The original and the revision of the NYT’s bio-weapons canard
The New York Times casually asserted last month that the US had used biological weapons against foreign countries. What the NYT originally said on May 4:
Dr. Cone, the black liberation theology theorist, has known Mr. Wright for decades and says he much admires his provocations. But when Mr. Wright opined recently that the United States government may have used AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black people (Mr. Wright notes, correctly, that the United States has tried biological warfare on foreign nations), Dr. Cone winced.
The NYT piece as corrected on June 1 omitted the original assertion entirely, not just in an appended correction:
Dr. Cone, the black liberation theology theorist, has known Mr. Wright for decades and says he much admires his provocations. But when Mr. Wright opined recently that the United States government may have used AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black people (Mr. Wright alleges that the United States has tried biological warfare on foreign nations), Dr. Cone winced.
We found it interesting that there is no cached version of the original NYT story on Google, so we wanted to see if we could find the wording of the original story, and we did, though it took a while. It had not vanished down the memory hole. It is also interesting how casual was the assertion by the NYT that the US had committed such war crimes. We wonder: did those war crimes in the imagination of the Times occur before or after President Nixon’s executive order in 1969 prohibiting germ warfare under any circumstances whatsoever? (HT: Powerline)