You can trust him  

Apostropher, who's been awfully good lately, links to this fascinating/disappointing story about the provenance of this story, which seems to have been edited after the fact (Apostropher has some of the original here). The even more interesting story would be: who was this guy? Makes me feel a little less animosity toward journalists to see what they have to wade through to put a story together - ie it's not just the journalists who are making stuff up.