I didn't know that some of the documents referenced in To Set The Record Straight are being removed from the internet and library databases.I noticed that mainly with some recent online articles dealing with Iraq-related stuffstuff relating to Haditha, Massey, Durbin, Murtha etc. I would guess that some of that might be libel/lawsuit-related. What struck me was that in some cases it was even being removed from the Wayback Machine.
Brazen. Have you readBut in enough cases the originals were still around on FR or other news-clipping sites, or I had clipped them myself when they were originally posted, so I could document what was removed.Blacklisted by History:Evans asserts that a lot of the record pertaining to the McCarthy investigations has been stuffed down the memory hole. The relevant microfilm of old newspapers missing from libraries, etc.
The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy
and His Fight Against America's Enemies (Hardcover) by M. Stanton Evans ?
But are they actually pruning the wayback machine! How do they expect to escape universal condemnation for that! It certainly sounds like anyone on the Internet should be able to verify your claim. Why don't you document it, posting an original article that you have a copy of and challenging people to find that article now? Best reference of all, perhaps, would be an article which still exists on the Wayback Machine version of FR but has been clipped from the wayback machine version of the original source. That would demonstrate that FR hadn't somehow jiggered its database to fabricate the article in question after the fact. I think you have a big story if you do that.
Is that Evans book out yet? I’ve been waiting for it to come out for a while now, but the publication date kept getting pushed back. His articles that I’ve read look good. He picked up on a few things I’ve noticed in my own research that I haven’t seen anyone else cover, so I’ve been looking forward to seeing what he comes up with in the full-length treatment.
I’ve inferred that the Wayback Machine seems to have a policy that they will remove access to things under certain circumstances if the copyright owner or a party in a libel suit or other interested party requests it, because I’ve noticed them remove things on other occasions as well. In some cases there may be legitimate reasons for removing things, so I don’t assume there’s something amiss in all instances, but in this case I was surprised how frequently articles on the aforementioned group of topics were being placed out of access.
Oh, good, I just looked at your link and it looks like it is out! Thanks for the update on that, I’ve been wanting to get that for a while! :-)