Investigating a Wikipedia administrator

[Daniel Brandt]

I am trying to develop information on Linda E. Mack. She is now about 45 years old and appears to be living in Alberta, Canada and using the name Sarah McEwan. On Wikipedia she is SlimVirgin, one of their most powerful administrators. Her editing is very anti-conspiracy-theory, and she spends many hours a day on Wikipedia. She's very supportive of anything Chip Berlet tries to push on Wikipedia, for those of you who know who Chip Berlet is.

There may be more than one person behind her username. She was tracked once editing Wikipedia for a single 27-hour period without a break. Administrators on Wikipedia have extraordinary powers to block or ban users, and delete or protect articles.

She started a biography on me that I've been trying to get taken down for a year now, without success. It took a lot of effort by several people to develop the information that she is Linda Mack. This information is very solid by now.

Ms. Mack was a grad student at Kings College in Cambridge in 1988, when her new boyfriend was a passenger on Pan Am 103. She dropped out of school and was soon working for Pierre Salinger, who was bureau chief for ABC News in London. Her main preoccupation was the Lockerbie investigation. Within a couple of years, Salinger locked her out of the office because he became convinced that Ms. Mack had been working with MI5 all along. Here's some background on Ms. Mack:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2235

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3761

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3910

We've lost the trail from her departure from ABC in London, to her arrival on Wikipedia in November 2004, from Canada, using the name "Sarah" and the username "SlimVirgin." I think she's still working as an agent of influence for someone. I think Wikipedia may have been infiltrated, and developing more information on her is the most promising lead we have.

A high priority is to get a photograph of her, even if it's an old one from 1989 or so. Since she has used more than one name, this makes a photograph more important than it might be otherwise. There are dozens of us who are interested in developing more information on SlimVirgin, because her heavy-handed editing has alienated many Wikipedia editors.

My email address is in the staff box that's behind the "about us" link at the bottom of www.wikipedia-watch.org

Thank you.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Daniel, I live in Cambridge, and know people at Kings. i will see what can be done about a photo, circa late 80s Steve.

[John Simkin]

I do not know anything about Linda Mack (is she married to Gary Mack?). However, I am very concerned about the authors of Wikipedia entries. For example, if you type in “Assassination of John F. Kennedy” at Google, it results in 2,270,000 pages listed in the following order:

1. McAdams: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

2. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination

3. Ralph Schuster: http://www.jfk-assassination.de/

4. Spartacus: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKindex.htm

5. JFK Net: http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/

6. BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/s...000/2451143.stm

It is my belief that John McAdams is the author of the Wikipedia entry. He gives himself a link yet has removed the link that I placed on the page. I will add it again later on today. It will be interesting how long it remains on the site.

I believe Wikipedia is more dangerous than the McAdams website. It pretends to be objective and is likely to fool many people.

[Jack White]

I do not know anything about Linda Mack (is she married to Gary Mack?). However, I am very concerned about the authors of Wikipedia entries. For example, if you type in “Assassination of John F. Kennedy” at Google, it results in 2,270,000 pages listed in the following order:

1. McAdams: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

2. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination

3. Ralph Schuster: http://www.jfk-assassination.de/

4. Spartacus: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKindex.htm

5. JFK Net: http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/

6. BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/s...000/2451143.stm

It is my belief that John McAdams is the author of the Wikipedia entry. He gives himself a link yet has removed the link that I placed on the page. I will add it again later on today. It will be interesting how long it remains on the site.

I believe Wikipedia is more dangerous than the McAdams website. It pretends to be objective and is likely to fool many people.

She would be Mrs. Dunkel if married to "Gary Mack", since Gary's civilian name is Larry Dunkel.

Jack

[John Simkin]

She would be Mrs. Dunkel if married to "Gary Mack", since Gary's civilian name is Larry Dunkel.

Maybe she also uses a false name as well. Why does Larry Dunkel call himself Gary Mack?

[Daniel Brandt]

Linda Mack's boyfriend in 1989 was Neil Croally, who is now head of the Classics Department at Dulwich College. Croally came by my apartment in Arlington, Virginia in 1989 and got a set of NameBase disks for Linda. I contacted Croally last June by email, and he says that he lost all contact with Linda. But I think he's protecting her, because when I contacted him twice last month with new information that should have amazed him and sparked at least some sort of comment, I never got a reply.

