SlimVirgin started a stub on John K. Cooley in December, 2004. Around 1989-1990, Cooley was an ABC News correspondent in London. A book that Google recently scanned, I Solemnly Swear by former DEA agent Michael T. Hurley, is about the Pan Am 103 investigations. It relates that Cooley, who knew Hurley in Cyprus when both were stationed there earlier, tracked Hurley down in Seattle to ask him about the Pan Am 103/Cyprus/DEA connection. Hurley reports that Cooley passed the phone to Linda Mack, who was working on the story for ABC News. Linda Mack came on the phone with her English accent.

SlimVirgin is almost the only person interested in the Wikipedia bio of Cooley. Unlike Steven Emerson, who wrote a prominent book on Pan Am 103, Cooley has not written about Pan Am 103, as far as I know. Why would SlimVirgin start a stub on Cooley one month into her Wikipedia career if he had nothing to do with the Pan Am 103 story?

The answer is that Cooley worked at ABC News London, and so did Linda Mack. This is more evidence that SlimVirgin is identical to Linda Mack. Cooley is retired now and reportedly lives in Athens, Greece. I haven't been able to find contact information for him.

OK, I have the book now. There are no references to Linda Mack in the index or acknowledgements, and the book has no photos.

It dawned on me, as soon as I had the book in my hands, that I know who Steven Emerson is. He's somewhat notorious, and SV writing a "glowing stub" on him for Wikipedia fits her M.O. He notes in his acknowledgments that he worked closely on the book with Oliver "Buck" Revell, who I know as a noted Iran-Contra figure, and an operative in the government/private sector task force that came after LaRouche back in the '80s.[1]

Thanks, HK. That's one more thing that doesn't need to be checked. I noticed today that SlimVirgin started a stub on Charles Glass on September 6, 2005. Mr. Glass is another Middle East specialist, formerly with ABC News. He even has an email address. On the theory that he knows something -- or at least knows how to contact Mr. Cooley -- I've emailed him and hope to get a reply soon.

Sorry, I just had to take note of this:


Yes, this is clearly not an attack at all. It's almost a kindness, relatively speaking!

And three days later, just after Tony's request to be de-opp'd:


Now, it could be said that I'm trying to give the impression here that SlimVirgin was responsible for Tony's decision to give up adminship. This is, of course, not true - many editors and fellow admins have complained about Tony, not just SlimVirgin.

What it suggests, though, is a complete lack of self-awareness on SlimVirgin's part. If there was ever anyone on Wikipedia who was, and is, unwilling to trust anyone else's judgment about him- or herself, it's SlimVirgin. And there she goes, pointing the finger at poor Tony, as if the problem couldn't possibly apply to her, no sirree!

Everybody Loves SlimVirgin!

Indeed. Anyone noticed the relative low contribution level of SlimVirgin?

I noticed a full two-day break before she came back to delete something on her talk page, but I didn't want to say anything for fear of jinxing everybody!

I generally try to keep my theories about peoples' actual mental states to myself, though I often don't succeed, especially in Slimmy's case. But it may be no coincidence that this latest 48-hour break coincided with Patrick Byrne's arrival on this site... So at the risk of appearing too sympathetic, it might be best if we try to take a wait-and-see attitude, just for a little while?

Bad news: I heard from Syracuse University, and there's nothing in that archive box that would interest us. Specifically, no video tape and no picture.

Good news: I got contact information for Mr. Cooley thanks to Mr. Glass, and sent off an email asking for help with anything he knows about Linda Mack.

I had written it off to Yom Kippur.

I've cross referenced her editing patterns with other Jewish high holy days and have not observed what would seem to be a direct relationship one way or the other, either up or down. She just edits like a machine.

Just to get some perspective here...is it the case that the entire Linda Mack connection goes back to the single instance of "slimvirgin@@gmail.com" being tied to that name on the King's College alumni site? Barring that, would we still be calling her Sarah McEwan? Or might we have derived the name and circumstances by combining Daniel's interaction with her in the early 90s and Patrick's experience?

The Kings College email discovery was the tipping point, but the connection is stronger than that.

Go to http://www.namesbeyond.com/cgi-bin/Registrar?action=whois and search for "slimvirgin.com". You see the same email as on the Kings College site.

Do a forensic analysis of her first month or two of edits: Pierre Salinger, Pan Am 103, etc. She has more than a passing acquaintance with these topics.

Her IP address, when we've been able to catch it, is (IP address redacted). She uses a Mac, which she brags about on her User page (see the categories below). Elsewhere she described herself as using a Mac with Firefox. The user_agent on that IP address was:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

While her IP address now appears to geolocate to somewhere in Saskatchewan, that wasn't the case a year ago. Back then it geolocated to the Calgary area, which matches with the slimvirgin.com domain registration. Database glitch, probably.

