Oh Dear!

I'd never heard of Aaron Klein until ABC Radio National's Rachael Kohn interviewed him on The Spirit of Things last year. So 'impressed' was I that I devoted 2 posts to the interview: Schmoozing with Aaron Klein! 1 & 2, 2-3/7/08.

Klein, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for worldnetdaily.com, had just authored a book titled Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew! His book was about Palestinian 'terrorists' and their wicked ways, and his message was essentially that, whatever the label (Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad), they're all "pure evil" and killing is "what they do." However, these Spawn of Satan had one, terrible weakness: they simply could not get enough of him. So by cunningly exploiting this fatal weakness, schmoozing with them, and living to tell the tale, Klein was able to reach his counter-intuitive conclusion that 'You gotta talk to the terrorists to know that you can't talk to terrorists'.

Rachael, it seems, couldn't get enough of him either, variously describing him as "exceptional," "intrepid," "courageous," and "frank."

So what's this then? Klein was quietly going about his business at the WorldNetDaily site, sticking pins in an Obama doll and muttering to himself, when all of a sudden he happened to find himself on Fox News courageously and frankly denouncing Wikipedia for censoring the efforts of a certain Jerusalem21, who had been unsuccessfully trying to edit into Obama's Wiki entry information about his alleged links with pastor Jeremiah Wright and 'Weatherman terrorist' Bill Ayers, as well as an allegation that he was ineligible to serve as prez because there is no proof he was born in the US. The Wikipedia administrator had knocked back Jerusalem21's allegations as 'fringe' theories and Klein was angry on his behalf. But all was not quite as it seemed:-

"Klein did not identify who owned the Jerusalem21 account but futher digging by the ConWebWatch blog discovered that the only entry the user had tried to edit other than Obama's was Klein's. Jerusalem21 had created Klein's entry and edited it 37 times, adding several links and pictures. Claims that Jerusalem21 was Klein himself are backed up by discussions by Wikipedia administrators on the talk page attached to Klein's entry. 'It reads as a total puff piece and was obviously heavily influenced by Klein himself and cronies/sockpuppets at WND', one wrote. Further, when questions were raised about the identity of Jerusalem21, Klein edited his original story to remove references to Jerusalem21, replacing them with 'one Wikipedia user'. Eventually, in response to emailed questions from Wired News, Klein admitted that he had a hand in engineering the facts used to stand up his scandal. But he blamed the Jerusalem21 edits on his researcher. 'I am not 'Jerusalem21', but I do know the Wikipedia user (he works with me and does research for me), and I worked with him on this story', Klein said." (Obama Wiki fiddler caught red-handed, Asher Moses, The Age, 11/3/09)

Oh dear!