A friend forwarded an e-mail to me today - a chain-letter kind of thing that purported to be an account of testimony given by Col. Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 in which Col. North warned senators - including Al Gore - about Osama bin Laden. It also included a story about how the Israelis had 9/11 WTC pilot Mohamed Atta in prison and were pressured to release him by Bill Clinton and then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
I've seen enough of these things to be reflexively skeptical and I also know some of my friends will forward some crazy stuff without checking it.
So I went to the two best authorities on online tomfoolery - Hoaxbusters and Snopes.
And, of course, both sites said the stories are bogus. Snopes, in fact, had a letter from Col. North refuting the bin Laden story and asserting that he was speaking of the terrorist Abu Nidal.
Now, I detest Bill Clinton and Al Gore as much as any right-thinking Republican, but I prefer to deal in facts.
So the next time you get an e-mail with a shocking story, regardless of the political spin, please check it out before you forward it to everyone in your address book. If you don't, it's about the same as if you let a virus replicate via your e-mail access. It also makes you look like a gullible dope when your friends try to confirm the story.
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