Postscript: student lied about federal agents
A postscript on my entry about the student who said federal agents visited him about a book he had on Mao. (See my entry under Big Brother). Apparently the student concerned was lying. I just found another independent source which stated the following:
"There were too many inconsistencies and he threw up roadblocks every time I tried to pin him down and have him give me an independent means to confirm something ... plus, he embellished the story," making it more and more complicated and making it harder and harder to confirm information. Mr Nicodemus spoke with his editors, and we suspected that the student was lying. We decided to hold the story so we could do some more checking. The next day, as the student's story began to ravel, the student admitted to his professors that he had made the whole thing up. He ducked our reporter's attempts to reach him. "
Still, it is a cautionary tale on both sides - not to believe everything you read, but also to be aware of what can happen. It is enough that Bush authorised the monitoring of phone calls and emails of Americans contacting anyone in a foreign country. That, in itself, is an outrage, and one of my online contacts stopped contacting me a while ago, fearing this would happen.
