Myth Busted: Oprah Winfrey and the 9/11 Ticket Agent “Suicide”

             In mid-September 2006, a moderately amusing slapfight broke out among Brendan Nyhan, then writing for The American Prospect, and various contributors to top-shelf lefty blog Eschaton. To most rubberneckers, it looked like a case of one academic/moderate type accusing an activist/progressive type of going overboard in criticizing President Bush, and it was just rorschachy enough to leave alone. But the basis for the disagreement was another story. As I wrote at the time: I’m distracted from whatever I was going to say about it because… the incident giving rise to the debate — the alleged suicide of a ticket agent who had checked in Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari on the way to crash Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center — appears to be an urban legend, hoax or mistake. I looked hard. I scoured the Nexis database. I studied the 9/11 Commission Report. Whatever is the Google equivalent of an oceanic trench, I dove into it. But I found no inde...