February 21, 2003
Fair and Balanced?
Bill O'Reilly, after falling for a defamation scam and reading an email,
falsely attributed to me, on a televised network with worldwide coverage,
has failed to respond to my simple inquiries concerning his act of
defamation. Despite email contact with his legal team, I have yet to
receive a reply to my requests. More than 48 hours have passed since his
transgression, yet the "fair and balanced" O'Reilly, despite a
reputation for arrogance and outspokenness, remains mum.
I ask you, Mr. O'Reilly, are you just too embarrassed to admit that you were
had by a group of cyber terrorists or do you have something to hide? Here
is a copy of my simple request, sent to your lawyers:
Dear
David:
What would help me greatly is if you can give me the following information:
(1) What is the email address that the fake email came from?
(2) I'd like to see the contents of that email message.
(3) You might need a technical person for this request: I need the full header
of the email. The header contains information concerning the path
through the Internet that the email took. I may be able to use this to
determine the actual source of the email.
(4) Please explain to me your verification process. I'd like to know
what is done in order to verify the authorship of an email before it is put on
the air.
(5) Please describe all of the steps taken in this case in order to verify the
authorship of the email. If any telephone calls were made, I'll need to
know the telephone number contacted for confirmation.
For my part, should you wish to pursue the senders of the fraudulent email, I
would be happy to share the information I have gathered on them with you,
assuming you are forthcoming in assisting me as well.
Sincerely,
Stephen DeVoy
This sounds to me like a very reasonable request from a person subjected to
Mr. O'Reilly's cooperation with a group of individuals engaged in a year long
death threat, cyber stalking, and defamation campaign. After all, Mr.
O'Reilly, I'm just a little guy trying to find out who used you to libel
me. It seems clear to me that you have a responsibility to provide me the
above information. I can't think of any legitimate reason why you would
not. Of course, there are illegitimate reasons why one would not be
forthcoming with my request. For example, you may not have verified the
email. On the other hand, you may not have ever received the email.
Of course, you may have received the email, but find yourself unable to humble
yourself to the task of admitting that you made a mistake.
Let's take another look at the messages posted by the cyber terrorist before
you read his libelous email:
letter
to O'Reilly
In the document links above we see the following statements:
"We've done this before and O'Reilly has read our emails on the air
three or four times."
Interesting, O'Reilly, if we are to take this cyber terrorist at his word,
you've already read his spoofed email three or four times. Mr. O'Reilly,
what percentage of letters sent to you do you actually read. My own
brother has been sending you emails for years and you have never read any of his
emails. Yet, this individual claims that you have read three or four of
his emails (fake emails at that)! He was so confident that you would read
it that he posted a message on an Internet forum bragging about it.
Doesn't probability make it highly unlikely that some random individual,
completely unconnected to your show, could pull this off? One of his
fellow cyber terrorists seems to agree with me:
Maybe
it's someone who works for FoxNews
If it were someone working for Fox News, the failure of your legal team to
respond to my request would be clear, wouldn't it? After all, if you never
received the email you read on the air, there would be no email, email header,
or verification process...
Well, Mr. O'Reilly, the ball's in your court.