You might be giving Cutts to much credit, while he does work with Google - since when to PR guys get all the info? They don't - he probably just gets bits and pieces (like us) and hears only what he needs to know.
I'm sure he gets a lot more information diorectly from the source than any of us do. I'm also sure that, as mjewel has said, while he may not know everything or tell us everything, it isn't likely that he would lie to us publicly and in writing - it's too easy for that to come back and bite you.
As I said above, you just took it wrong. You took my nick wrong as well. It is sufyaaan, not syfyaaan.
Actually, once you take PageStench in to account the aging factors of your inbound links do actually effect (at least in part) to your overall PageRank scores. But it effects the deepest pages on your site first. That's where the water tends to settle causing PageRot and undeniable factor in PageStench. Glad I could help.