Her domain registration lists a "S. McEwan)" but if you poke around Google, you will find a letter to the editor of the UK Telegraph where a "Sarah McEwan, Canada" protests fox hunting. SlimVirgin is very pro-animal rights.

Finally, her poodle looks very sad to have ended up with such a mean owner.

That would cause a 25 hour break from sunset on Sunday to nightfall on Monday.

She's back

Apparently Bhouston is still at it, too! Here, SlimVirgin erases a note left by him on her talk page, saying he's going to report her and JayJG for "tag-teaming" to get around the 3RR rule:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=79337036

But JayJG, ever the gentleman, actually responds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=78521813

So anyway... Apparently, a few weeks ago she "forked" her NAS article off into "New anti-Semitism (term)," probably just to increase everyone's confusion and frustration levels, and so that she could do more consecutive reverting without JayJG's assistance (i.e., with two articles, you can do six reverts, not just three - simple economics, really). So, when Bhouston started to give her some static about it, suggesting that the two articles be merged, she moved the discussion over to the new article's talk page, where presumably fewer people will see it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=79317327

But it didn't work, because Bhouston (how is it he hasn't been banned yet?) decided not to give up. Anyway, it's now over here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:New_anti...tism_%28term%29

I think you are a bit mistaken here? It was Bhouston that started the New anti-Semitism (term) article, and Slim who called it a POV fork.

SlimVirgin is now dismantling it as planned.

Oops, you're right. Sorry, I totally missed that... Damned confusing, these edit wars!

It makes more sense now, actually. IMO that wasn't an especially smart thing for Bhouston to do, unless he just wanted to draw more attention to the whole situation... It's not like Slimmy was ever going to let him actually have his own article on that subject, and if it's merged into "History of anti-Semitism," she'll just gain further ownership control over that too.

Whole thing's starting to look a bit silly, isn't it?

Nah, that's because she won't feed it meat. A less pathetic dog would rip out her throat in her sleep.

Come on, now - that's just mean! To the dog, that is.

lolol vegetarian dog... how sad.

Everybody see the changes she's making to the blocking policy?

This looks like the Wikipedia equivalent of one country amassing troops on its neighbor's borders. I'd warn any active WP editors here to get their defenses in place.

Pardon me for suggesting this, but why are they even bothering? This is delusional thinking at it's most obvious. Presumably they know that the law (of what country?) doesn't protect their anonymity. Conventional morality isn't on their side either, given that they're basically providing a huge, open platform for anyone to offend and libel real, non-anonymous people without consequence for doing it. So what do they have left? Blocks? What are blocks on some anonymous interweb site going to do against this level of unwanted personal exposure?

It's the online equivalent to sticking pins in a voodoo doll!

And to think that in this case, at least, they could probably end the whole thing, right now, by simply deleting a few completely marginal articles and putting one or two humane and society-friendly policies in place. Think of how much nicer things would be over there if they did that... But noooo, anyone who complains about what they do, or criticizes them, or questions their motives, must by necessity be an "evil troll" who wants to "destroy the project."

We're trying to help the stupid project, actually. We're trying to save it from the reactionary idiots who run it.

My domains came off the Wikipedia spam blacklist yesterday, for the first time in months. That's because I'm no longer redirecting to wikipediareview.com. One interesting side effect of this is that immediately I started seeing referrals in my logs from Wikipedia Talk pages that were linking to specific searches within my IRC logs. You can construct a search to show how nasty certain Wikipedians are toward other Wikipedians on IRC chat, and paste the URL of that search right into a Talk page. Very effective, and you're not even "publishing" IRC logs.

How long will it take SlimVirgin to add yet another paragraph to that block-policy page? If that happens, you can probably find the same IRC chat pages on Google by now, so SlimVirgin should be sure to make it clear in her next blocking-policy paragraph that Google is off-limits too.

No real-world intrusions. No IRC logs. No Google. No Yahoo. No MSN. No nothing. Only SlimVirgin and her poodle, building their own private view of the world.

I am taking another look now, based on new evidence, at the possibility that LaRouche's friendship with Salinger made LaRouche a particular target for SV. That doesn't rule out any number of complementary co-factors.

BTW, I am reading a short novel by John le Carré entitled Call for the Dead, in which two of the characters are Adam Scarr and The Virgin. That's a bit unheimlich.

I'm completely captivated by the discussion around what Slim is plotting right now, but don't want it to derail the original thread relating to her identity in light of Patrick Byrne's new revelations.

