I sent an email to my friend (that I mentioned on the other comment thread). I know what I was told though not who told my friend. But obviously recent events require that I ask for some more info.

I leave Thursday to attend a wedding in Atlanta. Maybe I’ll get a response by tomorrow. If not, I hope to have more of an answer when I return on Monday.

Now that your final is over are you going to re-instate the comments in the previous posts on Drake so we can continue that conversation about whether we need to ask more questions before calling for Drake’s resignation? Also, was your source that Drake had been contacted not from the SPLC? Couldn’t you just confirm to Bart that indeed you knew Drake had been contacted?

These are some questions I think we should ask before moving on in this discussion. And I promise I won’t jump to conclusions until you answer them.

But, let me send a personal email and see if I can get a name/number.

I notice the Intelligence Project and SPLC lists the same telephone number.

Do they actually have people working at Intelligence Report (if they do, apparently the people don’t have telephones). Do you think you could manage to be in contact with a real-live person over there. I would really like to know whether they contacted Drake before publishing the story.

If the latest comment by Bob Allen is supposed to help clarify that Drake is not truthful, it doesn’t fill the bill.

Blessings,
Tim

First, let me preface my comments by saying that nobody ever considered me Wiley Drake’s ally in any sense. I have blogged comparing Drake to Caligula’s horse. I offer that just for context for my remarks.

Affirming an online declaration is not an action requiring a Notary Public. To see one’s name there is not to know for certain that the person himself actually put it there.

For this very reason, either Intelligence Report or Ethics Daily should have bothered to ask Drake whether the signature was his. They would not have been required to pull the story no matter his answer—they merely could have added to the story: “Drake denies placing his name on the list; however, Intelligence Report has good evidence that…” Or, before outcry for his resignation, Drake might have acknowledged the signature as his own. Either way, responsible journalism requires some attempt to confirm such an important fact upon which the entire story rests.

If this accusation had been leveled against Frank Page, I would not have believed it. I readily believed it about Drake because, if he is anything, he is audacious. Although I acknowledge the very human temptation to lie when caught in a tight spot, one must also acknowledge that Wiley Drake is just the kind of person, if he has actually signed the declaration, to say, “Yeah, I signed it. What of it!?” Psychoanalysis of the vagaries of Wiley Drake could support any position on the questions at hand.

If we are now in a “he said, they said” position, then we are in that position due to the recklessness of the folks over at Intelligence Report. They credentials, impressive as they might be, are no more formidable than those of the New York Times, yet consider the case of Jayson Blair. Even really good reporters and organs of the press sometimes make very foolish mistakes. Drake is human, but so are they.

I would like very much to hear from Bob Allen and from the folks over at Intelligence Report.