You Said What?: Lies and Propaganda Throughout History

329 Pages·2007·3.1 MB·English

by  Bill Fawcett

?
W H AT
SAID
YOU
LIES AND PROPAGANDA
THROUGHOUT
HISTORY
@
EDITED BY
BILL FAWCETT
Dedicated to the memory of
James Patrick Baen,
the most honest person I have known
CONTENTS
Introduction: So Many Lies, so Few Pages vii
Politics 1
Watergate: The Great American Scandal 3
Stalin’s Big Lies 10
McKinley’s Missionary Position 16
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: Silversmith
or Poster Child for Civil War Draft 21
J. Edgar Hoover’s Not-so-Red Menace 29
The Soviets Blink 35
Daley Country 41
The First Casualty of War Is Truth 47
James K. Polk’s Fabrication to Congress 49
How the Roman Empire Lost Its Gallic Wars
but Julius Caesar Became Emperor 53
iv CONTENTS
Radio Raiders of the Polish Frontier 58
Murder Most Foul 62
Listening In 67
The Yellow Peril That Wasn’t 73
The Magical Lies of Quicksilver 78
And U-2 89
How Not to Sell a War 93
Incident in Tonkin Gulf: The Dishonest Truth 100
Sink or Swim with Ngo Dinh Diem 106
King Hussein’s Trust Issues 122
History Books Lie Too 127
Cleopatra: Looks Were Not Deceiving 129
Death on the Nile 137
Christmas—In May? 141
Witches, Devils, and Puritans in Massachusetts 148
So Humble in Green County, Tennessee, 1834 154
J’Accuse! 157
Seventy-nine Bridges 162
Village of the Damned 168
World War II’s Master of Lies 174
Arms for Hostages? 181
CONTENTS v
But It Was in a Book . . . 189
This Is a True Story . . . Not 191
The Author of This Book Is . . . 203
The Janet Cooke Pulitzer Fiasco 213
Mark Hoffman’s Forgeries and Murders 217
The New York Times’s Khmer Rouge Story 222
The New York Sun’s Six-Part Story on Life on
the Moon 226
Trust Me, I Can Cure You 231
The Royal Touch That Healed 233
Grover Cleveland’s Secret Dental Surgery 237
Dr. Albert Abrams and the ERA 241
The High-Voltage Cure-all 246
Bad Blood 252
FDR’s Legs 257
Smoking Is Good for You 261
A-OK JFK: The Presidential Campaign Trail, 1960 266
Killing by Bureaucracy 270
What Lies Ahead? 277
“We Are Here to Save the Holy Land, Making
a Profit Is Just Incidental!” 279
The Fake of a Fake 285
vi CONTENTS
Tower of London: Not Really Where You Get
a Head 289
Are My Arms Tired! 295
No Speak English 299
Eric Clapton’s Undying but Temporary Passion
for Patti Boyd-Harrison 304
Vincent “the Chin” Gigante 308
Epilogue: Color Him Red-Faced 313
About the Editor
Other Books by Bill Fawcett
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
@
INTRODUCTION
S M L , F P
O ANY IES SO EW AGES
S
o many lies, so few pages. When this book was proposed there
was no shortage of lies, deceptions, and frauds great and small
to use as examples. The fact is that the lies told in an era give
us some real insights into history. So this book could be a deep
study of the philosophical ramifications of deceptions on histori-
cal, um . . . okay, you got me. It isn’t philosophical anything. We
did this book because lies, when you are not the one caught tell-
ing them, anyhow, are both fascinating and fun. They do tell you
a lot—mostly that some of the greatest leaders in history should
be embarrassed. So we looked at all those uncounted thousands
of lies that have been told to us and to those who came before us
and came up with what follows, the story of some of the strangest,
best known, and darkest lies. You are even likely to find a few lies
here that you thought were truths. (Hint, I threw out my coonskin
cap, and it wasn’t to please the terrorists at PETA.) This selection
of lies from history are fun and interesting—and a few will simply
viii INTRODUCTION
amaze you that anyone ever believed them. Their topics run the
gamut from war and politics to medicine and crime. Oh, and it’s
safe to leave this book in the bathroom or take it to the offi ce. We
carefully did not cover the lies lovers and married c ouples tell each
other and will leave to you all of those deceptions perpetrated by
our current leaders.
Some of the lies we include caused great pain, others great
embarrassment. Through the perspective of history it may seem
strange that anyone, occasionally just about everyone who heard
them, believed some of the whoppers in this book. Still they “made
sense at the time.” There are some lies p eople just want to believe.
Other lies are accepted because no one knows better. Many lies are
successful simply because the liar is so good at telling them.
This book is written in many small sections. It really is meant to
be picked up, put down, read while commuting. It may make you
think, it might even outrage you a few times, and it will occasion-
ally elicit a chuckle or two. When editing this book, it has been
tempting to draw conclusions about the nature of truth and the
state of man from its contents, but I will leave that to those of you
so inclined. That said, while the intent of this book is to entertain,
no one who has contributed to it will be upset if you view the lies
we are hearing and accepting today with a little more skepticism.
That said, to get us off to a roaring start and because it just has to
be in a book on lying somewhere, so needing no introduction here
it is:
“I did not have sex with that woman” (President William Jefferson Clinton).
BILL FAWCET T
ED I TOR
POLITICS
@
How can you tell a politician is lying?
His mouth is moving . . .
A joke that likely first appeared
sometime during the Sumerian Empire.
“I am not a crook” (Richard Nixon, 1956).
(He should have added “yet.”)