At Kings College, Linda was pursuing a PhD in philosophy, under the supervision of Bernard Williams.

[Jack White]

She would be Mrs. Dunkel if married to "Gary Mack", since Gary's civilian name is Larry Dunkel.

Maybe she also uses a false name as well. Why does Larry Dunkel call himself Gary Mack?

For a brief time in the 70s he was a DJ and announcer at a FW

radio station, and he needed a more macho name, so he picked

Mack, as in MACK TRUCKs. I suppose he kept the name because

he became accustomed to it and preferred it to his legal name.

His former wife's name is Eadie.

Well, that's show bizness.

Jack

Edited October 18, 2006 by Jack White

[Daniel Brandt]

Daniel, one thing I don't get, however, is your mention that she seems to like Berlet...who to my knowledge is well informed on the Far Right in the USA and elsewhere. While not usually labeled a CT, Berlet is to my knowledge progressive and not taken-in on most things...but I haven't now that I think of it, heard him talk on other things, such as assassinations or covert operations etc. Am I missing something on Berlet or on your comment about her and him?

Linda Mack is pro-Israel, pro-animal liberation, and anti-LaRouche. Berlet is very anti-LaRouche, and very anti-conspiracism (if you subscribe to any conspiracy theories, then this can only mean that you have been duped by the right-wing). He is politically correct, and denounces his enemies as fascist and anti-Semitic.

Berlet was on my board of advisors until 1990, when he discovered that L. Fletcher Prouty had also joined. Prouty's unforgivable sin was to let Liberty Lobby republish his book, The Secret Team, which is one of the early anti-CIA books (Ballantine, 1974). This was a significant book, and copies were already difficult to find by the early 1980s. No one else would reprint it. Prouty himself didn't have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. But the association with Liberty Lobby, which was anti-CIA and anti-Zionist, caused Berlet to fly off the handle. Berlet expected me to kick Prouty off of the PIR board of advisors, with the suggestion that if I didn't, he himself would have to leave. So I politely thanked Berlet for his past support, and whipped out the white-out, and removed Berlet from our letterhead.

Then Berlet contacted the other advisors and denounced me. Three other "progressive" advisors quit in the wake of this: Holly Sklar, Martha Wenger, and Tom Barry. It's no big deal -- the board of advisors has zero power and it's the Board of Directors that's important. Berlet also contacted Dennis Brutus, a poet and professor who spent time in prison with Nelson Mandela for ANC activities, and quite an impressive activist. But Dennis Brutus would have none of Berlet's bull, and he's still on our Board of Directors.

Prouty was a reasonable, highly-motivated critic of the Secret State with a lot of insider Pentagon experience to draw on. He was the so-called "Man X" in Oliver Stone's movie JFK. Once he became a critic, Prouty was someone who was impossible to compromise. When it came to making a choice between Prouty and Berlet, it was an easy decision for me to make.

In the last few years, Berlet has been funded by the Ford Foundation. I believe that the Ford Foundation is still heavily influenced by the intelligence community. They certainly were during the 1950s. McGeorge Bundy was its president from 1966-1979. In 1972 they started pouring money into "identity politics" (women's studies, Black studies, Hispanic studies, etc.). The entire "identity politics" thrust within U.S. progressivism took over and replaced the New Left. White males, including academic sociologists and neo-Marxists, had been getting into power structure research (interlocking directorates, etc.) during the 1970s, but we were completely wiped out by the deep pockets of the identity politics movement on campuses. Identity politics destroyed class consciousness, and Ford Foundation was the leader in funding this destruction.

Berlet worked for the National Student Association during the 1970s. It was exposed as CIA-funded in 1967 by Ramparts magazine. By the 1970s they were probably clean, but still I find it curious that a progressive would even associate with them once they had been exposed.

Berlet appears to have worked with U.S. intelligence to put LaRouche in jail. I reject most of what LaRouche says, but his organization still does some power structure research. Their philosophy is weird, but they do believe in connecting dots among the international elites. That's something that the "identity politics" people have never done in the U.S. All that those people have ever wanted, is to break through the glass ceiling and become elites themselves.

[John Simkin]

Linda Mack is pro-Israel, pro-animal liberation, and anti-LaRouche. Berlet is very anti-LaRouche, and very anti-conspiracism (if you subscribe to any conspiracy theories, then this can only mean that you have been duped by the right-wing). He is politically correct, and denounces his enemies as fascist and anti-Semitic.

