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
March 31, 2003) — A former Clinton administration official will share a $1.4 million settlement from a New York nonprofit Internet access company accused of misusing federal grant money from the National Science Foundation.
David Lytel, who served as an adviser to the Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton administration, filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit against NYSERNet in 2000.
Lytel was NYSERNet’s president between April and August of 1998 but was fired when he questioned the handling of a federal grant, said his attorney, Washington, D.C.-based lawyer Bonny Harbinger.
Seems very strange to me.
This has Clintonian scandal written all over it. $1.4 million as a whistleblower? He served FOUR MONTHS in a management position at that company. Direct from the White House to a firm that was misappropriating Federal Grants. Which he then exposed. SURRRRRE!
Lytel got his start in Ithaca, NY. Gadfly TLBSHOW lived in Oneonta, NY. Mere coincidence? LOL!
Any Freepers who say there is no difference between the Clinton and Bush Administrations needs to be ZOTTED from this forum immediately, no matter how long they've been here bitching, whining and not contributing one penny to fund raising campaigns.
I think the Clinton crowd spent every waking second thinking of ways to skim money from the government, donors, foreign lobbyists, and any crook they could find.
I wish I could remember about Lytel's wife. I think she had some connection to something important as well, but my memory is failing me.
Was it a ploy to panic readers of his site so that they would kick in money? Or was it sold but Thompson mistakenly put the new owner's name on the net and so they made him come up with a statement that it wasn't sold after all?
Something fishy about that deal, in my opinion.
That is high praise, and I am honored, especially in light of its source, but I must confess that there are many times I wish I didn't get it.
Facing the reality of our times is something for which I only occasionally have the courage, and I constantly finding myself hoping that my assessment of things is some how terribly wrong. A strange motivation that, but in the stormy times in which we live, any shelter offers more comfort than none at all.
Perhaps this desire or need for shelter from the fury of naked reality underlies the fundamental problems which confront humanity now, but that is a trait we are unlikely to change.
Having waxed poetic on the topic, however, nonetheless leaves the most important question unanswered:
Just what the hell do we do now?
/sarcasm
Have I missed a post which identifies him? Considering the spate of questionable items in this fiasco, I really would like to know.
Thank you for your kind words. I interpret Thielmann's agenda as anything but personal. I believe it is political, and, perhaps more significantly, ideological. While his slams have a jocular nature reminiscent of classic James Carville material, it is the theme underlying his words that almost deafens me when I read his essays.
The people for whom he works have succeeded in doing what the Devil and Keyser Soze of The Usual Suspects fame managed to do: convince the world they do not exist. Even suggesting that they do will have you labeled as a tinfoiler and a paranoid schizo. And yet, as Galileo would put it, "Still, it moves!"
Thielmann is nothing more than a footsoldier in a long, global war. And he is not on the side of America. I feel like an idiot sounding like such an alarmist, but these times are far more dangerous than even those of the height of the Cold War, under whose apocalyptic threat I have lived most of my life.
Too many pieces are coming together, and the picture revealed by the puzzle taking shape isn't a pretty one. If you follow the tendrils up from operatives such as Thielmann, the beast you confront is one whom you would never wish to see in the light of day, or in your darkest dreams.
But I digress. Thielmann and his fellow travelers identify themselves with the words they use. You may know evil by the fruit it bears. Beware. Do not be fooled by their lies, for lies are their weapon of choice, and they are a powerful weapon, indeed.
And the only weapon that is effective against them is the light of truth. Wield the truth without hesitancy, lest we lose it forever.
Melodramatic words, perhaps, but I assure you, appropriate to the mortal, and immortal, threat we face. Again, I feel silly saying it like a character in a novel, but there it is.
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