For instance, in October, Snopes listed as false the claim, in its own words, that "several [Internet] domain names related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on America were registered before the attack." CNSNews.com, a news site affiliated with the conservative Media Research Center, had reported in an article by Jeff Johnson that at least 17 domain names such as "worldtradetowerstrike.com," "attackontwintowers.com" and "wterrorattack2001.com" had been registered prior to the attack, some as early as July 2000. The Mikkelsons wrote that "this is a nothing story, promulgated by those looking for something sensational to write about."
They dismissed any notion the sites could be related to the terrorist attacks, declaring: "Given the prominence of New York, the prevalence of violence and horror in our popular entertainment, the millions of domain names registered over the years and the fact that the World Trade Center had already been attacked in 1993 [in the bombing that killed six people], that a handful of expired domain names used one or more of these elements should be no surprise."
But Snopes left out many facts included in the CNSNews piece that may have given the article more credibility. For one thing, the belief that these sites may have been related to the attacks was not mere speculation on the reporter's part, but the view of renowned terrorism expert Neil Livingstone, chief executive officer of the Washington-based counterterrorism and investigation company Global Options LLC. "This wasn't just some man off the street," says Johnson, CNSNews congressional bureau chief. Livingstone has written on terrorism for the New York Times and Washington Post and appeared on Nightline and Meet the Press.
Livingstone was quoted in the article as saying that terrorists like to take credit for their work and might have wanted to set up Websites for a propaganda campaign when they didn't know how successful the attacks would be. Johnson noted that bin Laden says on one of his videotapes that even he didn't think the strikes would be so successful. One of the main points of the article was Livingstone's outrage that the registration companies apparently didn't report the domain names to the FBI.
Snopes made much of the fact that the few date-related domain names did not refer to Sept. 11, but to Aug. 11 and Sept. 29. However, CNSNews had paraphrased Livingstone as saying these two dates "may have indicated the window of opportunity during which the attackers planned to strike."
CNSNews executive editor Scott Hogenson also says that Snopes mischaracterized the article as saying the sites were related to the terrorist attack when the story only raised the question of whether they might have been related to the attack. He tells Insight he e-mailed the Mikkelsons three times to correct the record and never received a reply. "They got it wrong, and they didn't even have the ethical fortitude to respond to detailed, accurate, polite queries. I think that's just low class," Hogenson says.
In a telephone interview with Insight, Barbara Mikkelson saw no need to change the status of the CNSNews report from "false" to "undetermined" or to include Livingstone's comments. "I don't know the man, and I don't know his credentials," she says. "Just because somebody's a known terrorism expert does not necessarily mean he will be right about everything."
As for not getting back to CNSNews, she says, "I don't recall it, and I will point out that we get hundreds of e-mails every day and there are just the two of us." Hogenson responds, "If they don't have time to correct their own mistakes, maybe they should not be in the business of trying to correct others." (When Insight used the e-mail link on the Snopes site to arrange its interview, Barbara Mikkelson got back to us within a day.)
Snopes also classifies as false the claim that "monies given to the September 11 Fund are being used to defend suspected terrorists." That is not actually what critics of the fund, such as the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), have said. They objected to a $171,000 grant the September 11 Fund gave to the New York Legal Aid Society, which defended eight detainees rounded up for visa violations in connection with the terrorist attacks. Snopes calls the NLPC's objections "foolheaded," and cites the legal-aid society's statement in a press release that none of the grant money was used to defend terrorist suspects.
"The money was used for civil legal assistance for families affected by the tragedy who needed help getting access to wills, bank accounts and insurance," the Mikkelsons wrote.
But NLPC President Peter Flaherty says Snopes should know very well that such money is fungible. "They use the same office space. They use the same phones. They use the same staff," Flaherty tells Insight. "It is by no means an urban legend; it's a serious issue." Flaherty says that most people who contributed to benefit the families of victims do no want funds going to agencies that might be defending the perpetrators. "This group obviously has a political, left-wing, anti-American agenda. What is the September 11 Fund doing providing assistance to them for any purpose?" he asks.
Even before it gained prominence with the World Trade Center attacks, Snopes had critics who accused it of cavalierly dismissing legitimate stories critical of the left as urban legends. This seemed particularly true with stories about Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Snopes got into a tussle with WorldNetDaily.com by listing as false an August 2000 story by Geoff Metcalf that Bill Clinton planned to go to Vietnam and that the Vietnamese flag would be raised above the American flag on a U.S. Navy ship. "Nothing that was described in the article actually happened, other than the trip to Vietnam," the Mikkelsons wrote just after Clinton arrived in Vietnam in November 2000. "No U.S. Navy ship flew an American flag subordinate to a Vietnamese flag," their Website said.
But Metcalf tells Insight the Clinton administration probably abandoned the flag protocol after the story created a public outrage. "According to people in the Navy, one of the reasons it didn't happen was because of the whole flag-flap ****storm that I created with the series of stories," Metcalf says. He cited Navy sources in the story, but said they didn't want to be identified in a story critical of the commander in chief. He later quoted Allan Fields, chief justice of the Marshall Islands Supreme Court, as saying that he, too, heard about the plans to lower the flag from high-ranking Navy officials on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Like CNSNews' Hogenson, Metcalf says he e-mailed Snopes three times, asking that the status of the account at least be changed to "undetermined" but received no response from the Mikkelsons.
Yet Snopes seems to have different standards in evaluating stories involving conservatives. Take a bizarre new rumor asserting that Attorney General John Ashcroft believes that calico cats are a sign of the devil. This claim was first made in November by liberal financial writer Andrew Tobias, the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, on his Website (andrewtobias.com). To say the least, Tobias was vague about his sources, writing only that "I got this odd story from someone who was definitely in a position to know and then confirmed it with someone else, also in a position to know." Given the stringent Mikkelson standards about anonymous sources in evaluating Metcalf's story, one would have expected them to classify the preposterous Tobias story as false. Instead, they labeled it undetermined. "What the game is here — if indeed there is one — we can't fathom," they wrote of the silly Tobias smear of Ashcroft, a cum laude graduate of Yale with a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