Berlet was on my board of advisors until 1990, when he discovered that L. Fletcher Prouty had also joined. Prouty's unforgivable sin was to let Liberty Lobby republish his book, The Secret Team, which is one of the early anti-CIA books (Ballantine, 1974). This was a significant book, and copies were already difficult to find by the early 1980s. No one else would reprint it. Prouty himself didn't have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. But the association with Liberty Lobby, which was anti-CIA and anti-Zionist, caused Berlet to fly off the handle. Berlet expected me to kick Prouty off of the PIR board of advisors, with the suggestion that if I didn't, he himself would have to leave. So I politely thanked Berlet for his past support, and whipped out the white-out, and removed Berlet from our letterhead.

Then Berlet contacted the other advisors and denounced me. Three other "progressive" advisors quit in the wake of this: Holly Sklar, Martha Wenger, and Tom Barry. It's no big deal -- the board of advisors has zero power and it's the Board of Directors that's important. Berlet also contacted Dennis Brutus, a poet and professor who spent time in prison with Nelson Mandela for ANC activities, and quite an impressive activist. But Dennis Brutus would have none of Berlet's bull, and he's still on our Board of Directors.

Prouty was a reasonable, highly-motivated critic of the Secret State with a lot of insider Pentagon experience to draw on. He was the so-called "Man X" in Oliver Stone's movie JFK. Once he became a critic, Prouty was someone who was impossible to compromise. When it came to making a choice between Prouty and Berlet, it was an easy decision for me to make.

In the last few years, Berlet has been funded by the Ford Foundation. I believe that the Ford Foundation is still heavily influenced by the intelligence community. They certainly were during the 1950s. McGeorge Bundy was its president from 1966-1979. In 1972 they started pouring money into "identity politics" (women's studies, Black studies, Hispanic studies, etc.). The entire "identity politics" thrust within U.S. progressivism took over and replaced the New Left. White males, including academic sociologists and neo-Marxists, had been getting into power structure research (interlocking directorates, etc.) during the 1970s, but we were completely wiped out by the deep pockets of the identity politics movement on campuses. Identity politics destroyed class consciousness, and Ford Foundation was the leader in funding this destruction.

Berlet worked for the National Student Association during the 1970s. It was exposed as CIA-funded in 1967 by Ramparts magazine. By the 1970s they were probably clean, but still I find it curious that a progressive would even associate with them once they had been exposed.

Berlet appears to have worked with U.S. intelligence to put LaRouche in jail. I reject most of what LaRouche says, but his organization still does some power structure research. Their philosophy is weird, but they do believe in connecting dots among the international elites. That's something that the "identity politics" people have never done in the U.S. All that those people have ever wanted, is to break through the glass ceiling and become elites themselves.

Wikipedia is very concerned about public perceptions. If people believed that its online resource was being influenced by the CIA, they would begin to lose public confidence in the objectivity of Wikipedia.

The idea of an objective encyclopaedia is ridiculous. My own online encyclopaedia attempted to expose this idea of objective entries by including a range of points of view on the subject in the source section.

Spartacus Educational started in 1997. The following year Jimmy Wales followed my example of producing a free encyclopaedia. However, he found it too time-consuming and decided to make it an “open source” project. This meant that people have had to fight to get their interpretations of the past displayed at Wikipedia.

My main victory was over Operation Mockingbird. Initially, Wikipedia claimed it was an urban myth. I edited the entry to explain it was a real CIA secret project to control the mass media. My entry was removed and it took several moths of arguing before they allowed my version of Operation Mockingbird to appear in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

It also comes up first with Google and my page at Spartacus is number 2. This is an example of how you can win your battles at Wikipedia.

[Mark Stapleton]

I am trying to develop information on Linda E. Mack. She is now about 45 years old and appears to be living in Alberta, Canada and using the name Sarah McEwan. On Wikipedia she is SlimVirgin, one of their most powerful administrators. Her editing is very anti-conspiracy-theory, and she spends many hours a day on Wikipedia. She's very supportive of anything Chip Berlet tries to push on Wikipedia, for those of you who know who Chip Berlet is.

There may be more than one person behind her username. She was tracked once editing Wikipedia for a single 27-hour period without a break. Administrators on Wikipedia have extraordinary powers to block or ban users, and delete or protect articles.

She started a biography on me that I've been trying to get taken down for a year now, without success. It took a lot of effort by several people to develop the information that she is Linda Mack. This information is very solid by now.

