Eli Lake

Ken Silverstein, one of Lake's primary critics, has claimed his past sources lacked credibility and been used to manipulate the discourse on national security. Silverstein accused Lake's reporting of supporting the existence of WMDs prior to the invasion of Iraq. Silverstein cited an article that Lake had written in 2006 during the war in Iraq.^[17]

In 2011 at The Daily Beast, Lake reported that the Obama administration sold Israel powerful bunker buster bombs.^[18] In 2012, reporting from Somalia, Lake found a local prison that received Somalis captured by the U.S. Navy and later reported that the United Nations documented U.S. violations of an arms embargo in Somalia to funding some of the regional governments there.^[19][20][21]

In 2011, Silverstein wrote an article for Salon claiming that Lake's reporting on Georgia was biased because pro-Georgian lobbyists had paid for his meals and drinks in the past.^[22] This report was disputed by Ben Smith in Politico.^[23] Silverstein implied that Lake's relationship with these lobbyists influenced his original report of a bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi. That story was confirmed by The New York Times. Both pieces come to the same conclusion that a Russian military intelligence officer was implicated by Georgian and U.S. authorities in the bombing.^[24][25] Lake has publicly stated he has always paid his tab whenever meeting with Georgian sources.^{[importance?][22]}

In August 2013, along with