Robert Fisk: Entry denied

The Daily New Mexican via Doug Ireland reports:

---

"U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation’s readings-and-conversations..."

Pointing to a classically Fisk-y piece from earlier this month questioning the validity of the "imminent civil war in Iraq" theory, Ireland writes:

"I have long admired Fisk's unbeatably first-rate journalism, his intrepid insistence on sticking his nose where the authorities -- of whatever country he's in -- don't want him to go. He constantly shows up the sluggish cowardice and indolent hand-out journalism practiced by so many U.S. foreign correspondents from the safety of their hotel bars. That the U.S. won't allow this great journalist into this country to tell what he has seen and what he knows is a scandal."

Unless of course Immigration is telling the truth, and he was denied entry because, as they claim his "papers were not in order." Irony alert: we'll probably never know because our press is unlikely to follow up. (Direland)

--> Sign up for Peek in your inbox... every morning! (Go here and check Peek box).