Ms. Mack was a grad student at Kings College in Cambridge in 1988, when her new boyfriend was a passenger on Pan Am 103. She dropped out of school and was soon working for Pierre Salinger, who was bureau chief for ABC News in London. Her main preoccupation was the Lockerbie investigation. Within a couple of years, Salinger locked her out of the office because he became convinced that Ms. Mack had been working with MI5 all along. Here's some background on Ms. Mack:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2235

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3761

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3910

We've lost the trail from her departure from ABC in London, to her arrival on Wikipedia in November 2004, from Canada, using the name "Sarah" and the username "SlimVirgin." I think she's still working as an agent of influence for someone. I think Wikipedia may have been infiltrated, and developing more information on her is the most promising lead we have.

A high priority is to get a photograph of her, even if it's an old one from 1989 or so. Since she has used more than one name, this makes a photograph more important than it might be otherwise. There are dozens of us who are interested in developing more information on SlimVirgin, because her heavy-handed editing has alienated many Wikipedia editors.

My email address is in the staff box that's behind the "about us" link at the bottom of www.wikipedia-watch.org

Thank you.

Incredible stuff, Daniel. Reading through the threads you linked was most informative (and I only had time to read the first two). From a JFK assassination standpoint, a reference made concerning the 'mega group' was particularly fascinating: Charles and Edgar Bronfman, Leonard Abramson, Leslie Wexner, Max Fisher(former chairman of United Fruit and Gerald Ford stringpuller), Harvey Meyerhoff, Steven Spielberg, Michael Steinhardt (whose father 'Red' was an associate of Meyer Lansky). Hmmm.

I hope a photo of the elusive SlimVirgin can be procured. She and others sure seem like agents of influence to me. You don't need to be Einstein to figure out who for.

I'll never look at Wikipedia or Google the same way again.

[John Simkin]

Daniel, you might be interested in this story. A couple of days ago I had an email from a Wikipedia administrator.

Spartacus is about to be deemed an “unreliable” source of information for use in Wikipedia. It has been accused of “left wing” bias and being “propagandistic.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...oposed_decision

Those who want it banned are ready to strip any reference to Spartacus. There doesn’t appear to be a reasoned decision for this except that it carries sources of information that some of the administrators don’t like regarding the Kennedy assassination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...t_of_view.3F.22

I have now discovered that the Wikipedia administrator who sent me the warning email is a trial attorney in Honolulu and for the last 35 years has engaged in trial work in commercial fraud, racketeering, and civil conspiracy both in Honolulu and in California where he is also licensed. As a result of his support for me he is almost certain to lose his post as a Wikipedia administrator.

I then posted this on the Wikipedia page discussing Spartacus:

Statement from John Simkin

I am the author of the Spartacus Educational website. It was started in September 1997. The main objective was to provide a free encyclopaedia. I believe this was a similar intention behind the creation of Wikipedia. Like Wikipedia, Spartacus has resisted all attempts to become a “subscription only” service. I was attracted to the idea of creating a website because I saw the possibility of breaking the stranglehold of the rich and powerful over the communications system. It was hoped that when Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia in 2001, he shared this vision. In an interview he gave to Slashdot he said "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." (2004-07-28) However, it seems that Wikipedia is now being used to support the “official interpretation” of the past as reflected in the mainstream media.

At the time I created the Spartacus Educational website, I was a history teacher (11-18 year olds) in England. I was also a prolific writer of history books for students. As I still held the copyright for my books, I decided to put them on the web free of charge. Students, from all over the world, were therefore being provided with free teaching materials. This is especially useful for students in the Third World who do not have the money to purchase textbooks or to those who study in countries where the authorities use the political system to control the information they receive. On average, we get 6 million page impressions a month. A survey carried out by the Fischer Family Trust showed that the Spartacus Educational website was used by more history students in the UK than any other website, including that of the BBC. As you can see, I am a very dangerous person.

http://www.fischertrust.org/

According to this page “three of the arbitrators deem Spartacus as "unreliable" and dedicated to a "propagandistic point of view." It goes on to say: “The complaining editors want defending editor RPJ banned from Wikipedia for, among other things, citing Spartacus.”

