It's Not Kurt's Memory Problems That Disturbs Us The Most
Casey has talked about his story being “one about big government and big media and how the two can roll over your rights as an American citizen.” Well, at the center of Casey’s story sits Kurt Eichenwald, the puppet master that has controlled the Government’s and the media’s response to the Justin Berry story ever since his award winning article was first published in the NYTimes. Because of his reputation and integrity as a renowned investigative reporter the Justin Berry story has gone largely unchallenged, even after many of these revelations.One article countering the quality and accuracy of Kurt’s investigative reporting on the Justin Berry story has been published by CounterPunch. Debbie Nathan undertook the task of rewriting Kurt Eichenwald. In this piece she calls into question many of Eichenwald’s original premises regarding Justin Berry and his past activities.
Subsequent reporting has revealed that Eichenwald's story was faulty in other ways. There are revelations that Eichenwald paid Justin Berry several thousand dollars. There were PayPal payments totaling $1,184. There was a casher’s check for $2,000 issued out of the Preston Forest branch of Bank Of America just a couple of miles from Eichenwald's home. And now we have Kurt Eichenwald admitting in an NPR interview that there is an additional $1,000 that is yet to be reported. Eichenwald passes these payments off as something that he simply forgot about. Well, for us it’s not so much that he forgot that he had made these payments; it’s the fact that he made them in the first place.
When Kurt first discovered Justin Berry and his two websites, MexicoFriends and JustinsFriends, Justin had already left the business. For the six months preceding Kurt’s investigation these sites had been available on the internet but had drawn little to no traffic. While some subscribers may have joined to sites during this time period, they quickly learned that there was nothing going on and they subsequently canceled their subscriptions. This can be seen in the following diagram that graphs the cash flow enjoyed by MexicoFriends and JustinsFriends. The spike on the graph was caused by a large number of subscriptions that occurred in the afternoon of June 19th 2005.
But how was Kurt to know this? What clues could he possibly have had that would have told him that these sites were inactive? The answer is in his administrative accesses to the website. On June 19th, 2005 at 1:27 AM central time, Kurt used his administrative accesses to view the following webpage.
There were only 4 subscribers to JustinsFriends.com. Where was that fan base that was so involved in Justin Berry’s porn life? Where were those users clamoring to have sex with Berry as Kurt claimed? They simply didn't exist. The site had been dead for six months and Kurt knew it.
Following the money trail we see that by June 8th Kurt has paid Justin $314 and had a check for $2,000 in a FedEx package already on its way to Justin in Roanoke Virginia. So why is this a significant event? In the early morning hours of June 9th, Justin created pornographic images of himself and a 14 year old minor. The forensic evidence of this shows that the images were shot around 1:18 AM and uploaded to Justin's PC around 4:18 on June 9th. These pictures and videos were used in the re-launch of JustinsFriends on June 19th 2005. These were the images used in the Government's case against Casey. These images were created only after Kurt Eichenwald has contacted Justin and has paid him over $2,000.
But how was Kurt to know this? What clues could he possibly have had that would have told him that child pornography was being produced using funds that he provided? The answer is in his frequent visits to the website which we have summarized here. Kurt visited JustinsFriends often and many times a day. He was viewing the website watching its content change.
And Kurt continued to keep his eye on the financial growth of the website. On June 23rd Kurt once again uses his administrative accesses to see how the financials for the website are shaping up. This is what he saw.
In response to this unprecedented success we have this tidbit from Kurt. On June 22nd and 23rd Kurt sends another $670 to Justin along with a message that reads “attempt to do this …some more.”
