Zachary Young was a security contractor in 2021 when Joe Biden ordered all Americans to leave Afghanistan. He undertook several missions to save two dozen women from falling into the hands of the Taliban after media companies contracted with him to rescue them.
There was nothing illegitimate about what Young did. It was not illegal. But several media outlets included his efforts to rescue the women as examples of "smuggling" and "black market profiteering."
The reporting by CNN nearly destroyed his life. For that, Young sued the network and won a handsome defamation settlement.
But CNN wasn't the only outlet that ran stories naming Young specifically as someone who was profiting from evacuating civilians. Young has since sued the Associated Press, Puck, and now U.S. News and World Report, for framing what he did in rescuing women from Afghanistan as "black market" or illegal.
In an op-ed for the Daily Mail published in February, Young explained the effect on his life that CNN's deliberate lies cost him.
On Jake Tapper's show 'The Lead', CNN's chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt falsely reported that contractors like myself were charging 'exorbitant fees' and exploiting Afghans who were fleeing for their lives.
My picture was flashed across the TV screen as a CNN graphic suggested that I was part of some abominable 'black market' world that preyed on the vulnerable. But I was the only person mentioned by name in Marquardt's report.
'According to Afghans and activists we've spoke with,' Marquardt told Tapper, 'desperate Afghans are now being exploited' and compelled to pay 'impossible' sums.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Young was contracted by Amazon, Bloomberg, and other media companies to rescue civilians from a war zone. This was Young's business, something he took great pride in. He was shocked and sickened by CNN's inference that he was engaged in some kind of illegal or exploitative activity.
One CNN senior director of standards testified that he had approved a 'three-quarters true' story. It was also revealed that editors in internal CNN communications admitted that the piece was 'full of holes,' 'incomplete' and '80 percent emotion, 20 percent obscured fact.'
But none of that mattered to staff that gleefully derided me – in their private messages.
Marquardt even texted a CNN producer saying, 'I'm going to nail that Zachary Young motherf****r.'
The producer texted back: 'I'm going to hold you to that, cowboy.'
The CNN suit was a course in media laziness, stupidity, and bias, and the extraordinarily cruel revelation that the network admitted they didn't care if their reporting hurt Young. After suing AP and Puck for the way they framed their hit pieces on him, Young is now suing U.S. News and World Report for republishing the AP report and refusing to issue a satisfactory retraction.
AP media reporter David Bauder wrote that "Young’s business helped smuggle people out of Afghanistan" when covering the CNN trial. After U.S. News ran the story, Young contracted them to point out that he wasn't "smuggling" anybody and didn't break the law. They issued a milquetoast retraction, and for that, Young sued in a Florida court.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Bay County, Florida which has been obtained by Fox News Digital, Young’s lawyer, Daniel Lustig, wrote that U.S. News & World Report’s retraction didn’t go "far enough," and his client gave the outlet a chance to correct the mistake before a lawsuit was filed.
"We gave U.S. News every opportunity to do the right thing — to correct what was clearly false, to make it right by correcting and acknowledging what smuggling means. They had already issued a retraction, but it didn’t go far enough. It was not a full retraction, and it was not a fair one. Words matter. The word they used meant something serious, and they knew it," Lustig wrote.
Once Young objected to the AP accusing him of smuggling people, U.S. News & World Report removed its pickup of the story and chalked it up to a "possible misunderstanding."
Young doesn't know why CNN and other outlets went after him so viciously. He theorizes that as the withdrawal from Afghanistan proved to be botched and Americans were uselessly killed in a terrorist attack, the media was desperate to try and deflect blame from Joe Biden, choosing Young as a substitute target.
It's as good an explanation as any.
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