In 1998 Richard Preston, a Princeton Graduate, published his second book, the novel "The Cobra Event." A follow-up to his highly successful non-fiction book "The Hot Zone" about the Ebola virus. "The Cobra Event" starts in Iraq, where state-sponsored scientist in mobile bio-labs on huge trucks create a bio-terrorist weapon. Not the "Cobra virus" of which the book is about, but the book opens this way to scare us into what might be. The novel was so effective that it alarmed then president Clinton.
But then something terrible happened. After Clinton left office, some one read the non-fictional "Hot Zone" and the fictional "Cobra Event" back to back, but didn't realize the second was a novel. Taking it as evidence of Iraqi mobile bio-labs, a secret conspiracy was formed to invade Iraq. Weapons of Mass destruction appeared on top-secret intelligence reports based on the "evidence" from "the Cobra Event."
This conspiracy was discovered by a Microsoft employee, who has gone into hiding. To protect himself he encoded the message. When you type "Bush hid the facts" into Notepad and save it, it turns into a garbled list of Chinese Characters. This is NO JOKE! (Yes it is. It's an April Fool's Joke. Not the garbled text, that's real but the secret conspiracy is not, I think.)
It only encodes in Windows XP after that I guess it became common knowledge, so Vista and Windows 7 don't encode the message.
But then something terrible happened. After Clinton left office, some one read the non-fictional "Hot Zone" and the fictional "Cobra Event" back to back, but didn't realize the second was a novel. Taking it as evidence of Iraqi mobile bio-labs, a secret conspiracy was formed to invade Iraq. Weapons of Mass destruction appeared on top-secret intelligence reports based on the "evidence" from "the Cobra Event."
This conspiracy was discovered by a Microsoft employee, who has gone into hiding. To protect himself he encoded the message. When you type "Bush hid the facts" into Notepad and save it, it turns into a garbled list of Chinese Characters. This is NO JOKE! (Yes it is. It's an April Fool's Joke. Not the garbled text, that's real but the secret conspiracy is not, I think.)
It only encodes in Windows XP after that I guess it became common knowledge, so Vista and Windows 7 don't encode the message.
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