WILLIAM IN WONDERLAND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001200590001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 6, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 27, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

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Approved For Release 2001/03/04 :- CIA-RD
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We were wondering last week why
William F. Buckley's magazine, the
National Review, published documents
attributed to government officials,
calling for avoidance of long innvolve-
ment in Vietnam, which Buckley later
admitted were forged. We were un-
satisfied then with Buckley's explana-
tion that the purpose of the hoax was
to prove that forgeries would be ac-
cepted as true if their contents were
plausible.
Now, in a column elsewhere on this
page, Buckley offers a further ex-
planation, the thrust.of which seems
to be that actual documents' saying
essentially the same thing as the
forgeries must exist somewhere. He
starts with "the certitude that these
.papers are merely paraphrases of
documents that actually do reside in
government archives," then, without
citing any evidence to support that
belief, concludes that the publication
of the forgeries proves "that the
Pentagon and the CIA are not cola -
posed of incompeterrttr- - the unwar-,
ranted conclusion to which runny
.. .
were led by the fragmentary revala-
tions (of the Pentagon Papers)."
He had touched on that same line of
reasoning when he announced the
hoax last week. Papers similar to his
magazine's -staff - written forgeries
must exist, he said, because "it is in-
conceivable to nie that there is nobody
in the Pentagon, CIA or White House
who has the same analytical?povvers as
a junior editor of the National Re-
view."
But saying that sometliing must exist
because you fervently wish it did is
not the same as proving that 'it does
exist. That distinction---that link with
reality-seems to have escaped Buck-
ley.
Oh dear,. as Buckley is wont to say,
what to do with people like that?
Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R001200590001-7