“Within recent days—in fact, I think while I was in Pakistan—at his request, he was extracted from Afghanistan with a small number of his senior supporters and fighters, I believe for consultation in Pakistan, and undoubtedly will be going back in there at that point where those consultations are completed. … [H]e requested to be extracted for a period, and we cooperated to extract him.” —Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, describing theU.S. rescue of Afghan opposition leader Hamid Karzai, leader of a prominent Pashtun tribe, at a Nov. 6 news briefing“In a satellite telephone interview with the BBC World Service today, Karzai not only repeated his assertion that he had not left Afghanistan, but disputed statements by U.S. officials that American aircraft had attacked Taliban forces in support of him. U.S. planes that were in the area when he was at risk of being captured by the Taliban last week appeared to be attacking targets that were ‘not close to us,’ he said. … Karzai said he and his supporters escaped on foot, with only bread and green tea for sustenance—and without help from the U.S. military. ‘We walked for three days from village to village after the attack, and we reached a safe position,’ Karzai told the BBC.” —Molly Moore, “Opposition Leader Denies U.S. Chopper Rescued Him in Afghanistan,” Washington Post, Nov. 9.
[Update, 3:30 p.m.: Many readers have pointed out that it’s possible that Karzai is lying, either because he doesn’t want it known that he’s in
[Update, Nov. 14: There still doesn’t appear to be clear evidence demonstrating that Karzai is lying, but Chatterbox is now less inclined to snicker at Karzai’s motive to lie. It seems his family in the United States has indeed been very jumpy about having him be seen as a U.S. pawn, and in recent days Karzai has been in talks with the Taliban urging it to surrender. In deference to that, and to the fact that many news organizations are now embracing Rumsfeld’s version as being the true one, Chatterbox retracts the whopper and apologizes to Donald Rumsfeld. Chalk it up to the fog of journalism.]
Got a whopper? Send it to chatterbox@slate.com. To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.
Whopper Archive:
Nov. 2, 2001: Dick Armey
Oct. 26, 2001: Gale Norton
Oct. 19, 2001: State Department Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker
Oct. 12, 2001: Clarence Thomas
Oct. 5, 2001: Abdul Salam Zaeef
Sept. 27, 2001: Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Dick Cheney
Sept. 20, 2001: Larry C. Johnson
Sept. 13, 2001: Yasser Arafat
Sept. 7, 2001: Tommy Thompson
Aug. 30, 2001: HHS Spokesman Bill Pierce
Aug. 23, 2001: Variety Editor Peter Bart
Aug. 17, 2001: Tom Daschle
Aug 10, 2001: Robert Mueller
Aug. 3, 2001: Barbara Olson
July 27, 2001: Jeffrey Archer
July 20, 2001: George W. Bush
July 13, 2001: George W. Bush
July 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
June 29, 2001: David Brock
June 22, 2001: Edmund Morris
June 15, 2001: George W. Bush
June 8, 2001: Nepali Prince Regent (subsequently, King) Gyanendra
June 1, 2001: Mary McGrory
May 25, 2001: Ari Fleischer
May 18, 2001: York, Pa., Mayor Charles Robertson
May 11, 2001: Ted Olson
May 4, 2001: Rear Adm. Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O’Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan. 26, 2001: Denise Rich
