THIS IS JUST INCREDIBLE – AT 11:17 P.M. ET:  The headlines screamed at us.  It was the classic case of a major figure, the head of the International Monetary Fund, brought down by the accusations of one of the "little people."  The media loved it.  The audience loved it.  And now we find it may not be true.  From The New York Times:

The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.

Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.

Senior prosecutors met with lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and provided details about their findings, and the parties are discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges. Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.

And...

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

In addition, one of the officials said, she told investigators that her application for asylum included mention of a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application.

COMMENT:  Mr. Strauss-Kahn, meet Duke University.  There is a chilling resemblance between this case and the Duke case, in which false allegations of rape were hurled at three lacrosse players, who were immediately declared guilty by politically correct Duke, and thrown out of school.  They were later completely exonerated, and the politically ambitious district attorney who'd intended to prosecute them was disbarred.

We should hasten to point out that the great majority of sexual assault charges presented by women turn out to be true, and there are more and more quality prosecutions of those charges.  But there have also been disturbing false cases, resulting in the destruction of the lives of innocent men.  Strauss-Kahn has already lost his job as head of the IMF because of the charges, and his political career in France, where he had been considered the leading contender to become the country's next president, is essentially over.

If Strauss-Kahn is cleared of wrongdoing, there should be an immediate, massive investigation of the district attorney's office's initial work, although that office eventually, and commendably, discovered the discrpancies in the case.  And news organizations should have the common decency – highly unlikely – to finance an outside investigation of their own behavior. 

The image of American justice is not very good here.  There is work to do.

June 30, 2011