In Hiding Details of Dubious Deal, U.S. Invokes National Security the NYTimes today reports on how easily the US government was conned out of millions of dollars for software that could supposedly decode secret al-Qaeda messages being transmitted via bar codes in Al-Jazeera broadcasts. You may recall the terror alert of Christmas 2003 when President Bush ordered dozens of trans-atlantic flights to be cancelled and we were told:
A surge in recent terrorism intelligence points to the possibility of a spectacular attack that terrorists abroad "believe will rival or exceed the scope and impact of those we experienced on Sept. 11,'' said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary.
Apparently the December scare was based on a hoax and not even an elaborate hoax. The con man, a heavy gambler with no serious background in computer science, never gave anyone in the CIA, the Air Force, or Special Operations Command his software or explained his algorithms and no one else ever found any secret messages in Al-Jazeera broadcasts. Moreover, despite the fact that this information went right to the top, few people stopped to ask the obvious questions such as why the hell would al-Qaeda do something ridiculous like embed messages in Al-Jazeera broadcasts? Wouldn't, you know, say an email or obscure web page work better?
On a lighter note this sentence in the NYTimes piece caught my eye:
Hints of fraud by Mr. Montgomery, previously raised by Bloomberg Markets and Playboy, provide a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of government contracting.
Playboy?!!! Determined to investigate further, I discovered that the NYTimes is being somewhat duplicitous since Playboy broke the story and provided a lot more than hints. The Playboy story is in fact quite a bit more detailed than the NYTimes gloss (need I warn you, however, that the adverts make it NSFW?).
Are you surprised that Playboy would break such an important story? I was, that is, until I remembered that Playboy has been uncovering fakes for a long time.
Sunday morning yuks from Professor Tabarrok. This blog needs more one-liners.
It makes a lot of sense that publications like Playboy or Rolling Stone that don't rely on official sources for scoops or insider access would have fewer incentives to downplay information that's embarrassing to those same official sources.
Is it any wonder that these idiots couldn't prevent 9/11?
"I remembered that Playboy has been uncovering fakes for a long time."
I suspect the whole post is just a ruse to write that sentence. well done sir.
A once proud paper sinks deeper into irrelevance.
The fringe status of Playboy tends to make it see itself as civil libertarian and political anti-establishmentarian, and gives it less to lose. As a result, it has a long history of printing stories that other mass-circulation publications won't. For example, the article by CIA critic Philip Agee, Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silver's story on the "October Surprise" (the hypothesis that the 1980 Reagan campaign promised arms to Iran's mullahs in return for frustrating President Carter's attempts to free U.S. hostages) and Mark Ames and Yasha Levine's expose of the Tea Party as a Koch funded astroturf movement. Playboy is one of the best sources of inestigative journalism around (and it has other redeeming qualities as well).
I'd read the story in Playboy but unfortunately I would find all the hairless women too depressing
Bill,
That story was basically a follow on to the Playboy piece, and found it difficult to even give that publication as much credit as it was due, as Alex pointed out. The Times is beginning to remind me of nothing more than my local paper that just reprints the stories written by others. Irrelevant, in other words.
Ray, that's what my 10-year old son claimed long ago but he quit reading PlayBoy when he graduated from High School. I hope you have one of those good old pieces to share with us.
Playboy has been uncovering fakes for a long time.
http://instantrimshot.com/
" discovered that the NYTimes is being somewhat duplicitous since Playboy broke the story and provided a lot more than hints"
What, thats redundant… you put NYTimes and duplicitous in the same sentence.
The question is, what did the NYT add? My guess is that a lot of the value added was in terms of respectability–the NYT is probably better about fact-checking than Playboy, and the NYT's reputation means that people who wouldn't have believed it from Playboy (or Rolling Stone, or the Enquirer–all of which have done high-value stories in the last couple years that were picked up by the big boys later) believed it when it appeared in the NYT.
"Determined to investigate further…"
We have an early front-runner for Euphemism of the Year!
Great investigation. MSM is falling further and further behind. We need more publications with the investigative integrity (and publishing cajones) that playboy does.
Comments on this entry are closed.