Let's hope not in fashionable appearances, primarily.
Would you trust 'insider CIA information' from this man?
Posted on 07/09/2003 4:04:00 PM PDT by Doug Thompson
Damn, I hate it when I've been had and I've been had big time.
In 1982, while I was working for Congressman Manuel Lujan of New Mexico, a man came up to a me during a gathering in Albuquerque and introduced himself as Terrance J. Wilkinson. He said he was a security consultant and gave me a business card with his name and just a Los Angeles phone number.
A few weeks later, he called my Washington office and asked to meet for lunch. He seemed to know a lot about the nuclear labs in New Mexico and said he had conducted "security profiles" for both Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs. Lujan served on the committee with oversight on both labs and he offered his services if we ever needed briefings.
We already had nuclear experts on the committee, on loan from the Department of Energy, and we never used Wilkinson for briefings but we kept in touch over the years. He said he had served in Vietnam with Army Special Force, worked for Air America, later for the FBI and as a consultant for the CIA. He said he had helped other Republican members of Congress I called some friends in other GOP offices and they said yes, they knew Terry Wilkinson.
"You can trust him, he's one of the good guys," one chief of staff told me. When I left politics and returned to journalism, Wilkinson became a willing, but always unnamed, source.
Over the last couple of years, Wilkinson served as either a primary or secondary source on a number of stories that have appeared in Capitol Hill Blue regarding intelligence activities. In early stories, I collaborated his information with at least one more source. His information usually proved accurate and, over time, I came to depend on him as a source without additional backup.
On Tuesday, we ran a story headlined "White House admits Bush wrong about Iraqi nukes." For the first time, Wilkinsson said he was willing to go on the record and told a story about being present, as a CIA contract consultant, at two briefings with Bush. He said he was retired now and was fed up and wanted to go public.
"He (Bush) said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," Wilkinson said in our story. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country."
After the story ran, we received a number of emails or phone calls that (1) either claimed Wilkinson was lying or (2) doubted his existence. I quickly dismissed the claims. After all, I had known this guy for 20+ years and had no doubt about his credibility. Some people wanted to talk to him, so I forwarded those requests on to him via email. He didn't answer my emails, which I found odd. I should have listened to a bell that should have been going off in my ear.
Today, a White House source I know and trust said visitor logs don't have any record of anyone named Terrance J. Wilkinson ever being present at a meeting with the President. Then a CIA source I trust said the agency had no record of a contract consultant with that name. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever heard of this guy," my source said.
I tried calling Terry's phone number. I got a recorded message from a wireless phone provider saying the number was no longer in service. I tried a second phone number I had for him. Same result.
Then a friend from the Hill called.
"You've been had," she said. "I know about this guy. He's been around for years, claiming to have been in Special Forces, with the CIA, with NSA. He hasn't worked for any of them and his name is not Terrance Wilkinson."
Both of his phone numbers have Los Angeles area codes but an identity check through Know-X today revealed no record of anyone named Terrance J. Wilkinson ever having lived in LA or surrounding communities.
His email address turns out to be a blind forward to a free email service where anyone can sign up and get an email account. Because it was not one of the usual "free" services like Hotmail, Yahoo or such, I did not recognize it as one (although you'd think that someone like me would have known better).
The bottom line is that someone has been running a con on me for 20 some years and I fell for it like a little old lady in a pigeon drop scheme. I've spent the last two hours going through the database of Capitol Hill Blue stories and removing any that were based on information from Wilkinson (or whoever he is). I've also removed his name, quotes and claims from Tuesday's story about the White House and the uranium claims.
Erasing the stories doesn't erase the fact that we ran articles containing informattion that, given the source, were most likely inaccurate. And it doesn't erase the sad fact that my own arrogance allowed me to be conned.
It will be a long time (and perhaps never) before I trust someone else who comes forward and offers inside information. The next one who does had better be prepared to produce a birth certificate, a driver's license and his grandmother's maiden name.
Any news publication exists on the trust of its readers. Because I depended on a source that was not credible, I violated the trust that the readers of Capitol Hill Blue placed in me.
I was wrong. I am sorry.
© Copyright 2003 by Capitol Hill Blue
To be as kind as possible they are not hinking clearly. Here is a snippet from Thompson's June 19th article, Do Presidents lie? Do their lips move?
Now George W. Bush has his own little scandal about questionable intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, so the operative question on Dubya is “what did he know and when did he ignore it?”
Seems to me that Thompson has been accusing President Bush of lying for quite sometime. Wasn't this article written after his first hissyfit and subseqent so-called apology? In this article he also accuses President Bush of "ignoring what he knew" and that plays right into the disgusting article of yesterday. I think he is Wilkinson.
Gee .. ain't that special
Let's hope not in fashionable appearances, primarily.
Would you trust 'insider CIA information' from this man?
Those types live in the imagined story-book or Hollywood world of what they only fatuously believe to be the reality of the experiences of those who have actually walked-the-walk. For them, I hold a strange admixture of contempt, pity, scorn and wonderment at their chutzpah. For them to be stripped naked of their charade they need only spend a few moments with either the real McCoy or a long-serving vet who knew one of the actual guys or was in a position of observing and thus admired the work of these amazing fellows.
Too many of those brave men have never been recovered, heard from or came home in a body bag to allow frauds to intrude on even the slightest portion of the esteem that is properly set aside solely for them. The exposure and discrediting of the SOB mentioned in your post was too long in coming but was inevitable.
