Was Roger Ailes a little flexible with the truth in his "the doors aren't locked / shape up!" memo to staff? That's what Fox News' Public Enemy No. 1 Dan Cooper claims in another blog post aimed as his former bosses.

Ailes, who has already kicked out two high-profile commodities, claims that back on "February 6, 1996, exactly twelve years ago this week I walked into this building for the first time as a new employee of News Corporation to build a cable news channel for Rupert Murdoch. At that time we had no employees, no studios, no control rooms, no executives, no staff, no news gathering capabilities, no equipment, no programs, no stars, no male or female divas, no international operations and no perks."

Except, well, there was a Fox News before Roger Ailes. And it did have staff. Maybe you might recognize the name Shep Smith? Or Rita Cosby? Or how about Joe Peyronnin, the then-president of the network?

Writes Cooper:

Nothing could be further from the truth. And what's more, Roger relied on some of these people, me included, to be the key players in creating the Fox News Channel.

There was already a Fox News. It had a president. His name was Joe Peyronnin. Peyronnin was still there when Roger arrived that wondrous day. Peyronnin had been a senior executive at CBS News prior to joining Fox News, and has had a distinguished career since Roger tossed him down the mail chute. Mark Pearlman, formerly vice president of corporate development at CBS, was the Fox News executive vice president of finance and operations. These two guys worked there beginning in 1995.

There were dozens of other people, and I don't want to bore you with a list. But here are some of the most important: Richard Friedel was the vice president of engineering of Fox News. Ian Rae and CNN veteran George Case were senior executives in charge of what's called the affiliate feed: the generating and feeding of national and international news reports and video to all the Fox television stations around the country. And they had correspondents out around the country covering stories every day. And guess who two of them were. No! Go ahead! Guess!

One of them was Shepard Smith! Yup, Shep was already working at Fox News before Roger Ailes got there. And so was Rita Cosby. Amazing, right? Who could discover these future stars, perhaps candidates for Ailesian diva status, other than Roger himself?

As for studios, in 1995 we built an entire bureau with newsroom and studios and control room in Washington, DC. That was one of my projects.

We certainly had newsgathering capabilities, including satellite trucks and, I'm not sure that I recall this correctly, but I think wheelbarrows to carry Shep and Rita around the country so they could cover breaking news.

Yes, we had "equipment".

We didn't have Fox News Channel programs because there was no Fox News Channel. But before Ailes was hired, Joe Peyronnin was trying to get Fox News Sunday on the air, but was having trouble because Mitchell Stern, then president of the Fox owned television stations, didn't want to carry it. Peyronnin was also developing a prime time news magazine. One of Oprah Winfrey's producers, Lloyd Kramer, was involved with that. So, no programs under the Peyronnin regime, that's true. But Fox News did produce a weekly news magazine called "Front Page" that was on the air in 1993 and 1994 every Saturday night on the Fox television network. The executive producer was David Corvo, who for years now has been the executive producer of "Dateline NBC". We had a political unit headed by Emily Rooney, Andy's daughter, who had been executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight", and has for many years now been the host of a daily "Nightline"-like show on WGBH, the educational station in Boston.

We had no international operations that I'm aware of, and as to perks, we certainly had a coffee making machine. And a big refrigerator.

So you get the point. Roger doesn't like to remember any of this, so he apparently doesn't. Amnesia, you know? He did it all himself. Like God. First the earth was wild and waste. Then Roger said "let there be television!" And, you know, if you don't like it, keep in mind the doors aren't locked from the outside.

All of this what-happened-before-Roger stuff, and the launch itself, is the story of "Naked Launch".

Central to Roger's amnesia, I suspect, is that the Fox News Channel launch team initially consisted of four people: Mark Pearlman, the brilliant finance executive, Mark's right hand man Russell Epstein, Roger's only hired executive at that point Jack Abernethy, and me. And it was the team of Pearlman, Abernethy, me, Friedel and Epstein who remained as key players throughout the launch. At which point all of us except for Abernethy were dispensed with.

If you're planning to have amnesia, be sure to eliminate the evidence. Remember that, OK?