Blog Whodunits
By Charles Bird Posted in Elections — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I just love a good mystery, and Eric Scheie at Classical Values has almost too much fun (starting here and following up here) tracking down the identity of oft-quoted George Harleigh, said to be a retired political science professor from Southern Illinois University. Problem is, there is no evidence that the man exists. The "reporter" who used Mr. Harleigh as a source is Doug Thompson from Capitol Hill Blue. Interestingly, Thompson has been furiously trying to wipe all references of Harleigh from his website, but there remain caches where Harleigh's name still lives.
Thompson was chumped three years ago by an "intelligence consultant" source (Terrance J. Wilkinson) who allegedly had close ties to the CIA. As a result, his explosive story on Bush and uranium fizzled. Looks like Thompson still hasn't learned his lesson. I have a hazy recollection of Thompson back in the late 1990s when I was reading freerepublic. He struck me as somewhere on the Buchanan-Raimondo-Rockwell axis (which would be an odd axis), but I could be mistaken.
Today's other mystery (which Moe touched on earlier) involves the five sock puppets (allegedly) who were haunting Glenn Greenwald's two IP addresses. Ace, Patterico (follow-up here), Dan Riehl and Jeff Goldstein found characters such as Ellison, Wilson, Thomas Ellers, Sam Mathews and Ryan who had not only written from the same IP addresses as Greenwald, but all are remarkably like-minded. Ellers made multiple appearances at QandO defending Greenwald and attacking his critics. As Riehl noted, "Ryan" even had an e-mail exchange with Greenwald (sort of like me in the living room e-mailing my son in the playroom perhaps?). Greenwald denies that it was he who wrote under those synonyms, but left unsaid was whether he was aware of these pseudonyms operating under his roof. Using my keen powers of deduction, there are several possibilities:
- Greenwald is not being truthful.
- Brazil (where Greenwald happens to live most of the time) has an unusual "party line" IP system, where multiple Internet users can all access the same IP. Not only that, those Brazil-residing users with English surnames are all big fans of Greenwald and have a thorough working knowledge of his bio.
- The right-of-center bloggers conspiratorially colluded, forging the IP to make it look like sock puppetry was taking place.
- Greenwald lives in a sort of commune and all these commenters really do exist, each having nearly disturbingly similar opinions of both Mr. Greenwald and his detractors.
- His live-in partner was the sock puppet master.
The mystery is still unsolved, but my best guess is that it was the Partner in the Brazil House with the Keyboard.
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Blog Whodunits 12 Comments (0 topical, 12 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I think "lame" is the best word to describe his antics. And "sad", maybe.
Also, note the whiff of victimhood in his use of the words "personal attacks".
...really had an unofficially official secret disinformation site, it would look precisely like Capitol Hill Blue. They've been shiving Democrats for as long as I can remember.
Luckily, they aren't one of our sites, so we don't even have to pay them...
without coming out and saying it, that his roommate was using pseudonyms.
in his post:
IP addresses signify the Internet account one uses, not any one individual. Those in the same household have the same IP address. In response to the personal attacks that have been oozing forth these last couple of weeks, others have left comments responding to them and correcting the factual inaccuracies, as have I. In each case when I did, I have used my own name.
Reverse the sentences in this paragraph and I think it becomes clear: he basically is admitting that someone in his household did it.
He really should consider a legal name change to Nick Danger. But maybe he doesn't want his writing to conjure up images of Brian Donlevy in a trenchcoat.
Somewhere in the Free Republic archives are two investigations I made of other sources that Doug Thompson used who appeared not to exist. The incidents occurred months apart. Alas, I do not remember the details, and the FR search engine is worthless for finding such things. By my lights, Doug Thompson is a serial offender.
...something fierce back in his Free Republic days. Thompson, at one time, ran CHB as a reasonably sane site. Basically, what happened was that after 9/11 Doug turned Bush hatred into a cottage industry on his site. Danger used NEXIS/LEXIS and a few other devices to expose Thompson's fraudulence.
Thompson would publish horsec**p stories about Bush, before the Iraq invasion, raving around the WH stating that those who opposed him were enemies of the people, etc., etc.. Lefties bought into it. What Thompson was catching onto was the earliest wave of Bushhitler chic, and he made CHB into that kind of site. Think of CHB as Antiwar.com without the undercurrent of anti-Semitism that permeates Raimondo's stuff.
who is no longer pseudonymous.
...four Americans were members or guests in Greenwald's house in Brazil, all writing similar comments and parroting similar highlights from his c.v. Sure, it's an answer.