There is an article in Thursday’s New York Times?entitled “Palestinian Backer or Israeli Spy? Lebanese in Shock Over Arrest?” that I found very interesting to read. No matter one’s stance on his actions, the idea that someone could maintain the fa?ade as the subject of the article did for so many years is truly stunning.

I decided to google the name “Ali al-Jarrah,” the individual about which the article speaks, expecting some modicum of articles on him, including a Wikipedia page. His achievements as chronicled by the Times?seemed to merit one. However, I was stunned when there were seemingly no articles on him except for the?Times‘. There was something about some Saudi sheik, and a link to the public Facebook profile of a guy with the same name who lives in Iraq and likes Fuddruckers, Washington Denzel, Will Smith, and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Clearly, neither of these were the same individual.

So I clicked over to the Google News search, and saw again the New York Times article. However, here I noticed something else. There were two relevant results (of three), and the second, to my utter shock and astonishment, was in French, of all things. The title, “Espionnage : l’incroyable saga des al-Jarrah” needs little translation to be comprehended. Then I noted the date: February 4. Clearly the times article, published on February 18, is a little behind on the times.

I thought, “I must be wrong. How could this be?” I realized then that my search terms had been in quotes, indicating an exact phrase. So I took them out of quotes and searched again, and another box popped up with 126 news articles. I clicked on this, and the next page indicated that there were 36 results. I was completely confused. Then, when I looked at these results, I noticed that all but one of them were on Israel and Hezbollah in general and not on Ali al-Jarrah. (They were all about Hezbollah whining about air defense weapons for the most part.)

After this, I did what any responsible individual wishing to gain a more comprehensive view of world events would do: I went to the French article, placing my faith in five years of rather poor French instruction. The article that followed, which translates well with Google and can be found here in its original source and here machine-translated, is stunning. It details the life of an individual and his brother, both of whom worked as spies throughout their respective careers. It is wonderful to read, and it is definitely worth taking the time to understand the translated version, although it is rough in certain passages.

The story that the New York Times has published is reprehensible in its misrepresentation of this man and his accomplishments. Even this article, one of only a few on the subject, and published by a Lebanese news organization at that, mentions the man’s brother, while the New York Times completely ignores that entire story (which is quite comprehensive, and explored fully in the French article). Thankfully,?I did not trust the?New York Times, as I believe that it is generally better suited for use lining my family’s dear cat’s litter box or sopping up grease from the floor when my mother fries veal on the stove. In this case, as in many others, I was proven correct.

From a journalistic source such as the New York Times, I ought to expect much more. I should be indignant that they seek so clearly to limit their stories and misrepresent fact, as a reading of this shows they have. Why else would the mention one distant component of the man’s family unnecessarily, yet not mention an individual so close as his brother? Somehow, though, I do not expect more. I do not have higher standards for the New York Times. If they choose to obscure fact, so be it. But I hope that everyone will take the effort to seek it out through other sources, for it is only through that method that we may truly discover the truth behind any action in the world.