Games People Play
7/10/03 | William McKinley
Posted on 07/10/2003 3:39 PM PDT by William McKinley
Games People Play
By William McKinley
"If I promise you the Moon and the Stars, Would you believe it?
Games people play in the middle of the night" - Alan Parsons Project, "Games People Play"
The recent fiasco experienced by the New York Times over the creative writing exploits of Jayson Blair should have served as a warning to journalists to be careful over the information they publish. A news outfit depends upon its credibility, just as surely as our society depends upon news reporting in order for people to make judgments over their own governance. Yet it appears that some lessons are not easily learned, as was recently demonstrated by some events which are to this moment still unfolding.
Doug Thompson has been involved in journalism for decades. According to his biography, he has won awards for his reporting and his commentary, and he has worked as Press Secretary for a few members of Congress. He runs a news and commentary webzine called Capitol Hill Blue. Chris Betros is the editor of Japan Today, an English Internet news publication based in Tokyo. Both men find themselves in an uncomfortable position for a journalist, where the story becomes partly about them. I can best describe William Rivers Pitt as a propagandist and a left wing agitator. On July 8th, a sequence of events commenced involving all three that demonstrates that in the aftermath of Jayson Blair, the field of journalism still has not immunized itself from the ministrations of charlatans...
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
This statement in and of itself is patently false. As pointed out, Saudi Arabia and Iran share borders with Iraq, making this claim absurd on its face.
Additionally, Iraq's Al-Masoud missile has been proven to have a range in excess of 90 miles, which is long enough to strike a wide range of important strategic targets in Iran and Kuwait, both nations whom Iraq has already invaded, and including the cities of Ahvaz, Khorramshahr, Abadan, Hafr al-Batn, Al Jahra and Kuwait City.
The Al-Masoud has been proven to exist in Iraq's arsenal, but other missile systems have been at issue, including Scud-B systems unaccounted for after Desert Storm, and indigenous missiles Iraq produced, including the Al Hussein, Al Hijarah and Al Abbas systems. During the 1990's, well after Desert Storm, UNSCOM had determined that Iraq had kept several Scud systems and scores of indigenously-produced missiles, but was unable to find and destroy them (call that a literary foreshadowing of things to come). The attacks on Israel during the Gulf War proved conclusively that even inaccurate missiles like the Scud and its derivatives are sufficient to terrorize and intimidate an enemy, if not destroy him.
This statement also ignores the strong possibility that Iraq had secretly acquired Scud parts and Nodong missile components from China and North Korea, respectively. While unproven, the blood trail leading among these countries is about as plain as such things can get.
I do not know Greg Thielmann personally, but based on this and other things I have seen him say, I would not trust a word that comes out of his mouth. He is on somebody else's payroll, I just don't know whose.
As more like him come crawling out of the woodwork, however, the nature of their shadowy paymasters is becoming more distinct.
This was four hours after Thompson's retraction, btw.
I do not disagree with you. I do wonder though about the recent poll numbers. I do not care for polls, but people are using them. According to the media, the polls say that Bush's favorability level is tanking.
Personally, I have an attitude about certain things. I do not like hearing every freaking day that more of our Troops are being murdered in Iraq. I think that there is a softness in security over in Iraq, and that notion is disturbing me greatly.
I have been of the opinion that the current administration has been brilliant in every single endeavor on which they have engaged. I believe that they are going to have a big surprise for their liberal critics. I certainly think it, and I am looking forward to it. The left is being set up, and I could not be more pleased.
That is all well and good in my opinion. My major problem is that American Troops are being assasinated almost regularly with impunity. This is causing me great travail. Bush needs to have his group address this issue and stop it from happening. If they cannot stop the bleeding, then "W's" administration has no future.
That is IMHO a shame, because the alternative to the Bush Administration is something that I do not wish to contemplate!
Bush hasn't declared that the war is over, yet.
It is clear that the DNC is frantically slinging mud wherever it can, and hoping some of it sticks. Rest assured that the Whitehouse knows all about it, and is actively monitoring these efforts a lot more closely than you may think.
In the balance lies the very real possibility of a presidential bid by Hillary Clinton in '04. No one among her supporters nor her detractors buys her "thrice refused the crown" act for a second. If the Democrats get a toehold, she'll make a "surprise" bid in '04. If not, she'll bide her time until '08, when a new Republican candidate must be fielded (hint: it won't be Cheney).
On this topic, and a growing number of other ones, I'm finding myself to be a reluctant tinfoiler. There are some very powerful interests in conflict here, and the arena is global, not just the field of American politics. There is a lot of foreign money and power being thrown into the fray, because the future of the world is being decided as we speak. The currents of history are running strong and swift through our time.
The hidden hand of the Illuminati? I think not. But the very real influence of the undead Marxist revolution now quaintly styling itself as "progressive world socialism" is a far more pernicious and potent threat to free humanity than anything Adam Weishaupt could have possibly dreamed. The spectacle of the propaganda and track record of the Democratic Party being in lockstep with world socialists is all the proof any reasonable mind requires.
For my part, I am one of the often-derided Libertarians of the Free Republic, but I will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Republicans in '04 and for the foreseeable future. Why? Because as the great Benjamin Franklin so aptly put it: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately".
The great beast of Marxism is once again raising its diseased and addled head, and it is poised to strike viciously at the heart of America, with even more devastation than the tragic and seductive poison of the New Deal could wreak. I believe it will claim even more victims in this century than the last, with wars and genocide on scales beyond the darkest imagination.
When this war is joined in earnest -- and that day is not far off -- the middle ground will be a killing field. This is not a time to be demure or sophistic, but to keep the powder of freedom dry.
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