It seems we all were scammed by a phony story released just before Election Day. As if to justify Bill Clinton's sexual escapades, it was announced on all the major networks and in most of the big city newspapers that DNA scientists had proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered a child by a black slave girl.

Now, it turns out the DNA tests proved nothing - and that the charges are 200 years old, created by one of Jefferson's enemies. The allegation is that black slave, Sally Hemings, became Jefferson's mistress after the death of his wife.

Hotly, he denied the story in a personal letter.

His descendents have dismissed the whole thing as the concoction of an enemy--and that Sally was in fact the mistress of one of his nephews.

The whole matter is discussed in detail in Jefferson the President: First Term by Dumas Malone. He writes that an enemy of Jefferson first brought the "sensational charges against the character and private conduct" of Jefferson.

Malone writes that the "Sally story" was not in keeping with Jefferson's character, and over the years has changed several times, which casts it into serious doubt.

Malone writes that Jefferson's nephew, Peter Carr, probably had an affair with Hemings, but also mentions that possibility of Peter's brother Sam having had children with Sally's mother, Betsy. Last month, the national news media proclaimed that DNA tests had proved that it was Thomas Jefferson who sired Sally's son, Eston.

But now, scientists have admitted the DNA results proved nothing at all. "We just cannot pin anyone down, because once you get into that DNA, Jefferson blood is Jefferson blood," said Herbert Barger. "We still can't pin it on Thomas Jefferson."

Barger, a retiree Fort Washington, Md., has studied the Jefferson family for 25 years. His wife Evelyn is Thomas Jefferson's cousin, six generations removed. Indeed, "Don't be so quick to assume Thomas Jefferson fathered a child by his slave," admitted the Associated Press a few days ago.

Dr. Eugene Foster of Charlottesville, Va., organized the study and reported that he found a match Y chromosome DNA between descendants of Eston Hemings and of Field Jefferson, the president's paternal uncle.

The Y chromosome is passed along mostly unchanged from father to son, so it can be used to trace lineages that contain an unbroken line of males. Thomas Jefferson's only son died in childhood, so Foster had turned to Field Jefferson's descendants to indicate what Thomas Jefferson's Y chromosome looked like. But what was proved was that the Hemings descendents have Jefferson chromosomes--which could have come from any of the Jeffersons.

The only national news media figure to scoff at the report was John McLaughlin on PBS, who revealed he had confirmed with the FBI that the study's supposed proof of Thomas Jefferson's paternity would not hold up in court.

In fact, the more honest conclusion, noted McLaughlin, would have not named Thomas Jefferson as the starting point in the so-called unbroken sequence.

To conclude Thomas Jefferson paternity assumes, among other things, that Field and Thomas' father, Peter had the same father, and that there were unbroken lines of male-line descendants in both the Hemings and Jefferson lineage, a tenuous assumption in a culture notorious for uncertain paternity. "The science--illiterate literati are now claiming that the study proved Thomas Jefferson paternity," declared McLaughlin. "They are either ignorant fools or they are assuming that we are."

The Jefferson DNA analysis revealed a dirty little secret. And it has nothing to do with Jefferson. The secret is that the so-called literati are scientific illiterates--and so is the national news media.

The Jefferson DNA analysis is not definitive. Far from it. At best, it merely fails to exclude the possibility that one Hemings' child, Eston Hemings, was fathered by a member of the Jefferson family. The probability of a chance occurrence of this result is 1 in 100.

Cinder Stanton, a Jefferson scholar at the Monticello International Center, was asked on C-SPAN's Washington Journal whether she believed the DNA "study" was politically motivated. She noted that the publication date of the Nov. 5 Nature magazine article was pushed forward to a pre-election release.

Indeed, today, when the lay public hears "DNA match," it reflexively thinks "certain identity." However, results are expressed in terms of a probability of chance occurrence.BR>

For example, Keneth Starr established conclusively that the semen on Monica's navy blue Gap dress was Clinton's. The analysis of Clinton's DNA determined that the frequency of the matching genetic markers extracted from the presidential fluids is characteristic of one out of 7.87 trillion Caucasians. The world population is only around 5 or so billion.

So statistically speaking , you would have to search outer space to find another match. Similarly, the blood matches to OJ Simpson's DNA yielded probabilities as rare as 1 in 150 billion, which is again, virtual identity.

However, the probability that Hemings descendents and Jefferson descendents are related is 1 in 100. Said another way, the DNA of one out of every 100 males randomly plucked from the general population would be consistent with paternity. That's not very compelling proof of Jefferson's paternity. This analysis is junk science--but it was powerful politically, dragging Jefferson's name through the mud and justifying Clinton's sins since "everybody does it".

Also, who broke the story to the press? None other than James Carville, Clinton's attack dog--who frequently is caught up a deception on camera, but just smiles and goes on to another topic. The truth does not matter to him in the least. Nor does being caught in flagrant exaggeration. His job is to keep Clinton in the White House. And without any conscience, he does whatever it takes.

--used with permission--
Christian Crusade Newspaper