A couple weeks ago in regard to the story about a college student being visited by the FBI because he had checked out a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book Kip noted:

FULL DISCLOSURE: There are some who are insisting that this story is a hoax. But if it is then that means that an MSM reporter, or two university professors, are risking their jobs on a lark. Sounds unlikely to me. The reporter, Aaron Nicodemus, has publicly insisted that the story is genuine.

Well it turns out they were right:

The reporter writes about how the student’s story eventually started to unravel under intense questioning (only after the initial story was written), and how the tale “came at a perfect storm in the news cycle” due to the recent New York Times story about government surveillance. It doesn’t mention the paper’s failure to speak with the student prior to publishing the piece, nor does it offer up any kind of admission or apology.

Here is the retraction article which was published on 12/24. It is 4 days later and until I ran across the article in Regret the Error linked above I still thought the original story was true. I wonder how many will continue to cite this as an example of bushian governmental badness (which it would be if true). For instance this entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 3:29 am UTC.