Time: Fri Mar 07 14:00:37 1997
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Fri, 7 Mar 1997 06:05:38 -0700 (MST)
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 13:54:25 -0800
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: J. Orlin Grabbe
<snip>
> Hero or crackpot, man
> a star of Internet gossip
>
> by Don Cox
> Reno Gazette-Journal
> March 6, 1997
>
> J. Orlin Grabbe sits in the Area
>51 Bar on East Fourth Street, sipping a
>beer and accepting congratulations from
>friends for his Sunday performance on
>national TV.
>
> They shake Grabbe's hand and smile
>as he describes outwitting well-known
>"60 Minutes" correspondent Leslie Stahl
>during an interview in the Reno bar.
>
> Grabbe, a Harvard graduate who
>taught at the Wharton School of
>Business, is a hero in Area 51, an
>alternative music hangout. He won't
>reveal how he earns a living in Reno.
>
> But Grabbe's a hero despite his
>portrayal on the popular CBS news
>magazine as a Reno computer kook who
>transmits conspiracy theories and
>unbelievable information about national
>events to millions of people in
>cyberspace.
>
> "Stahl is not that bright when you
>get right down to it," Grabbe says. "I
>could have done a much better job at
>ripping myself apart."
>
> Stahl wouldn't answer phone calls
>for her side of the story. But CBS
>figures it got its man.
>
> The network calls Grabbe "an
>interesting example of some of the less
>credible sources you can find on the
>Internet."
>
> Grabbe was interviewed by Stahl at
>Area 51 in December for the 60 Minutes
>segment broadcast Sunday on the
>difference between fact and fiction on
>the Internet.
>
> CBS says it wanted Grabbe for one
>main reason--he says a missile fired by
>Middle East terrorists caused the
>explosion and crash of TWA Flight 800
>off the coast of New York on July 17.
>
> That's the kind of electronic
>gossip, according to a local Internet
>expert, that floats in cyberspace.
>
> "You have people talking about
>more subjects than ever before. You
>have a Tower of Babel," says Milton
>Wolf, director of library collection
>development at the University of
>Nevada, Reno, who studies computer
>communication.
>
> "People are talking. Talk is
>cheap."
>
> Grabbe brags that he lured CBS and
>Stahl to Area 51 after refusing to be
>interviewed at the network's New York
>headquarters.
>
> "Since I know I have them on the
>hook, I insist on doing it at Area 51.
>It's hilarious," says Grabbe, a regular
>who knows the bar owners and employees.
>
> "They come all the way out to Reno
>to interview some bar patron."
>
> Area 51 is named for the top
>secret location in southern Nevada
>where the Air Force conducts test
>flights of experimental aircraft.
>
> CBS searched the net to find
>Grabbe, who says he tricked the network
>into believing he is Reno's town
>crackpot.
>
> "She (Stahl) turned around and
>tried to portray me as entertaining
>myself by making all this up," Grabbe
>says.
>
> "I said, `I don't believe in
>anything.' "
>
> The report on Flight 800 is on
>Grabbe's Internet home page, where
>anyone with a computer can read it.
>The web page site is
>www.aci.net/kalliste/.
>
> "That TWA Flight 800 was taken out
>by a ground-to-air missile was known
>from the beginning by U.S. official
>agencies," Grabbe's July 23 report
>says.
>
> "The flight path of the missile
>was captured both on radar and by
>satellite. The only question was the
>identity of the missile and the
>identity of the group responsible."
>
> Grabbe identifies both. The
>missile, according to Grabbe's report,
>is a Stinger, possibly one of 200
>missing from U.S. military bases. The
>group, Grabbe says, is connected to
>Syria. Grabbe also reports that more
>airplanes may be shot down.
>
> "The group responsible, identified
>by intelligence sources as working on
>behalf of Syria, says there are five
>more planes to go," Grabbe says on the
>Internet.
>
> "It was not something I made up.
>It was not information Leslie Stahl
>would have gotten in her wildest
>dreams," says Grabbe, whose other
>Internet reports include a claim that
>60 Minutes chief correspondent Mike
>Wallace received a $150,000 bribe from
>the Democratic Party.
>
> Grabbe says he gets a lot of
>information from government sources,
>including a report that President
>Clinton snorts cocaine.
>
> "I had a source in the White
>House," Grabbe says.
>
> Grabbe says his interest in
>cyberspace information started with
>computer research into world finance.
>
> Harvard University identifies
>Grabbe as receiving a doctorate in
>economics from the school in 1981. The
>University of Pennsylvania confirms
>Grabbe was on the faculty of its
>prestigious Wharton School of Business
>from 1981 to 1986.
>
> Grabbe says he moved to Reno in
>1995 to escape high local taxes on the
>East Coast and continue computer
>research.
>
> But Internet sources, according to
>Wolf, can be a couple of people who
>believe the same theory and send
>electronic messages to each other.
>
> "You have to watch who you are
>talking to," Wolf says.
>
> "It's one of the pitfalls."
>
>Posted here March 6, 1997
>Web Page: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/
>
>
>-> Send "subscribe snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
>-> Posted by: kalliste@aci.net (J. Orlin Grabbe)
>
>
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