Can we move the Slim prediction thread here?

I think that this theory needs to be updated to reflect the latest revelations from Mr. Cooley. It appears that Linda was less interested in uncovering the identity of the Lockerbie bombers than she was in "spinning" the investigation in the direction desired by her handlers.

I think that this reflects also on the debate that erupts now and again about whether SV is pro-Jewish, anti-Jewish, and so forth. I think that she is basically indifferent to Judaism per se, but highly interested in controlling the ground rules for any discussion.

I really wish you could find a way to start recording all that stuff again, it'd do a whole world of good..

It looks like another RFArbcomm complaint against Slimmy has been summarily dispatched.

Of course, she gets full protection as the uncrowned Queen of Wikipedia

I don't mean to stir up more controversy with Slimvirgin, but has anyone considered they're chasing the wrong tail?

Those in the Intelligence community are well known to have different names, especially while in operation. The names floating around that are being attributed to Slimvirgin may not be her real name. They're well known to put up front biographies that will pass any scrutiny (especially by even news organizations -- it took CNN's Anderson Cooper to admit he interned for the CIA in college, for example).

No one knows her before her Cambridge days. That the sleuthing stopped there, and SV is operating as usual, is a very good sign whatever her name that was "outted" now, is no concern for her -- it's a dead end.

It's when they become unhinged is when you know you actually got your man/woman (remember the early fallout days of the Cambridge Five? The tipoff was when Phiby and Burgess flew the coop?).

I also wonder why folks claim it's MI5 (FBI), when it sounds more like MI6 (CIA)? It's the MI6 guys that does the foreign intelligence, where the MI5 does the domestic scoops. And the MI6 recruits the weirdos.

Darn you !!! Now they'll just go and add "being called a weirdo" to their list of e-vocational hazards.

Jonny

Are you talking about the same person?

In a rare attempt of being serious, now it's a comedy!

But seriously, what piques my curiosity is how SV can turn on and off her British accent, to even fool natives. That's a sign of her being "handled". And if she passes the native test, more likely she's not even Canadian (especially living now in Canadian Texas country...where else in Canada more willing to be sympathetic to the Crown?). It's the foreign intelligence services that train operatives in languages (very intensely, right down to local dialect). And they are the ones who recruit the, yes, "weirdos" (Anthony Blunt and his fellow Soviet spy travellers weren't "conventional" even in the 1930s, for example).

The truth is every organization that has any popularity will be infiltrated by intelligence services, of many countries. Especially organizations that ply information. But I wonder, how many on that admin list are undercovers for other agencies? If Anderson Cooper can be an anchor despite admitting he just "interned" for the CIA, just how many are in the management positions who don't/won't admit it?

The danger in all of this cloak and dagger stuff is how knowledge will be repackaged according to an agency's agenda (we already see that pitfall in the MSM). Will Wikipedia be the next bastion of accessible knowledge to fall?

I would assume that Sarah McEwan was the fake name and "front biography" that you refer to, whereas the best evidence we have suggests the Linda Mack was the actual name. As far as the MI5 conclusion, we didn't draw it ourselves -- this comes from her former employer, Pierre Salinger, by way of Mr. Cooley. For a concise summary of all the evidence that has appeared on these pages, I recommend reading Chip Berlet, SlimVirgin, and Wikipedia.




We don't know that she could fool natives. As far as turning on and off a British accent, I've known a number of amateur thespians who did that to make an impression. Apparently Madonna does it. Nowadays, it might help you get a job doing voice-overs on American TV commercials or talent contests. Plus, one of Virginia Slim's parents was evidently British, so it would come naturally and not require a great deal of affectation.

I find it interesting that Linda Mack, the person asserted to be SV, never becomes engaged in this discussion in any of it's various manifestations. If she or a friend just googled "Linda Mack Canada" she would have ample reason to be concerned if she wasn't SV. As far as I know this never happens.

This seems to argue for a correct identification.

Yeah, I read the web page, and I still don't think any of the names offered is her real one. Remember the Valerie Plume incident? Now that is how they react when their cover is blown (much like MI6's Philby, and Burgess exiting Britain upon disclosure of their identities).

SV just moves to Canada, not even bothering to cover her tracks very well, even giving folks hints of her interests. She would've known eventually folks will pick up the breadcrumbs, as she left them there for anyone to pick up. Especially going anywhere near the Pan Am 103 topics.



Just because someone doesn't attest that XYZ name isn't there's doesn't mean it is there's. Follow some Usenet stalkings, and you'll see very quickly how so many don't say a peep when they were incorrectly "outed".