It seems strange that the arbitrators want to “ban” someone for citing a source of information because it apparently puts forward a “"propagandistic point of view". In fact, if these arbitrators spent just a short period of time on my website they would soon discover that one of my main themes is to expose propaganda from wherever it comes. See for example, my section on the communist government in the Soviet Union:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RussiaSU.htm

I especially recommend those pages on Socialist Realism, NKVD Secret Police, Soviet Writers' Union and banned writers such as Yevgeni Zamyatin, Isaac Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Nickolai Tikhonov, Mikhail Slonimski, Vsevolod Ivanov, Victor Serge, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei Yesenin, Konstantin Fedin, Victor Shklovsky, Mikhail Zoshchenko and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The arbitrators seem more interested in my pages on American history. After looking at my pages on “Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman, and a few other historical figures” it is concluded that I “have, what an American might believe, is a foreign viewpoint of modern American history which might seem stark, candid, and non-deferential”. I have to confess that I am indeed “candid and non-deferential”. However, that is not only true of my pages on American historical figures. I take the same approach with historical figures from all countries, not just those from the United States.

The debate about me being a reliable source is apparently based on my pages on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That I am guilty of putting forward a "propagandistic point of view." This seems to completely misunderstand the contents of my encyclopaedia. The website was created to support the teaching of history in the UK. One of the aspects of the history curriculum in the UK is to teach “interpretations”. That is to say, we teach our students that people interpret the past in different ways. There are several factors involved in this process - this includes the political beliefs of the person creating the “interpretation”. Nationalistic factors are also important, hence the reasons why arbitrators at Wikipedia based in the United States have taken offence at my “candid and non-deferential” interpretations of American political figures.

Educators in the UK have tried to deal with this problem by rejecting the idea that it is possible to create a “standardized, neutral, objective” interpretation of the past of the type favoured by the Soviet Union under Stalin and Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Instead, history teachers in the UK attempt to arm its students with the skills needed to deal with issues like subjectivity and propaganda. Therefore, when we teach any historical subjects, we expose our students to different interpretations of the past. We also provide them with the sources of evidence that these historians use to support their interpretation of the past. This is true whether you are studying Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This is reflected by my encyclopaedia. Therefore on most pages you will get examples of different interpretations of that subject. It seems that the Wikipedia arbitrators, who dislike my website, have concentrated on those interpretations they disagree with.

I suspect that attempts to get my links banned from Wikipedia has very little to do with my page on Lee Harvey Oswald. It has more to do with my pages on people like George H. W. Bush, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Robert Gates, that have links to my site from Wikipedia. This is a debate about people who are still alive. It is a debate about the present and not the past. When Wikipedia arbitrators talk about the need to produce “neutral and objective” entries, they are really concerned about the provision of a standardized view of the past. They are the modern Stalins and Hitlers who believe that the state should determine the way we see the world. Before I edited it, the Wikipedia entry for the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird described it as an “urban myth”. In fact, the CIA is still attempting to control the world’s mass media and that includes the internet. It is only to be expected that today’s struggle over how we interpret the past and the present is taking place at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

I am very interested to know something about the people who accuse me of producing propaganda. We always teach our history students that it is important to explore the background of the people creating these “interpretations”. That is why, in my encyclopedia I provide a link to a page on the person who has created the material. I also provide a link to my own biography:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/author.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Simkin

Maybe my accusers at Wikipedia should provide also provide biographies that provides us some information about their experience of studying or teaching history.

I expect that this entry will soon be deleted so I have also posted it on the International Education Forum. Maybe the Wikipedia arbitrators would like to join the forum so they can post a defence of their views.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8861

It was of course deleted straight away.

[Daniel Brandt]

Gamaliel is one of the main people behind the move against RPJ. He worked closely with SlimVirgin in the war against LaRouche articles on Wikipedia in early 2005. When SlimVirgin started the bio of me on September 28, 2005, it was mainly because I was quoted in a newsletter about Chip Berlet, where I had pointed out some evidence of intelligence-community collaboration by Berlet in the government's successful effort to jail LaRouche during the 1980s. I independently confirmed this evidence before I wrote about it in the newsletter. SlimVirgin deleted the quote from me and called me "unreliable." Then she started the bio on me a few months later! You can see why I soon launched a war to get my bio taken down. I felt that there was no way I needed a bio on me if it was started by SlimVirgin, who clearly had ulterior motives.

Gamaliel worked closely with SlimVirgin and was very active in frustrating all of my efforts to delete my bio. He permanently banned me from Wikipedia in early April, 2006 for making legal threats. I merely pointed out that there was a new federal law in the U.S. that makes it a felony to harass someone while hiding behind a screen name.

