Our Bombshell on India’s Assassination Program — and the Story Behind the Green New Deal

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We posted a new excerpt from “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution” exploring the way the Green New Deal came together. The bizarre right-wing distortion campaign around my book relied heavily on the climate parts of it, so we figured we’d just publish that and let people read it. Perhaps stung a bit by my criticism (ha), Fox News has since published another story based on my book that is shockingly faithful to the actual reporting in the book itself. Here is Fox’s writeup of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first interaction with the Democratic Party’s hesitant, turtle-in-its-shell approach to abortion politics. No complaints on that one.

If you’ve already gotten the book, please leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon or whatever independent platform you normally do that sort of thing. And if you haven’t finished your holiday shopping, what better stocking stuffer than a book? We also published Part 2 of the audio version on Deconstructed.

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At The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain and I published an explosive new report today that, for the first time, directly implicates the Indian government, based on Indian government documents, in the global assassination program against Sikh dissidents. The murders and attempted killings have stirred intense controversy between India, Canada, and the United States. An April 2023 memo we obtained, sent by India’s Foreign Ministry to operatives in North America orders a “sophisticated crackdown scheme” in coordination with the nation’s intelligence agencies.

The memo lists several people to be targeted, along with a slew of dissident groups, associated with Sikh separatism. “Concrete measures shall be adopted to hold the suspects accountable,” the memo orders ominously.

Two months later, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who appears in the memo we obtained, was assassinated in Canada — a hit the Canadian government blamed on Indian assets. More recently, a New York-based leader of one of the organizations named in the memo was targeted in an assassination attempt, but it was foiled because India accidentally tried to hire a DEA informant to do the killing, according to an unsealed Justice Department indictment.

After our story was published, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs flatly denied the existence of the memo in the following preposterous statement:

In response to media queries on reports of MEA “secret memo” in April 2023, the Official Spokesperson, Shri Arindam Bagchi said:

“We strongly assert that such reports are fake and completely fabricated. There is no such memo.

This is part of a sustained disinformation campaign against India. The outlet in question is known for propagating fake narratives peddled by Pakistani intelligence. The posts of the authors confirm this linkage.

Those who amplify such fake news only do so at the cost of their own credibility.”

Just last week, following a slew of critical stories about India’s rival Pakistan, the Pakistani security services accused us of being in the pay of the Indian security services. That we work for their rival intelligence agency is the first thing India and Pakistan have agreed on since partition. Although it’s hard to square both claims being true at the same time.

In any event, Baaz News, an outlet for the Sikh diaspora, subsequently published a document that supports our reporting and makes a mockery of the Indian government denial.

Our full story is here.