Apocalypse Now

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From the editor of Asia Times On Line

Hi Henry:

The Apocalypse Now yarn was written by our Roving Eye, Pepe Escobar, on
the
basis of an alleged Al-Jazeera interview with "Osama bin Laden's No 3
man",
in which he claimed that al-Qaeda has nukes somewhere in the US. We were

dubious about the story as no other reputable news organization had run
it,
but were also mindful of the fact that the mainstream US media are more
sensitive these days than before September 2001 to government pressure
to
suppress certain stories. We were unable to reach the reporter to get
him to
re-confirm the validity of the story. So we elected to run it but
attempt to
cover our butts with caveats and a tongue-in-cheek headline warning our
readers that it might all be bogus.

But today a reader advised us of an alert on a website that specializes
in
warnings on viruses and other Internet mischief that the story was
indeed an
e-mail hoax, so we pulled the story, which of course has aroused even
more
curiosity among our readers - we even got a phone call just now from
someone
claiming to be with Deutsche Bank in Tokyo asking what happened to the
story.

A slightly more detailed explanation of this saga than the one currently
on
our front page should appear the next time we upload, around 7 a.m. EST.

Cheers
Dave