Press TV, the Iranian government-run operation that employs George Galloway to do two weekly shows, reports on its website that President Bush has revoked his posthumous pardon of Charlie Winters, the American who transferred planes to the Israeli Haganah in 1948 and was convicted under the Neutrality Act.
One problem, though. The report is absolute bullshit. In fact Bush revoked another pardon:
[Isaac Robert] Toussie, convicted of making false statements to the Housing and Urban Development Department and of mail fraud, was among 19 people pardoned Tuesday.
But after learning in news reports that Toussie’s father had donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party a few months ago, as well as other information, the White House issued an extraordinary statement Wednesday saying the president was reversing his decision on Toussie’s case.
So (either incompetently or dishonestly) Press TV conflated the report of Winters’s pardon with the revocation of Toussie’s pardon. Their website ended up reporting:
Bush revoked his pardon upon learning that the late Charles Winters’ father contributed USD 28,500 to the national Republican Party in April…
Charlie Winters died in 1984 at the age of 71, so that would make his father probably the oldest human being on the planet.
I await Press TV’s correction and apology.