In the course of developing my Wikipedia-Watch.org site, I have identified dozens of Wikipedia editors and administrators. Gamaliel's real name is Rob (Robert) Fernandez. Here is an old webpage of his I found that he had forgotten to take down. I moved it to my site as soon as I discovered it, because I knew he would whitewash it.

Fernandez is or was a grad student in library science. He dug out information about me from page 20 of a New York Times story from 1968, and took much delight in using this to brand me as a draft-card burner in my Wikipedia bio. Needless to say, that doesn't help me when I have to send out my resume to try to get a job.

Fernandez brags on his user page that he is most proud of his contributions to the Wikipedia article on Lee Harvey Oswald. His edits de-emphasize the conspiracy angle. If I ever find myself in court over my Wikipedia biography, I'd like to put both Jimmy Wales and Rob Fernandez on the stand. Conveniently, Wales and Fernandez both live close to each other, near St.Petersburg, Florida, which is where the Wikipedia servers are located, and where the trial would most likely take place.

It's very difficult to fight Wikipedia. Fernandez can call on top administrators such as JayJG and SlimVirgin, who collectively have more power than the Arbitration Committee. Fighting them is like struggling against quicksand. The best way to deal with Wikipedia is to undermine its image in the popular press, so that people stop considering them a viable source of objective information.

[Steven Phillips]

John, I think truthful objectivity should be applied to all subjects equally, its extremely important that scolarship have the freedom to investigate historical events and draw conclusions from the evidence they uncover.

People who want to clarify history by going back over events to see if maybe a different interpretation holds should be able to do so without being villified or labeled or mollested by the powers that be for trespassing on their statements of historical fact.

History by definition is revision and as more understanding accrues and more evidence comes to light historians are duty bound to fill in those pieces of the jigsaw and this is true of the most taboo subjects as well as the most popular.

The freedom to challenge historical assertion is one of the most basic freedoms alongside freedom of speech.

[Pat Jaress]

I am a trial attorney in Honolulu and for the last 35 years have engaged in trial work in commercial fraud, racketeering, and civil conspiracy both here and in California where I am also licensed so I know the area of law and usual fact patterns.

Last year I saw the articles in Wikipedia on the Kennedy assassination and was surprised at how outdated they were. I don't know that much about the subject but the articles were embarrassingly outdated. I've tried to update them with new information and its been like poking a hornet's nest. A group of editors seem to feel the only proper source of information is the Warren Report as interpreted by a Professor MacAdams that has a website devoted to the Kennedy assassination.

I then got interested in how the group of editors operated to drive away other ideas. Here is basically what has caused the controversy where they want me banned for life.

Presenting evidence of four significant viewpoints relating to the Kennedy murder:

• There was a criminal conspiracy to murder the President. This viewpoint is reflected in the final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 after a three year investigation. This viewpoint has majority support among 70% of the American public in 2003.

• There is “an official cover-up” involving the murder of the president. This viewpoint is reflected by G. Robert Blakey the former counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

"Significantly, the Warren Commission's conclusion that the agencies of the government co-operated with it is, in retrospect, not the truth. We also now know that the Agency [CIA] set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency."

"Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp."

and a growing amount of evidentiary material being released by the HSCA [45]and Assassination Records Review Board. This viewpoint of "an official cover-up" has majority support among 68% of the American public in 2003.

• The conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Oswald was a lone assassin. This viewpoint has minority support among 22% of the American public in 2003.

• Lee Harvey Oswald did not participate in the plot to murder the President. This viewpoint was consistently voiced by Lee Oswald prior to his murder. This viewpoint has minority support among 7% of the American public in 2003.

These specific examples of contributions to Wikipedia have also not been well received:

* Finding and disclosing that a false history of research had been placed in the biography of the famous NASA scientist Dr. Eugene Shoemaker. (That human skulls recoil towards the shooter) This was used in the assassination article.

* A year later,again found a false history of research on human skulls had been placed again back in the biography of the late Dr. Shoemaker. This re-insertion of the information was done exactly one year after it was deleted by an editor of his biography when I had noted on the talk page of the Shoemaker biography that the information was unsourced and appeared suspect.

