NEW YORK - Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia "that anyone can edit," posted specific, accurate details regarding the death of Chilean former dictator Augusto Pinochet, 91, two days before it occurred, leading experts to opine that persons connected with Wikipedia may have had some involvement in his death. This is not the first time Wikipedia has posted an entry containing a high level of specificity about an event before it transpired. For example, it posted an entry on the poisoning death of Alexander Litvenenko by polonium-210 more than one full week before the ex-KGB agent was actually poisoned.
"The high incidence of such postings suggests more than mere happenstance," said Commander Bradleys Roadhouse of Scotland Yard. "The international intelligence community has long suspected that Wikipedia has had some involvement in numerous such incidents, perhaps dating to the Kennedy assassination." Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales defends such postings as merely reflective of the speed with which the encyclopedia reports up-to-the-minute, late-breaking events.
The Wikipedia entry on Pinochet, posted last Friday, December 8, stated: "On December 10, 2006, at 13:30 local time (16:30 GMT) he [Pinochet] was taken to the ICU. He died of heart failure and pulmonary edema, surrounded by family members, at the Military Hospital at 14:15 local time (17:15 UTC)." These details turned out to be precisely correct.
In addition, the encyclopedia has reported all of the Pittsburgh Steelers' losses this season before they occurred, but Commander Roadhouse discounts those entries as "proving nothing" because, he said, "anyone could have guessed those correctly."
