I read this post - Weinergate: Someone Smarter Than Me: Explain Why This Is Not Possible – at my friend Patterico’s site and I have a question.
Explain to me how I know that a normally rational person hasn’t been kidnapped and had their blog account taken over by conspiracy theorist? I mean – it’s POSSIBLE, isn’t it?
PS – if anyone thinks the theory put forth is possible, just ask and I’ll start naming reasons.
Last Friday June 24th, under pressure from New York Times reporter Jennifer Preston, the CEO of BlogTalkRadio Alan Levy was directly involved in taking one of my BlogTalkRadio shows offline, removing 20 seconds from the show and then putting the edited show back online. The section removed dealt with the mental state of Jenny George, the woman that has been confirmed to have called me on June 19th. The removal of this material was done with some of my assistance but not at my request and the specific material that was edited out was picked by Ms. Preston.
I remain a fan and customer of BlogTalkRadio and don’t hold them responsible for succumbing to pressure from a reporter with one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the world. Nobody asked me not to reveal this information and I hope that my doing so will have no effect on my current or future relationship with BlogTalkRadio or Mr. Levy.
I also have no reason to believe that anyone else at The New York was involved in this decision.
Should any of these facts be called into question, I have some written correspondence and an eyewitness who can confirm this story.
I am friendly with both Patterico & Tommy Christopher but I’ve also been critical of both at points in the #Weinergate story. But there’s a pretty glaring hypocrisy going on in the current reporting that I feel is worth commenting on.
Patterico has really gone after Tommy for being fooled by the Reids, even though Tommy not only talked to someone on the phone but also got IDs. Yes, the IDs turned out to be fake – but that’s certainly not Tommy’s fault.
At the same time, though, Patterico has uncritically posted information from (drum roll) John Reid – this, AFTER the fakery was exposed.
And some of the information is blatantly false – here’s one example…
did you your family initially tell Tommy that Breitbart and Loesch behind getting Bornfree to Manufacture evidence? Do you have evidence or did Nikki lie about that? Or did Tommy misreport this? When did Nikki start/create(date/month year fine)her Twitter accnt?
Comment by az5thdstrct — 6/27/2011 @ 12:16 am
No. This has been mis-reported and is another lie. Marianela told Nikki this lie about Breitbart andDana. Nikki trusted her friend was telling the truth. When Tommy showed Nikki the DM’s betweenMarianela and Mike Stack Nikki was surprised and her emails to Tommy will reveal that. I will releasethose to Patterico. Nikki immediately told Tommy that she NEVER authorized Marianlea to speak forher and also sent a warning to Gennette not to talk to Marianela. Nikki never pushed any story aboutBreitbart or Dana. This was Marianela that was unauthorized to speak to Mike saying she was speakingfor Nikki. I hope this false/misreport will stop being perpetuated. It only serves to stoke misconceptions.If you are in the business of misconceptions, then more power to you. I’m not. We’re not.
Comment by John Reid — 6/27/2011 @ 12:22 am
(emphasis added)
This is totally untrue.
Nikki told Tommy that Breitbart and Dana were trying to get Nikki / Marianela to lie. She said this in DMs from the JohnReid9 account, late Saturday night / early Sunday morning. I have triple checked this with Tommy and got his okay to repeat it. (Adding: and here’s a link to Mediaite discussing it.)
And again note – this happened from the JohnReid9 account; so ‘fake Papa Reid can’t really declare ignorance.
Publishing this sort of lie – totally unchallenged — from a person confirmed to be a fake seems very questionable on Patterico’s part. This is especially true about someone who has been so critical of Tommy.
If it’s bad journalism to publish statements from the Reids BEFORE they are exposed, what is it to publish such information afterwards?
A few people have asked for written info about the call I got from Jenny George on Sunday, June 19th. I’ve discussed this call several times on my BlogTalkRadio shows but haven’t written out the conversation. Listen to July 20th show for my immediate thoughts as I was trying to sort stuff out. I didn’t take written notes during the call. These notes are what I recollect.
I’ve noted things that Ms. George said that were lies in red.
Some people still seem confused about why I believe that Dan Wolfe (middle aged arch conservative who hates Anthony Weiner!) and Nikki Reid (high school student who loves Anthony Weiner!) are the same person. This has never been particularly confusing to me because both — and actually all the sock puppets involved in the story — are after exactly the same thing: information.
This is crucial to understand. The person behind the sock puppets is trading information, specifically information about the former congressman and his love life. The different personas make it much easier to gather information. Gennette Cordova wasn’t opening up to Dan Wolfe but maybe she would talk to Nikki Reid.
But gathering information is only part of what these characters have been doing. The significant and often repeated tactic of all of them – PatriotUSA76, JohnReid9, NikkiReid, MarianelaAlicea and others — is to also quietly spread information behind the scenes. And another clear tactic is to get other real people to help spread this information to the outside world.
Want to know why the Puppet Mistress hasn’t gone away? She’s still playing the information game.
Dan Wolfe and John Reid seem to be the main characters who use this technique. They have been having private conversations, sending e-mails and going out of their way to contact literally dozens of people, all of whom are being used by the Puppet Mistress to post information about Congressman Weiner. Wolfe and Reid have befriended people on the left and right. They befriended people who are bloggers, journalists and just plain bystanders. All of them are being used and manipulated by the person behind Wolfe, Reid and the other characters.
This is exactly how journalist Tommy Christopher got burned — and he actually took precautions to try to make sure he was talking to real people. Most of the people having these clandestine conversations with Wolfe, Reid and the other characters are exchanging information with someone who doesn’t really exist.
Some of the real people are having conversations with these sock puppets would argue that in many cases the puppet has good information.
Well, yes of course — information that they got from other people. That’s the game; you get information from one person and then share it with others behind the scenes.
A simple example of the recent information dumps by John Reid. Much of the “good information” is nothing more than transcripts of conversations that Nikki Reid had with Gennette Cordova. Interestingly, the value of this information only exist because Cordova chose to keep that information private herself. In other words, she created the scarcity. Ironic, no?
But this "information” isn’t actually very useful on its own. It’s used as an entry ticket; a way for these fake personas to get in the good graces of real people…people that will in turn be used to gather other tidbits that will then be passed on behind the scenes to other people.
This clandestine information give-and-take is done with no concern whatsoever for the negative affect that may have on the real people involved. Take PatriotUSA76’s technique of using Mike Stack to Tweet information. Rather than Patriot putting out information himself, he would have Mike Tweet something and then Patriot would often re-Tweet it. This has created a historical narrative that has had grave consequences for Mike Stack. And this is not the only case of a major breakthrough in the story being transmitted from The Puppet Mistress to another person, who in turn put that information out without mentioning that the source was Patriot/Reid.
Anyone communicating behind the scenes with any of these puppets should seriously reconsider the value of what they are doing. Your conversations are the fuel that Patriot / Reid and other characters need to operate. If these information sources are cut off, I think we’ll all find that suddenly these characters have absolutely nothing of value to say.
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