No, the other way around. They were all set to get it in at a high level into the military, when some pesky medical lower ranking officer said, hey, doesn't this need FDA approval? Theranos tried to squelch that, but to no avail.
Absolutely. However, they give 0 attribution to their baseless assertions. I follow Theranos enough where neither of these statements are so obviously common knowledge that they don't need to reference something at least in passing.
"But things didn't shake out that way. A military regulatory expert contacted the FDA with concerns about Theranos' technology without telling the company first, stalling the project and prompting Holmes to reach out to Mattis for help.
"I would very much appreciate your help in getting this information corrected with the regulatory agencies," Holmes wrote in an email to Mattis, saying that since the "misinformation came from within DOD, it would be "invaluable" to have the information "formally corrected by the right people in the DOD."
Really? I don't know these reporters, but I know ones of similar caliber, and they are very, very hard to use. They are of the "if your mother says she loves you, check it out" school of reporting. So in that spirit, could you provide your evidence that the reporters were used? And also explain by whom, and why these military VIPs didn't just have the DOJ go after Theranos directly?
I imagine a chain of events something like this:
1) Some shady anonymous source (someone incentivized to see Theranos fail) provides them with some hints.
2) Being good journalists, they follow up and find that something sketchy is going on at Theranos, enough for a whole series of good stories.
3) At this point, even if the original anonymous source was using them, they've put together their own story. What are they going to do, kill it to avoid helping some third party by printing the truth?
Evidence? That is a very serious charge, and I feel sure you would not just shoot your mouth off with an accusation that would destroy the careers of people and cause damage to our military and country unless you had strong, incontrovertible evidence.
