This is a mistaken title attribution, but even with a correction do you think it changes much? Stoltenberg is the civilian leader of NATO and having his support is crucial. Hersh may have been mistaken in the title, but not the person nor their importance.

It actually means a lot. Hersh is basing the entire story off one anonymous source. For such a serious implication, he’s unable to even do due diligence on basic verifiable facts. That buries the lede on how much verification he competently did for his source.

It doesn't really. It's the kind of thing that could slip by fact checkers at plenty of publications and result in a fairly innocuous correction.

A single mistake, maybe. An entire paragraph where every single sentence consists of a separate claim that is either outright wrong or unsupported by any evidence? Well, maybe it is par for the course for modern journalism after all.

I mean, he also claims Stoltenberg collaborated with American intelligence during Vietnam at the tender age of 16 given his birth date and the end of the war. The whole paragraph is just completely wrong.

The US controlled a lot of Social Democratic groups during the Cold War. Remember the European Left was overwhelmingly either Communist or Third Campist Socialists (non-Communist Marxists) in the first decade or two after WWII. Ever since then, the CIA boosted both Atlanticist Soc Dems and New Leftists, the latter perhaps being anti-American on the surface but undermining trade unions and socialist structures.

And now nearly every dumbass Western "progressive" thinks NATO is some holy defensive force and imperialism is somehow only something far lesser powers do.

Moreover, Stoltenberg´s DAD was a pro-NATO Defence and Foreign Minister.

The idea that the CIA recruited a teenager to infiltrate a group of Norwegian activists for throwing rocks at the American embassy is the silliest thing I've ever heard of. If he had been arrested, I'm sure you'd be saying that was proof he cut a deal with the authorities for lenience in his punishment for petty vandalism.

I didn't say the CIA recruited him to infiltrate anything. No one is saying he's a secret agent. I'm just saying it's possible that there is a history of cooperation of some form or another since he was a young activist and through an extraordinary career, which has led him to be "trusted completely since."

I don't believe it because I don't know, but I don't think it's insane to consider or that the existence of a relationship is impossible on face value because he was merely a young activist in the 70s.

Is there any evidence at all of this sort of 'history of cooperation'?

Beyond Hersh's unnamed source, not that I know of. Again I don't believe it disbelieve it. But I don't dismiss it out of hand because it's not enumerated in an NYT article or a wikipedia page.

So what's more likely here:

1. Stoltenberg didn't get arrested because he was the son of a high-ranking government official.

2. He had a secret history of collaboration with American intelligence going back to his teenage days that is only being mentioned now in a single line in a paragraph with several other factual inaccuracies.

Yes, I'm sure the CIA was consulting with a 16-year-old on the Vietnam War in 1975. Very plausible!