| The story below is originally published on Mainichi Daily News by Mainichi Shinbun (http://mdn.mainichi.jp). |
| They admitted inventing its kinky features, or rather deliberately mistranslating them from the original gossip magazine. |
| In fact, this is far from the general Japanese' behavior or sense of worth. |
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| ※ この和訳はあくまでもボランティアの方々による一例であり、翻訳の正確さについては各自判断してください。 もし誤訳（の疑い）を発見した場合には、直接ページを編集して訂正するか翻訳者連絡掲示板に報告してください。 |
1995,08,06
Weekly Playboy8/15 By Nathan Westby
How much of what we read in newspapers and see on television about AUM Shinrikyo can be trusted?
According to a Weekly Playboy interview with an anonymous public security official, 65 percent of reports are based on lies.
He should know, as a reporter's biggest source of information concerning the cult is the police, in particular the highly secretive public security arm where he works.
The reason papers report false information, he says, is that reporters aren't doing their jobs properly.
As a result, much of the information leaked by police for strategic purposes is printed without being followed up on or questioned.
The newspapers and TV networks appear to be satisfied with placing the blame for everything on AUM without digging any deeper.
This is not to say that Shoko Asahara and other cult members are being wrongly accused, but rather, maybe the "evidence" and"confessions" so far revealed in stories scooped from police sources are not as solid as they appear, the interviewee says.
He claims that many of the AUM followers quoted as giving confessions in news reports are in fact still holding their silence under police questioning.
The official hints that there may be non-AUM followers involved in the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in April this year, in the 1989 disappearance of an anti-AUM lawyer and his family, and in the stabbing of AUM's top scientist earlier this year, but the press is not pursuing these avenues.
Hideo Murai was "assassinated" he tells Weekly Playboy, by an outfit that may have wanted to prevent police from finding out who helped the cult in its effort to produce sarin.
"Investigators believe a sample of sarin was delivered to (the cult's commune in) Kamikuishiki from someone on the outside, and that the cult was able to develop its own sarin based on the analysis of this sample," He says.
The reason Asahara is not being transferred to the Tokyo Detention House in Kosuge like other AUM suspects is because public security authorities fear he is being marked by an outside organization, the official says.
He also tells Weekly Playboy that reporters should use more common sense with respect to the missing Sakamoto family and the shooting of National Police Agency chief Takaji Kunimasu, ridiculing the Fourth Estate for its gullibility.
"Would Sakamoto open the door if he heard bunch of thugs come.
...They could have tranquilized him with a powerful chemical, but it would have been risky."(NW)
