A well-placed source in Lebanon sent me this. The source is in a position to know but I can't reveal more on it. But I want to add this: Mitch is more than welcome to respond to this and I would be willing to post his response in full. Here it goes:
"Mitchell Prothero's latest story on paintballing with Hezbollah has
been blown out of proportion and its time to speak out. Prothero is a self
proclaimed expert on Hezbollah, and he believes he is an expert on Jihadist
insurgent movements in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he has been living in the
region for almost 8 years and doesn’t speak the language. How can an expert be
called an expert on anything if he doesn’t understand the spoken language of the
subject he is specialized in? Prothero is unique in his reputation of [here he talks about Mitch's work at the National but I deleted that reference]. He had a fixer who
used to do all his street work, or as its known "investigative journalism," then
Prothero spiced up the quotes his fixer got him. Prothero almost never left his
office, and when he did he took make the rare trip to the South of Lebanon it
was driving around with his sectarian driver who hated Shiites. That’s how he
considers himself to be an expert on Hezbollah by driving into the South every
once in a while.
On to the Paintball Story.
Prothero knows a man from Dahyeh. He likes to call him D, but we
will keep this man’s identity hidden for now. In the future we might expose D’s
true identity. D is basically a thug who got deported from the US and continued
being a thug here in Dahyeh. Prothero met him once on the street in Daheyeh. D
saw in Prothero a stupid "Ajnabi" [foreigner] similar to a walking bag of money, and you
know the rest. D used to live in Atlanta, Georgia, and he was sent back to
Lebanon (this as well we might expose in the future). D is the type of Lebanese
man who will sell any rumor or news about sectarian tension, Hezbollah news, or
expected clashes to Prothero for a price. Prothero should mention how much money
he had to pay D to set up this Paintball game, or should we refer to him as
Prothero did in his made up story: “Ali, one of my lower-level contacts within
the group”. But who are the rest of his higher contacts or other contacts in the
group? None.
The alleged Paintball game with Hezbollah was all set up by D who is
not a member of Hezbollah and has nothing to do with the party/resistance. D,
just like any other person who lives in Daheyeh knows people in the Hezbollah
and in the Amal movement. What D did is use some dollars from Prothero and
recruit some of his neighborhood friends, to play a free unlimited shooting game
of paintball, at the cost of pretending to be Hezbollah fighters. Imagine a
fighter from the resistance called Coco! An expert on Hezbollah will never buy
into this; a ten years old child from Lebanon will never buy this story. Ask
Prothero why this story was not published since 3 years the time it was done?
Why would such an out of the ordinary story take three years to get published in
the west and only in Vice magazine?
Why would Hezbollah would play with and expose their fighting
tactics with a journalist who publicly calls them a terrorist organization
(Torino bar in Gemayzeh witnessed the Prothero's bigotry).
How come Prothero who doesn’t speak a word of Arabic infiltrated the
ranks of Hezbollah’s fighters and convinced them to join him and a bunch of
white journalists: one of them used to serve in the invading American Army?
Prothero thinks that any man in Daheyeh is a Hezbollah fighter.
PS: If Prothero was such a journalist how come he missed the whole
Arab spring? Maybe because of his reputation among editors that he makes things
up, who knows what other stories were made up.
We still have so much more on Mitchell and his Dahyeh fixer D!"
