I was very much alarmed by their analysis, particularly how well it was supported by citations and footnotes.

This was a time before Google, so I took their paperback (None Dare Call it Treason) to the Tampa Public Library, and started following up their references. Not all could be located, of course, the local library did not have the resources of a university or big city archive. However, I was able to find about a dozen of them. They all seemed legit, but upon deeper digging I started turning up evidence of the usual fascist mind-fucks: cherry picking, taking things out of context, deliberate misinterpretations, dead ends, unsubstantiated quotes, flat out paraphrasing, etc. It was clear that the "citations" had been cleverly assembled so that they contained a germ of truth, but upon detailed examination, did not hold up. Every blockbuster revelation, when followed up to its source, either went nowhere, or it was a deliberate twisting of the truth.

You know, the same kind of receipts they brought to the auction here on the Zone. Remember TB's Scandinavian Bog Fossils? Or the time we caught Gbaike leaving out the independent clause of a quoted sentence, thereby altering its entire meaning?

Fortunately, I had a good English teacher, and I wrote a lot of term papers. I was taught how to use a Library and do research, and how to spot propaganda disguised in a very thin cloak of truth. There is more to research than just finding another website with the same lies in it. You have to dig deep, cross check, verify and follow the threads wherever they may lead. And always go for the original source.

You would think the internet was an ideal place to do that, but very often what looks like depth is only superficial redundancy.