The Scams, Scandals, Hoaxes, Frauds and Pranks of August

Actually, Mike and his wife had consumed that bottle the evening before and, as a practical joke, filled it with Gallo, assuming the guy would immediately know the difference. He didn't. Mike and his wife were so horribly embarrassed that they didn't have the heart to reveal the hoax.

--5 Aug. 2008
Book claims White House ordered faked letter to tie Saddam and 9/11
WASHINGTON (AFP) -- A new book by author Ron Suskind alleges that the White House ordered the CIA to fabricate a letter purportedly showing links between deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the September 11, 2001 attacks. The book, "The Way of the World," was immediately attacked by the White House, the CIA and former CIA director George Tenet who is alleged to have passed the White House order to senior CIA operators. "There was no such order from the White House to me nor, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from CIA ever involved in any such effort," Tenet said in a statement. In an interview with National Public Radio, Suskind said his account came from the former head of the Near East Division, Rob Richard, and others "right in the thick of this operation."
--Agence France-Presse (AFP)

--7 Aug. 2008
John Edwards: The Picture of a Scandal: New developments in the story that cannot be reported.
"We're working off our timetable, not yours," says David Perel, editor of The National Enquirer. "I'm not letting other media drive the story for us." Perel is talking about the issue of whether the Enquirer should have published, by now, photos of a July 22 confrontation in a Los Angeles hotel between its reporters and former Sen. John Edwards. Edwards had, the Enquirer reported, come to the Beverly Hilton to see a woman named Rielle Hunter, with whom he has had an affair and a baby. In an almost surreal scene described on the Enquirer's website, Edwards was said to have fled to a men's room, pushing against a door while the reporters pushed and asked questions from the other side.
--Byron York, National Review

--11 Aug. 2008
Some Beijing Olympic Fireworks Faked
Because one organization is responsible for filming the Olympics--Beijing Olympic Broadcasting--foreign TV networks had no choice but to accept the altered video. Some of the fireworks seen in television coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics games in Beijing were created digitally, according to a report in The Beijing Times. Twenty-nine fiery footsteps traced in the air above Bird's Nest National Stadium were created using real fireworks. But The Telegraph in the U.K. reports that because event organizers feared they would be unable to capture the pyrotechnics live on camera, a digital effects team spent almost a year preparing a computerized version of the 55-second footstep sequence, which was inserted into the live video feed.