I need a vomit bag. He has “never been manipulated by anyone!”

Eichenwald’s “Serpent on the Rock” was a “Liar’s Poker” in reverse.
The moral of Michael Lewis’s “Liars Poker” is the little guy ends up holding the bag.
Eichenwald created a sensation with his “serpent on the Rock.” It motivated people to get rid of perfectly fine investments. The little guy owned 30 year proven reserves of oil purchased at $6 a barrel. He had interests in prime property from around the world. The majority of the Prudential direct investments were in real estate, and using 20:20 hindsight, these investments did quite well.
Prudential was willing to return the cash on the $5 billion plus dollars to the investors for two reasons. First, the money had to be repositioned, which means income, and big income at that.
If the brokers repositioned the $ 5.2 billion of direct investment money into Prudential mutual funds it could have translated into a 250+ million dollar windfall.
The second reason was how sweet it was for the people to take these “questionable” investments off the hands of the poor investors, and at a discount! These buddy-buddy boys did very well for themselves now that we can look back into history with 20:20 hindsight.
Of course Eichenwald had no clue. He had no background into business so he was an easy shill to dupe.
The guy is a fraud.

The person with 27 years of journalism experience who’s never been manipulated by anyone is the owner of this blog, “DN” — aka Debbie Nathan — not Mr. Eichenwald. But whatever: I’m putting up your comment anyhow! DN

Lorraine, FYI: I have two children, one 25 and the other 20. Read my past 27 years of journalism and you will see that I have never been manipulated by anyone. To understand my reasons for disagreeing with Eichenwald, please go to the “articles” section of my blog and download the piece I did about his work on Justin Berry, in Counterpunch of April 2007. That will give you a good idea about why I, as a parent, a journalist and a concerned citizen, am very concerned that media work be done with ethics and nuance — especially when it comes to issues of children and sex. DN

Is irresponsible, and certainly will stop other journalists from researching the issue.

Your work was never more needed.

Thank you.

“Viewing images of child porn is not essential when researching the issue, Eichenwald says. He described his research on Masha Allen, who he said at age 8 was adopted from a Russian orphanage by a pedophile, and whose repeated rapes were caught on film for four years. “Now, I haven’t seen any of them because they’re illegal. What I have seen are cropped versions, what I have seen are images where they have the images removed but you can see what’s happened,” he said.”

from http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3052

These “cropped versions” are rare and hard to find – there are maybe two or three on the internet. And it is far from obvious about “what’s happened” in the images. Even as Masha’s lawyer, I have not seen these images, other than those few which are publicly available online.

The time line of Masha and Justin’s story raises many questions. Masha’s “cropped images” first appeared in the media on February 2, 2005 (in Canada only). The story broke in the United States in late April 2005. After a brief but intense media frenzy, the LA Times, in a major scoop, interviewed “the Disney World Girl” and featured her story on June 18, 2005.

The reporter of the LA Times story immediately moved in to option Masha’s life rights. The Masha “story”–she is a much more compelling figure than Justin–was quickly gone lock stock and barrel. Any of Eichenwald’s research into her story including his careful consideration of her “cropped pictures,” becomes worthless. Not surprisingly, Justin goes from “personal” to “major story” weeks later in early July 2005.

The next appearance of Masha on the media scene was December 2, 2005 when ABC Primetime aired a major full-faced interview of Masha. A worldwide media frenzy started within minutes of that show, including an eventual appearance on Oprah. Justin’s story was featured by the NYTimes less than two weeks later.

Is it no coincidence that the NYTimes carries no mention of Masha Allen? Not one word. Was the Masha story suppressed in order to promote Justin? Masha testified in Congress, just like Justin. In Masha’s case a major new federal law resulted. Not so for Justin. Still no word of Masha in the NYTimes even though Eichenwald himself admits that he was researching her story. Clearly they knew about her.

Is this all just a coincidence or perhaps more media favoritism (ie., suppressing the “real news” for sensationalist pseudo-news?) Many more questions, few answers.

James R. Marsh, Esq.