from the victim's own gun when it accidentally went off in the terrific heat from the car's accidentally blowing up, and that it's terribly shocking and even libellous to allege that this was a political murder.

The President's out of patience now. The President openly accuses the secret police of kidnapping his son, so the head of the secret police sues him for libel. He also sues the local newspaper for saying the same thing, and then he sues a priest who presided over the blown-up guy's funeral. The Prime Minister puts yet another stooge on TV who claims that the President's son rigged the whole thing.

Then the Slovak Parliament gets into the act. They've got an independent commission which has been investigating. Got some results too - the committee gives out the names of the eight kidnappers and the cars they were driving and exactly how they went about kidnapping the President's son.

And I'm watching this whole thing take place, week by week, day by day, in amazed fascination. Because I'm on a couple of central European Internet mailing lists.

There's even a tasty phone phreak angle in this, because at one point somebody taps the phone calls coming out of the limo of the chief of secret police, and the chief spook is laughing evilly at the investigators and calling them a bunch of idiots who'll never prove anything. They got the tape and they play it on the radio. The secret policeman says the tape is forged. He refuses to resign. He's still in power right now.

Now - if having the truth splashed across the Internet was enough to bring down a government, wouldn't this do it? This looks like a pretty whacking good scandal to me. It's quite a story, it's too weird even for Hollywood. It's got kidnappers and electrodes and carbombs and secret policemen and embezzlement and thugs and politicians. At the risk of being sued for libel by angry Slovak