I don’t know if it strikes you this way, but it seems to me there’s an awful lot of high-level lyin’ going on these days.
Some of the stuff I’ve been reading in the papers and online seems blatantly false.
Consider these examples:
Jon S. Corzine, former MF Global chief executive, on whether he authorized the use of customer funds to beef up finances in another division of the company, a major global financial derivatives broker before going bankrupt.
“I never gave any instructions to misuse customer money, never intended to give any instructions or authority to misuse customer funds, and I find it very hard to understand how anyone could misconstrue what I’ve said as a way to misuse customer money.”
***
Joseph Amendola, former assistant Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky’s attorney, describing his client’s waiver of a preliminary hearing as a tactical measure, not an indicator that his client might enter into a plea agreement.
“We’re ready to defend, we’ve always been ready to defend…Today’s waiver has nothing to do with conceding anything. There have been no plea negotiations. There will be no plea negotiations. This is a fight to the death.”
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James Murdoch, News Corp. executive, on whether he knew about widespread cell-phone hacking at his company’s former News of the World newspaper.
“Any suspicion of wider spread wrongdoing, none of that was mentioned to me.”
…And after being asked about an e-mail, which he responded to, that referenced widespread phone hacking at the paper.
“I did not read the full e-mail chain.”
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Attorney General Eric Holder on whether he or other higher-ups at the Justice Department knew about the government’s “Fast and Furious” investigation into an Arizona-based gun-trafficking network. (Investigators ended up losing track of hundreds of weapons. Many probably reached Mexico, and two were found near the scene where a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed last December.)
“The notion that somehow or other this thing reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that. … I don’t think is supported by the facts…It’s kind of something I think certain members of Congress would like to see, the notion that somehow or other high-level people in the department were involved. As I said, I don’t think that is going to be shown to be the case — which doesn’t mean that the mistakes were not serious.”
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Here’s a late addition to our Parade of Prevaricators…
Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, who recently became the 296th Marine to earn the Medal of Honor for bravery in action in Afghanistan. In a big battle, Meyer claimed to have saved the lives of 13 U.S. service members, leave his vehicle to rescue 24 Afghans and lead a final push to retrieve four dead Americans.
McClatchy correspondent Jonathan S. Landay, who was embedded with Meyer’s unit, set the record straight in a story that ran on the front page of today’s Kansas City Star. According to Landay, Meyer was, indeed, deserving of the Medal of Honor, but he greatly embellished his heroism.
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I’m not sure any of these guys deserve to be wished a Merry Christmas.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 