I KNEW IT! (Thanks, Snopes.com!)
Claim: Osama bin Laden has been sighted in
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Origins: In the speculation-drenched weeks that followed the
Yet Osama was in
It did indeed. Rumors about bin Laden's living in the
According to The Salt Lake Tribune, "Federal agents in
Lt. Charles Illsley of the West Valley City Police Department likens the recent wave of bin Laden sightings to the Ted Bundy sightings that followed his 1977 escape from a Colorado jail and offers the following keen insight into the phenomenon: "When day-after-day media reports focus on a single person like Bundy or bin Laden, it is not too big a leap for somebody to go outside and think they see him. Images stick."
During World War II, although the Nazis did not make it to
Then (as now) the FBI was bedeviled by a constant barrage of false reports, each of which had to be investigated. According to the rumors afoot then, saboteurs lurked behind every post, and often we initially assumed strangers were enemy agents and only grudgingly afterwards acknowledged them to be mere folks who had just arrived from another town. Simple actions that in peacetime would have drawn no comment suddenly appeared ominous — a man spotted notebook in hand near a viaduct over railroad tracks immediately became the subject of a rumor that he was checking troop movements and shipments of war supplies. Upon investigation, that man turned out to one of the city's smoke inspectors. The actions of a couple staying in a seaside hotel (they lowered the shades for privacy and opened the window to catch the breeze) sparked a rumor that enemy operatives were signalling to submarines lying offshore. And so it went.
The threat of enemy action on American soil is far greater these days than it was even at the height of the Second Great War. Rumors about honey-skinned terrorists abound, but it needs be stressed that even though there's more to fear now, those rumors are just echoes of similar ones heard over half a century ago. Though the reality may be different, the perception of danger is not, and that is what people react to and express through the rumors they exchange.
The citizenry of the 1940s knew the visage of evil as that of Hitler's, whereas their counterparts of the 2000s recognize it as bin Laden's. It is thus no wonder they search for his face in the crowd.
Barbara "faces of death" Mikkelson
Sightings:
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