I don't think that's particularly unusual - I know nothing about SV's background (alleged or real), but I was brought up in England by New Yorker parents & can flick between the two accents (spoken & written) like a switch. I'd imagine a Canadian who spent a long time in the UK could do the same.

But can you fool the natives? And can you switch off the dialect and accent that tells them if you were raised in London or Liverpool?

It's like watching "Gone of the Wind". You know the actress who played Scarlet wasn't a Georgian but British. But would folks know that the accent in Atlanta is different than the one in Savannah (which Scarlet tried to portray)? Only locals know and can detect this, for example.

You are making assumptions that intelligence operatives are somehow perfect human beings with no weaknesses. There has never really been something like Wikipedia before so people don't (or didn't) really think that anyone could work out who they were just by their topics of interest, especially using a made up name.

It takes nothing to truly erase tracks.

It takes something to make more tracks -- heck, even lead the horse to water!

The thing is it's possible she didn't even give her email to Cambridge University, it could have been a friend of hers and she had no idea it was on there. Without the email on the Cambridge Alumni website noone would have ever worked out that SlimVirgin was Linda Mack.

The question still remains is she Linda Mack? What evidence than an email addy and a web search says it is her?

That SV will be the first to volunteer for difficult blocks at Wikipedia, despite this "outing", I doubt just over confidence of being some agent (real or imagined) is enough to make such a "fragile" person so confident.

You're not following the timeline of this. Since the Linda Mack revelation, SV has been in a consistent state of fragility. Off wiki and on. Including protracted negotiations with the staff of the Review regarding the mentioning of her real name. She now barely contributes to wikipedia. Much of it is already detailed on these pages for right or for wrong.

No, there is no doubt whatsoever that the editor SlimVirgin on Wikipedia is Linda Mack who studied philosophy at King's College, Cambridge in the late 1980s under Bernard Williams and who worked for Pierre Salinger and was subsequently fired by him. Her first ever edit to Wikipedia was to make derogatory edits to Pierre Salinger's biography just after he had died.

Not fragile enough to quit her job, despite folks "knowing" her identity.

Staying at Wikipedia is more important than having a kook over for dinner? Not like were she's reportingly lives has that many residents. If what that CEO stated was true, she couldn't handle an email from a kook -- one on her doorstep is enough to make her change her residence and name again.

That didn't happen.

She may have been more scared that the snooping would've continued, though.

But the thing that I'm trying to state is -- if you guys are about facts and evidence, what's presented has more holes than Swiss cheese in it. There's nothing here as real evidence, other than some pieced together ideas.

Wouldn't want a court to begin even a traffic case with this much "evidence".



You're not getting it: "Linda Mack" may not be her real name.

Someone suspected of working for MI5 isn't going to be an agent overnight. There's at least orientation and some other training to be done (look what was said about Anderson Cooper's stint in the CIA in college). That she got involved into the Pan Am 103 families as she did, despite not having a family member perish, says if she was a MI5 (or MI6) agent, she was one before it happened to be crafty enough to weasle in.

It's the before part that can mean "Linda Mack" isn't her real name.

How many times do we have to go through this for recent members?

I believe that Linda Mack may be an agent of influence, even today, through her role in Wikipedia. It's also possible that she just saw herself this way, and no one was paying her or encouraging her. Some have interpreted this to mean that Wikipedia harbors one or more spies. Others then assume that "spy" means all the cool techniques they see in the movies.

First of all, no one in there right mind believes that all spies are always competent. In a case such as Linda Mack, she was most likely recruited as an informant because of her media access as an ABC researcher tasked to investigate Lockerbie. It has been established that Western intelligence was very keen on influencing the investigation once Iraq invaded Kuwait, as Syria's cooperation was important in the Gulf War. Until then Syria's PFLP-GC was on the A-list of suspects, perhaps commissioned by Iran to carry out the bombing. The most obvious way to influence an investigation like this is to plant evidence, and then persuade the major media that the evidence is genuine, or at least "good enough" to indict. Libya was the best fall guy available.

It was MI5, according to one suspicious journalist who interacted with Mack at the time, and who informally asked some sources about her. Not MI6. Whatever. Maybe she didn't even get paid. Maybe she was trying to impress a new boyfriend. Rumor has it that she later married someone from MI5.

The word "spy" doesn't suggest anything that's actually useful. It fails to describe the role that someone might be playing on behalf of an intelligence agency. In the CIA, for example, you have "officers," who are formally on the CIA payroll and went through the CIA's training program, and were checked out rather closely before they were hired. These officers sometimes run "agents" in other countries. The officers often work through through light State Department cover out of the U.S. Embassy. They have diplomatic immunity and a CIA retirement plan. They could get declared persona non grata by the host country if they are exposed, but they won't be arrested.

