, washington, d.c., bureau chief for "the intercept." we want to talk about what is happening now in response to this story and the leak investigation going on and why a podcast based on their story, their own podcast "the daily," did not air. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

♪ [music break] amy: "i'm from here" by amal markus. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are speaking with intercept

reporters jeremy scahill and ryan grim about their exposé into "the new york times" article published at the end of december must've they published another one in january. we asked "the new york times" for a response to your article and the international editor responded -- "ms. schwartz was part of a rigorous reporting and editing process. she made valuable contributions and we saw no evidence of bias in her work. we remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team's investigation. but as we have said, her 'like'' of offensive and opinionated social media posts, predating her work with us, are unacceptable." ryan, if you can respond to this and talk about what is going on internally in "the times" and also talk about this leak investigation going on within the paper of record. >> i her own admission in that interview, she had significant violence. there are two ways to think

about what happened on october 7. the first way is it was a day of extraordinary mayhem and violence. israeli defenses melted away not only did you have several thousand hamas fighters stream across the fence but you also had hundreds of civilians from across. in that context, the idea that would be no sexual assault is not taken seriously by pretty much anyone who understands war and violence. that is one way to think about october 7. the other way is hamas intentionally and systematically designed a kind of strategy of weaponizing rate and sexual violence. that was what anat schwartz and "the new york times" believed going into the investigation. and oftentimes as journalists, we have something we think we're going to be able to prove. we report it out and we can't quite get it. we just don't land of the story. what "the times" it is they

wrote the story anyway. that gets you to "the daily" episode. it comes out in december, landmark pieces get turned into episodes of their flagship podcast "the daily." emelia after the story came out, it started coming under the schism. a lot of the named subjects have enormous credibility problems. that gets pointed out inside "the times" the producers of "the daily" go over the stories for fact checking. the original script produced for that first episode has to be discarded because the producers could not stand behind it. they redrafted a second s cript. it is an interesting podcast episode and something worth exploring. if they had aired that, he

would've raised questions about why they were walking away from the certainty of the original piece. we reported on the machinations inside "the new york times" about this conversation the disputes what was going on. "the new york times" has rather than reviewing the kind of journalism that went into this, they are launching a leak investigation to try to figure out who is talking to us. amy: in february, one of the reporters behind "the new york times" investigation, jeffrey gettleman, spoke at a conference on conflict-related sexual violence hosted by columbia university. he talked about the piece. >> stores about hostages and pretty soon, maybe, i don't know, within the first few days of this attack, we were hearing reports of rape and mutilations of women. we heard right away.

maybe people in this room are never those videos of the female soldiers being taken away in the body of that one woman in the back of a pickup truck half naked. right away it just -- there was always the crimes against women that happened. sadly, because i have experience doing this, i began looking to see what we could find out. i worked with two other colleagues and we interviewed almost 200 people over the course of two months. what we found -- i don't want to even use the word evidence because evidence is almost like a legal term that suggests you're trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court. that is not my role. we all have our roles and mine is to document. amy: i want to get a response to what he is saying. he is talking, by the way, to sheryl sandberg, the former coo of meta.

jeremy scahill, if you can talk about what he sees his role as a reporter? >> this is an astonishing comment from jeffrey gettleman. what is he talking about that it is not the job of journalists to uncover evidence? if you're going to have a headline -- by the way, let me say this, the screams without words headline comes from a source named roz cohen who claims to have witnessed a rape of a woman that he said -- he is a special forces veteran and he has been very adamant that the people who he saw committing this crime were not hamas that they were ordinary people. he has said that in numerous interviews. to have -- he said it was like screams without words. they're using a headline from a person whose testimony undermines the thesis of their blockbuster story. just to put that on the table.

but for government to say it is not the job of journalists to produce evidence when your one essay in the middle of a war were civilians are being starved and killed in an operation under review now by the international court of justice for genocide, if you're going to then make an allegation that hamas limited systematic rape campaign and you say it is not your job to produce evidence, then what is the job of a journalist in a situation like this? honestly, if you read their piece carefully, much of it is innuendo. much of it is based on sources who have either credibility issues or lack of professional credentials to weigh in on these matters. this is a grave situation, what of the most important pieces of journalism that have been produced during this war one of the votes consequential. for the lead reporter who is inexperienced were corresponded to say it is not the job of a "new york times" to produce evidence in an article asserting

hamas systematically raped women ? it is astonishing. astonishing. amy: the prestigious gorge polk award for foreign reporting this year was awarded to the staff of "the new york times." reading in part "for unsurpassed coverage of the war between israel and hamas. times reporters used firsthand accounts to demonstrate how brutal and well planned the hamas attack was." and this article in question "screams without words" was apparently part of the package submitted by "the new york times" that won the award. ryan grim? >> i want to add one thing to what jeremy was saying. it is remarkable that sheryl sandberg was on that panel with jeffrey gettleman because on december 4, and jeremy talked about how this campaign was rolled out, on december 4 sheryl sandberg and the israeli ambassador to the united nations

hosted an event at the u.n. that launched the campaign against the feminist organizations for not standing up and condemning hamas's systematic use of rape. the next day was netanyahu and then biden pot on that campaign. on december 4, sheryl sandberg penned an op-ed in cnn and gave interviews or was quoted in "the new york times" on that same day in an article by jeffrey gettleman and anat schwartz and adam sella. they were all working together on december 4 to launch this campaign. the december fort article in "the new york times" had a softer headline that said open what do we know about the use of sexual violence on october 7?" they reported at the time that israel had enormous amounts of forensic evidence that they were going through that would establish all of the claims they were making.

on december 8 or nine, they quietly corrected that story to say, correction, israel does not have forensic evidence to back up these claims, is relying on eyewitness testimony. anat schwartz priebus the reported they had "tens of thousands of eyewitnesses" that they were going to bring four to make these claims. they frontloaded this campaign with these major claims there was forensic evidence and thousands of witnesses. the final article comes out at the end of the month and to a casual reader, you would come away from reading it saying, well, they proved they made her case. this barbaric terrorist organization did use rape systematically against israeli women and that was used to justify the continuation of the war on gaza. as you said, when "the daily" try to look closely at the

article, they realized they could not stand up the claims that were being made. so inside "the times" you have the extremely intense debate going on. i think leaders at "the times" are used to external criticism of the internal criticism has them on the back foot. amy: even the use of the term "terrorist" within "the new york times" in the stepping back of one of the leading editorial directors? >> there is a light of -- there is a lot of concern particularly among reporters who do work on an international level that there has been a politicization of this war internally with the newsroom that is impacting the coverage. i think it is pretty clear you can see that in some of the journalism and now "the new york times" has ended up walking back to major claim they made and now

saying it may have occurred. that is one of the most significant things we unc