www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm
NEW BEDFORD -- The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Littl e Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.
The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, aft er being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.
But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office o f UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. P ontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the st udent added new details.
The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student's uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter.
Williams went to the student's home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time the y had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.
For more than an hour on Thursday, he spoke of two visits from Homeland Security over his inter-library loan request for the 1965, Peki ng Press version of "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung," which is th e book's official title.
His basic tale remained the same: The book was on a government watch list, and his loan request had triggered a visit from an agent who was seeking to "tame" reading of particular books.
Media outlets from around the world were requesting interviews with the students, and a number of reporters had been asking UMass Dartmouth students and professors for information.
The story's release came at a perfect storm in the news cycle. Only a day before, The New York Times had reported that President Bush h ad allowed the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps on internati onal phone calls from the United States without a warrant.
There was an increased sense among some Americans that the US government was overstepping its bounds and trampling on civil liberties in order to thwart future attacks of terrorism. The story of a college student being questioned for requesting a 40-year old book on Communism fed right into that atmosphere.
In Thursday's retelling of the story, the student added several new twists, ones that the professors and journalist had not heard befor e The biggest new piece of information was an alleged second visit of H omeland Security agents the previous night, where two agents waited in h is living room for two hours with his parents and brother while he drove back from a retreat in western Massachusetts. He said he, the agents, h is parents and his uncle all signed confidentiality agreements that the story would never be told.
He revealed the agents' names: one was Nicolai Brushaev or Bros haev, and the other was simply Agent Roberts. He said they were dressed in black suits with thin black ties, "just like the guys in Men in Black ."
He had dates and times and places, things he had signed and sen t back in order to receive the book. The tale involved his twin brother, who allegedly requested the book for him at UMass Amherst; his uncle, a former FBI attorney who took care of all the paperwork; and his parents , who signed those confidentiality agreements.
Every time there was a fact to be had that would verify the story -- providing a copy of the confidentiality agreements the student and agent signed, for example -- there would be a convenient excuse. The uncle took all the documents hom e to Puerto Rico, he said.
What was the address of the Homeland Security building in Bosto n where he and his uncle visited the agency and actually received a copy of the book? It was a brick building, he said, but he couldn't remember where it was, or what was around it.
He said he met a former professor at the mysterious Homeland Se curity building who had requested a book on bomb-making, along with two PhD students and a one pursuing a master's degree who had also been st opped from accessing books. The student couldn't remember their names, b ut the former professor had appeared on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox Ne ws recently, he said.
While The Standard-Times had tape recorded the entire tale on T hursday, the reporter could not reach the student for comment after he a dmitted making up the story.
During the whole episode, the professors said that while they w anted to protect the student from the media that were flooding their voi ce mails and e-mail boxes seeking comment and information, they also wan ted to know: Was the story true?
"I grew skeptical of this story, as did Bob, considering the ra mifications," Dr. "I spent the last five days a voiding work, and the international media, and rest, trying to get names and dates and facts. My investigation eventually took me to his house, where I began to investigate family matters. I eventually found out the whole thing had been invented, and I'm happy to report that it's safe to borrow books."
Pontbriand said the entire episode has been "an incredible experience and exposure for something a student had said." He said all a long, his only desire had been to "get to the bottom of it and get the t ruth of the matter."
"When it blew up into an international story, our only desire w as to interview this student and get to the truth. We did not want from the outset to declare the student a liar, but we wanted to check out his story," he said. We have great concern for thi s student's health and welfare."
Mr Hoey, the university spokesman, said the university had bee n unable to substantiate any of the facts of the story since it first wa s reported in The Standard-Times on Dec.
"I can now tell my students that it is safe to do research with out being monitored," he said. "With that hanging in the air like before , I couldn't say that to them."
"When I came back, like wow, there's this circus coming on. I s aw my cell phone, and I see like, wow, I have something like 75 messages and like something like 87 missed calls," he said. I usually get one or probably two a week and that's about it, and I usu ally pick them up."
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