The agents recruited by these officers are usually foreign nationals. They are a real mixed bag of nuts. They are at risk, particularly if they have access to classified information. If they're caught, they're in real trouble. That doesn't matter to the officer. It's his job to flatter, cajole, threaten, pay more money — whatever it takes to make the agent produce more and better intelligence. What matters most is the access to information that the agent has. Maybe he works in a government office. Maybe she can get close to someone and seduce him, for purposes of blackmail. The job of the officer is to control the agent. The officer passes out cash for payment.

If you are going to say that SlimVirgin is a spy, then at least be open-minded about the various possibilities that are implicit in this definition. And don't confuse "spy" with "competence." That only happens in the movies. Even the best spies might be getting drunk with a double agent now and then, without knowing it. The whole thing is a crap shoot.

Avoid the word "spy" if possible. And if you're going to suggest that Linda Mack was not her real name, then give me some evidence. One could take such evidence to Kings College, where someone named Linda Mack was enrolled in a PhD program in philosophy, studying under Bernard Williams. Are you suggesting that whatever credentials that Kings College required for admittance to the program were faked by MI5? Now that is something from a spy movie. I might be able to use that if I had proof. But there's not even a shred of evidence to suggest this.

Give me evidence, not revisionist speculation from an armchair. And stop watching those movies.

Sorry, but I'm one of the most sceptical people you will ever encounter on any topic. But we're talking about a Canadian woman who studied Philosophy at Cambridge, before becoming embroiled in the Lockerbie investigation, and then worked for Pierre Salinger, who has SlimVirgin as her Cambridge Uni email address.

We're comparing her to a Canadian woman who joined a website and proceeded to write about the Lockerbie investigation and Pierre Salinger, as well as creating articles on Cambridge philosophy professors and goes by the name of SlimVirgin. Who has corresponded with the staff of the WP Review offsite, and has pretty much quit editing once these revelations went to wider sources.

What conclusions would you draw?

We have discussed this at length previously. The best view is that Linda Mack/Sarah/SV is not an actual career agent with the attendant professionalism. She is more likely a low level operative who is on occasion utilized by agents. She has a history that involves a presumably accidental connection to 103 which motivated some journalistic activities in the middle east. She also possess a set of social skill that permits her to gain influence in the survivor's group as well as WP social networking environment. According to P.S. she was engaged in at least one intelligence operation in the capacity of a journalist who snitched on her principals. Her WP activities might have been as an low level operative in a failed experiment by an intelligence agency or it might just be the sad obsession of a person living in the past.

Don't make her out to be a more attractive character than what she is, or to rule her out because she lack super-spy skills.

I don't think so. Based on her full contributions history which is largely unrelated to specific content. She wouldn't gain much by going to extremes to revert Johnny Cache on some policy issue, and get into petty meaningless scraps with various doobs. And she certainly got out-edited on content now and then by nobodies who were sitting in their studies armed with books, good background knowledge and sharp brains. Which is all she was herself I suspect. Her motives were simply to get involved and feel important. Like most people there. I'm almost as certain of that as I am that LM is SV.

Kato, I think that you may be a bit too quick to draw conclusions here. First of all, if she were an agent of influence, one would assume that she would have an array of quirks and obsessions that would make her predictable and manipulable by her "handler." The PETA business and all the other stuff would fall into the "quirks and obsessions" category, and would not represent some sort of assignment. Likewise her compulsion to get into pissing matches with hundreds of editors, often leading to her banning them on the flimsiest of pretexts. If she were an agent of influence, all of this would add up to a plausible "cover" for her presence at Wikipedia, while her actual assignments would be subtle and designed to be unnoticeable amidst all the other kerfuffle.

Again, speaking hypothetically, running agents of influence is an uncertain business. The best laid plans often go awry. Agents can go rogue, or "rouge" as they say at Wikipedia. I don't think that we can possibly arrive at a definitive answer here. The one thing we can agree on is that her past associations, plus her POV edits, plus her documented abuse of privileges and violations of policy, add up to one heck of COI problem.

As per discussion here, I'm going to lock this thread until various knotted cables and wires can be unravelled. I don't see any point picking on Revision over her contributions here. And nothing new is coming to light regarding the SV case, Slim's not editing much on WP anymore, and rehashing old stories to new members is a real drag. So let's give both Slim and Revision a break.

If anyone is still interested in this thing, here's a summary of the SlimVirgin saga with loads of links.