Those with red faces yesterday included reporters this one among them the entire police department and above all

Those with red faces yesterday included reporters, this one among them, the entire police department, and, above all, the normally stern-hearted mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.Not that the truth about Edwin is any less poignant It is just not quite as he told it. His mother, although she abandoned him when he was three months old, is still alive in Honduras The father is not alive anywhere. A former resident of Miami, he found last year that he had Aids and returned to Honduras, where, last October, he died. And the boy's incredible journey, or most of it anyway, never happened. Thus New York, a city not famed for sentimentality, finds that it has been taken in, tricked by a Honduran boy barely into his teens. Trouble is, most of the tale told by 13-year-old Edwin Daniel Sabillon turns out not to be true.

He said his father had sent him a letter inviting him to make the journey and promising to meet with him at La Guardia airport And an entire city believed him. The Navaho Tribal Council banned its use in 1940, but the cult flourished covertly until the council relented in 1967. Up to 80 per cent of Navahos in the South-west are practising members of the church and peyote is legal in some states.. HE SAID his mother had been killed in Hurricane Mitch last November. He said he had trekked some 4,000 miles to New York to find his father. Footling stuff, really.The US military, traditionally a bastion of conservative values, has gone slightly overboard in its efforts to welcome allcomers over the past few years. Christians have been stunned to discover that not only adherents of Wicca, or witchcraft, but Satanists have been permitted to practise their religions on US bases.Peyote comes from a cactus that grows wild in south-westAmerica, and has been used in religious ceremonies by some Indians for centuries.Peyotists of many tribes founded the Native American Church in 1918, where peyote is honoured as a sacramental food.

Something about "acid flashbacks" and the risk of Armageddon. The bad news is that this involves taking peyote, which comes from a cactus and causes powerful hallucinations in users. The Washington Post reported the agreement yesterday, in all seriousness noting that soldiers with responsibility for nuclear weapons would not be allowed to participate in ceremonies.Agreement on letting the services turn on was reached two years ago, but apparently the spoilsports at Strategic Air Command had reservations. THE GOOD news is that the US military has struck a blow for religious tolerance, allowing its servicemen and women to practise a traditional native American religion. Obtained convictions; some were overturned on appeal and others pardoned by President Bush.Whitney North SeymourAppointed in 1986 and won perjury conviction of Michael Deaver, who served as deputy chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan..

That means that Janet Reno, the Attorney General and a Clinton appointee, will draw all the fire.The Washington InquisitorsArthur H ChristyAppointed in 1979 to investigate charges that Hamilton Jordan, President Jimmy Carter's chief of staff, used cocaine.No indictments.Jacob A SteinAppointed in 1984 to investigate charges of financial improprieties by Edwin Meese III, attorney general at the time.No indictments.Lawrence E WalshAppointed in 1986 to investigate Iran-Contra affair. Four other independent counsels will also continue down their trails and there are attempts under way to rewrite the law in an acceptable way but, from now on, it is the Justice Department that will appoint special prosecutors. Jacob Stein was appointed in 1984 to investigate charges of financial improprieties by Attorney General Edwin Meese, but there were no indictments. A decade later, Mr Stein re-emerged as a lawyer for Monica Lewinsky.Mr Starr thought the law should end.

Republicans and Democrats concluded the law did not work: the independence that had been so valued had led to a lack of political accountability.It also cost a great deal of money for often paltry results. In one of the more bizarre and painful investigations, Donald Smaltz spent $15m investigating gifts to the agriculture secretary Mike Espy worth $35,000.The law became a bizarre legal roundabout. In an investigation that cost $40m (pounds 25m) and took five years, Mr Starr produced a report that detailed in embarrassing detail the President's sexual escapades but which did not result in impeachment. As Mr Starr's investigation moved further from Arkansas and closer to Mr Clinton's crotch, the screams grew louder. This time, Congress turned off the life-support machine.When Lawrence Walsh was appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal in the Eighties, Republicans felt he was conducting a partisan witch- hunt. His inquiries led to numerous indictments, including one for Lt- Col Oliver North, who confessed to organising complex deals to arm the Contras in their war against Nicaragua, and to taking a Bible to Tehran to trade arms for hostages.When Mr Starr took over the investigation of Whitewater, an Arkansas land deal in which the Clintons were involved, Democrats screamed the same thing. Special prosecutor Archibald Cox led the inquiry into nefarious behaviour by President RichardNixon, but it was the President who demanded his removal.