Beware (Maybe) the Knock on Your Door

I was all concerned about this story until I found out that it may just be the latest internet hoax. Even the American Library Association has gotten involved in checking this story's accuracy. Meanwhile, here's what's allegedly going on:

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of The Little Red Book]," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring interlibrary loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."

The above quote, from an article that appeared in the Massachusetts newspaper The Standard Times on Dec. 17, 2005, encapsulates the entire story. The professor quoted above claims that one of his students at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth (not to be confused with Dartmouth College in Rhode Island) was visited by agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after he ILL'd an unabridged edition of Mao Tse-Tung's classic of Chinese Communism, The Little Red Book. According to the story, the agents told the student that the book was on a federal "watch-list". Furthermore, the student's "background, which included significant time abroad, triggered [the agents]to investigate the student further." Allegedly, the agents brought the ILL'd book directly to the student's home, but wouldn't let him keep it (that's the detail that really makes this story sound fake to me. Since when have federal agents hand-delivered ILL's? And since when has the DHS started telling subjects that they're being watched?).

The student himself has not been publically identified because, the newspaper says, he "fears repercussions". The student apparently hasn't spoken directly to the reporter who wrote the story, although the reporter claims he knows who the student is. The reporter only spoke to the above-named professor and one other at UMass-Dartmouth.

There are those who suspect that this story may be the latest version of the old "my dog ate my term paper" tall tale, although the journalist who wrote the article says he stands by his reporting. At any rate, it doesn't sound like anything came of the investigation. If it is true, however, it does make you wonder--where are the feds supposedly getting this ILL information? And why don't they have anything better to do?