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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Down the Memory Hole

MATTHEW BARAKAT
AP News

Jan 09, 2009 15:13 EST

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo is the highest ranking officer in the history of the CIA to be convicted of a federal crime,


Not up to the standards of Wikipedia

Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913–October 22, 2002) was the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to Congress over Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) undercover activities.


Lying to congress is a federal crime and the DCI outranks the "the agency's executive director and third-ranking officer under then-director Porter Goss."

A pardon can cancel a conviction for legal purposes but it doesn't mean that the event (conviction) never happened.

update: I just e-mailed some friendly advice to talk at Talkingpointsmemo.com

Dear Talk

This article
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/01/prosecutors_urge_release_of_testimony_in_cia_case.php
begins with a howler "Kyle "Dusty" Foggo is the highest ranking officer in the history of the CIA to be convicted of a federal crime,"

Richard Helms was the DCI and he was convicted of lying to congress, which is, you know, a federal crime. A pardon may cancel the legal effects of a conviction but it doesn't mean the event never happened.

Given the relative journalistic standards, I think that talkingpointsmemo.com should be more arms length from the AP, I mean do you really want to link without comment to an organization which just isn't anywhere near to being up to your standards ?

bye
Robert

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good grief; I try to read each post, but really is there a reason to write so terribly? Krugman can be playful, but is always clear. What is the point of such terrible writing? At least Derrida had a point, though reading Derrida is too tiring to care.

I bother, because there can be cleverness now and then, but I am likely a fool for bothering with such writing.