* Added information that was discovered by Congress years after the Warren Report was issued that the accused assassin, Lee Oswald, had the name and telephone number of an FBI agent in his address book, and had left a letter for the agent two days before the President was murdered. The FBI destroyed the letter and withheld the address book information.

* In the Warren Report article included a well known article from the New York Times about the CIA conducting a covert propaganda campaign to squelch criticism of the Warren Report (which clears the CIA of involvement in the Kennedy assassination). The CIA urges its agents to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. "Cable Sought to Discredit Critics of Warren Report" New York Times, December 26, 1977, p.A3

* Included excerpts from the now famous Katzenbach Memorandum. Written, three days after the Kennedy murder by Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, which said the purpose of the federal investigation was to satisfy the public “that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large."

* Included the excerpt from the Central Intelligence Agency's mission statement regarding a controversial activity of the CIA acting as a "secret hand" to perform "covert actions" assigned by the Director of the CIA or the President.

* Included excerpts from the 1998 Assassination Records Review Board Report criticizing the Kennedy autopsy on a number of grounds including the destruction original documents, the imprecise and inexplicably absent measurement of wounds, the failure to show original autopsy photographs by the Warren Commission, the failure to create an accounting of the photographs and a chain of custody for the autopsy materials, medical testimony in 1979 suggesting a change in the location of where the the fatal shot hit the head.

* Extracted actual testimony from the transcripts of witnesses from previously secret Warren Commission hearings. This is sworn testimony of witnesses to the actual assassination itself. These will be reconstructed, as as whole, in the workshop. Since most of it was put in and then deleted at several different times for different reasons by the complaining editors. Defending editor RPJ deems much of information to be the subject of a content dispute since the complaining editors insist the fatal head shot came from the rear of the head, and not the front right temple which blew out the back of his head.

In summary, this whole episode has proven very interesting and have come to a conclusion that it is an organized effort that is being consistently applied to Wikipedia and perhaps to other internet sites to limit information.

[John Simkin]

Gamaliel is one of the main people behind the move against RPJ. He worked closely with SlimVirgin in the war against LaRouche articles on Wikipedia in early 2005. When SlimVirgin started the bio of me on September 28, 2005, it was mainly because I was quoted in a newsletter about Chip Berlet, where I had pointed out some evidence of intelligence-community collaboration by Berlet in the government's successful effort to jail LaRouche during the 1980s. I independently confirmed this evidence before I wrote about it in the newsletter. SlimVirgin deleted the quote from me and called me "unreliable." Then she started the bio on me a few months later! You can see why I soon launched a war to get my bio taken down. I felt that there was no way I needed a bio on me if it was started by SlimVirgin, who clearly had ulterior motives.

Gamaliel worked closely with SlimVirgin and was very active in frustrating all of my efforts to delete my bio. He permanently banned me from Wikipedia in early April, 2006 for making legal threats. I merely pointed out that there was a new federal law in the U.S. that makes it a felony to harass someone while hiding behind a screen name.

In the course of developing my Wikipedia-Watch.org site, I have identified dozens of Wikipedia editors and administrators. Gamaliel's real name is Rob (Robert) Fernandez. Here is an old webpage of his I found that he had forgotten to take down. I moved it to my site as soon as I discovered it, because I knew he would whitewash it.

Fernandez is or was a grad student in library science. He dug out information about me from page 20 of a New York Times story from 1968, and took much delight in using this to brand me as a draft-card burner in my Wikipedia bio. Needless to say, that doesn't help me when I have to send out my resume to try to get a job.

Fernandez brags on his user page that he is most proud of his contributions to the Wikipedia article on Lee Harvey Oswald. His edits de-emphasize the conspiracy angle. If I ever find myself in court over my Wikipedia biography, I'd like to put both Jimmy Wales and Rob Fernandez on the stand. Conveniently, Wales and Fernandez both live close to each other, near St.Petersburg, Florida, which is where the Wikipedia servers are located, and where the trial would most likely take place.

It's very difficult to fight Wikipedia. Fernandez can call on top administrators such as JayJG and SlimVirgin, who collectively have more power than the Arbitration Committee. Fighting them is like struggling against quicksand. The best way to deal with Wikipedia is to undermine its image in the popular press, so that people stop considering them a viable source of objective information.

These are the five people who got Pat Jaress banned from editing Wikipedia.

Fred Bauder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fred_Bauder

SimonP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SimonP

Charles Matthews

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews

The Epopt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Epopt

Jayjg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayjg

Do you know anything about these people?