Among the questions surrounding the story about the murdered white supremacist in Belfast, Maine who had the makings of a dirty bomb in his house is this one: how come the details of this case showed up on obscure websites almost a month before the Maine media got wind of it?

The Bangor Daily News has done a fairly good job of covering the ins and outs of this story, following up with details of the apparent wacko who inhabited the house in Belfast and his wife who is charged with murdering him after supposedly suffering years of torment. Neighbors too have been interviewed about the man’s love of Nazi lore and memorabilia.

But there is no getting around the fact that the newspaper was late to the party. Two virtually unknown websites, wikileaks.com and unnatributable.com broke the story about the dirty bomb in January (the murder happened last December) by publishing an FBI field intelligence report about potential threats against the president during his inauguration. It appears that wikileaks.com just posted the entire memo without reading it and with no comment. The other website, unnatributable.com, also got the memo, discovered the info about the dirty bomb in Belfast buried among pages of bureaucratic gibberish, and ran the info about the dirty bomb as a web exclusive on Jan. 19th. It wasn’t until Feb. 10th that theBangor Daily News did their own version of the story, crediting unnatributable.com in the very last paragraph of the very lengthy article:

The FBI field intelligence report was apparently first reported on by unattributable.com, an online magazine which covers and blogs on current events.

This brought a nasty retort from the reporters of unattributable.com:

Not ‘apparently,’ you lazy reporter, it was most certainly first discovered and reported on by unattributable.com.

That blog post, entitled Bloggers Get No Respect: Dirty Bomb Edition,details how the website was contacted by the Bangor Daily News about its dirty bomb revelation, and how the unattributable.com folks went out of their way to help the BDN reporters understand the story and nail it down. And how offended they were at getting scant credit for their exclusive.

They have a legitimate beef. Granted, unattributable.com bills itself as a site that traffics in gossip and doesn’t normally lift a finger or a phone to confirm even the most outlandish rumor. Reporters are right to be cautious.

On the other hand, when a news reporter does confirm something that a blogger - any blogger - first reported, credit is due, and a lot higher up in the story than the Bangor reporter put it. 

Unattributable.com is continuing to dog the story and has raised some points that the Bangor paper has ignored. For example, the website is very suspicious of state law enforcement officials who have told the news media that the dirty bomb posed “no immediate threat” to the public. Well of course not. The ingredients hadn’t been mixed together yet. And they point out that the aim of a dirty bomb is not necessarily death and destruction, but terror. If the guy had managed to set the thing off, can you imagine the panic it would have caused even if the true radiation effects were limited?

The episode is yet another example of how the web is often way out ahead of the mainstream media in breaking major stories, and how even “disreputable” blogs and websites deserve respect sometime. That includes The National Enquirer. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile. 

Where’s Maine’s Right Wing? A lot of ink has been spilled over the last few weeks about Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins bucking their party and joining with President Obama to support the big stimulus package. Here in Maine, the two senators are revered, and their press clippings show it. So its a bit of a shock to tune in to right-wing radio bloviators and hear the two senators called “imbeciles,” “morons”, “traitors” and worse by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Monica Crowly, Mark Levin and Glen Beck. 

But there is one point the Maine media have missed: the reason that Snowe and Collins can support the stimulus bill while their Republican colleagues can’t is because most members of Congress face strong, right-wing opposition back in their districts and could face serious opponents for their jobs if they backed the president. Re-election, after all, is the one thing that really gets the attention of a member of Congress.

On the other hand, Maine’s right wing-nut GOP faction is no threat at all to Snowe and Collins. It’s a noisy but flaccid group who have no influence in statewide elections. There are plenty GOP senators and congressman who are jealous of Snowe’s and Collins’ invulnerability and would have otherwise supported the stimulus.