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Friday, April 29, 2011

National Media in need of a Spine Donor...

Parts of stories related to the CANVS story have seen the light of day in the press:

How to commit high treason and buy your way out:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17814559/ns/business-world_business/

Build your own Golden Parachute:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2005/nov/army-colonel-indicted

Win friends and influence people:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=1667009&page=1

Will the dead Congressman please take a bow (oh my bad he's DEAD):
http://www.bnet.com/blog/government/kuchera-group-goes-softly-into-the-night/4965

But, after over a decade of CANVS trying to find someone in the media with the moral courage to run our story, NO CIGAR!

One night in DC there were no hotel or motel rooms to be had (typical when they are wrangling over the budget, they can't pack enough lobbyists into the place...), in a last ditch effort to secure a location to stage my demonstrations and briefings to the various agencies that I had scheduled, I drove up to the Watergate hotel, walked in, and magically procured two rooms (it did cost me an arm and a leg). In a moment of weakness (thinking I could find someone who might run the CANVS story) I called the Washington post and left the following message:

Mr. Woodward, this is Mr. Walkenstein I am at the Watergate Hotel, I have a story you may be interested in running.

A few minutes later Bob Woodward called me back. I briefly outlined some of the high-points of a story worthy of National Media exposure. He dispatched Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Mary Pat Flaherty to come to my room at the Watergate Hotel.

In a gesture of good faith (and to put her at ease as well as to provide bonofidies) I had a number of different night vision instruments set up for her to look at. After demonstrating the equipment in question to her I provided her with enough soft copy data to not only write a story, but did the leg work associated with independent sources that could confirm all of the factual information I provided. After many months of going back and forth answering her every question, and providing contextual information, there was a deafening radio silence.

When I called Woodward he asked me to never call him again. I asked for the return of my data many times but to no avail. No explanation was ever given by Mary or Bob as to why the cold shoulder.

I will quote my Mom, she used to say: "I am seldom surprised, but I am often disappointed". This was usually in the context of folks promising to do things and not keeping their word.

I grew up with many fundamental principals seared into my being (awesome parents and personal experience), one of the key ones for me is:

YOUR WORD IS YOUR BOND

In the case of Bob Woodward and the Washington Post to date they have clearly defaulted on their Bond!

Message to the Post: PLEASE RETURN MY DATA OR RUN THE STORY!

"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five." —Groucho Marx

 Anyone can have a sense of humor when everything is going well, a true sense of humor is when you can laugh in the face of overwhelming odds. While I am on the subject of humor I would like to share with you another one of my favorite Groucho Marx quotes that sums up behavior in our Nation's Capitol:

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."