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Rh you have a reliable, credible basis for your information.

And, you know, it is a lot like journalism in that journalism is called the first draft of history, where essentially you're gathering up information, and your job is not to determine the truth, it's to gather credible information and to present all the possibilities and all the reliable information you can find.

But, you know, every day in the newspaper every story has two sides to it, and it's not the reporter's job to figure out who's telling the truth and who's not or who's right and who's wrong, it's to be responsible and professional in gathering up all of the facts and allegations and presenting them in a neutral way. So our method is journalistic, and our reports are written along those lines.

MR. GOWDY: Do you draw a distinction between facts and allegations?

MR. SIMPSON: Certainly.

MR. GOWDY: What is that distinction?

MR. SIMPSON: Well, I mean, a fact is something that's subjectively verifiable to all reasonable observers; and an allegation is something that hasn't been confirmed.

MR. GOWDY: All right. No offense to people that do what you do for a living, but if it is all publicly available, why do people need to hire you?

MR. SIMPSON: Well, we live in an information society, and there's a lot of information out there. Some people are good at finding it and processing it, and others not so much, or it's just a question of specialization.

So you're running a business and you're busy running your business and you think that the guy who's your main competitor is cheating or maybe paying a bribe to steal a contract from you. And that's not your main line of work. You don't know how to investigate whether someone is engaged in corruption or UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE