Now, as the week went by, various developments occurred. Drudge had picked up the story from the newspaper and Mims’s account. It quickly spread and resulted in an extreme outcry of hostility and included an interview from the FBI. Partial transcripts finally came out and there is nothing to support the most egregious accusation (of course, there is nothing to contradict it either). As I said, “Because of this, and because of the nature of the accusation, we feel forced to conclude that Mims’s report is premised on a terrible misunderstanding and misjudgment” and “Although there was independent evidence that supported this interpretation at the time, hindsight tells us that we should have demanded much stronger evidence given the nature of the accusations.”
Now, I do not think Mims’s report of the speech is a lie nor do I think he is a liar. Pianka’s speech was clearly an ideological diatribe and I think it would be easy for people who didn’t subscribe to such ideology to misinterpret it. But in the end, this is a classic story of the accused vs. the accuser. Given the serious nature of the accusation (the FBI doesn’t interview people over trivial accusations), I simply think that stronger evidence is required as the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused. We were not eyewitnesses and we cannot, as outsiders, and in good conscience, continue to speculate about what was and was not said in that speech