According to the Battle Creek Enquirer, the sheriff's department in Branch County Michigan has unwittingly released an anti-terrorism warning derived from The Onion.
In a four-paragraph release sent to area news organizations Tuesday, the sheriff department reported the investigation of several complaints of possible telemarketing fraud in the area, especially targeted at the elderly.
"In the course of this investigation, it was learned that this is going on throughout the United States and some of these telemarketing programs are believed to be operated by Al-Qaeda. The CIA has announced that they acquired a videotape showing Al-Qaeda members making phone solicitations for vacation home rentals, long distance telephone service, magazine subscriptions and other products."
The reports seem to be taken from a Sept. 18 edition of The Onion headlined "Report: Al-Qaeda Allegedly Engaging in Telemarketing."
At least one radio station in the Coldwater area broadcast the information from the news release.
Detective Dan Nichols, who wrote the release, said Tuesday he did collect some of the information from The Onion, not knowing it was a humor publication.
Detective Nichols presumably took this gem at face value, as well:
For all the evidence collected by the CIA, the "smoking gun" in the investigation may turn out to be an alleged Osama bin Laden motivational videotape, currently in the possession of CNN. The controversial tape, which has never aired on the cable network, is rumored to feature bin Laden urging his followers to think positive and believe in the quality of the product they are pitching, closing on the grim slogan "Smile And Dial."
The article did not discuss any other threats to national security currently being investigated by Detective Nichols.
11:54:08 PM 
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