When Spencer Met Scotty

I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

I can only imagine that we will soon be treated to fantastical claims of tanks driven by Fred Barnes and Karl Rove chasing Iraqi dogs though plate glass windows.

Hatley Convicted of Murder; Beauchamp Still a Fantasist

Master Sgt. John Hatley has been convicted of four counts of murder and has been sentenced to life in prison:

Master Sgt. John Hatley, 40, also will have his rank reduced to private, forfeit all pay and receive a dishonorable discharge, a jury of eight Army officers and noncommissioned officers decided. He has the possibility of parole after serving 20 years. The sentence came a day after Hatley was found guilty of premeditated murder and conspiracy in the execution-style killings of the detainees. He was found not guilty of premeditated murder in a separate January 2007 incident in which a wounded Iraqi insurgent was shot and killed.

Combat documentarian J.D. Johannes was in "The Arena" the killing ground in Baghdad's West Rashid neighborhood during the time of Hatley's deployment, and provides some perspective of what was occurring there at the time. It in no way justifies Hatley's action—to the contrary, it magnifies just how wrong Hatley's actions were during a critical time—but it does help explain how such crimes can occur.

And while I haven't yet surveyed the liberal blogosphere for reaction, day-late-and-dollar-short liberal bloggers are eventually going to latch on to the fact that Hatley was, at the time, the Sgt over one Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the fantasist that got The New Republic in such trouble for his various fictions including square-backed bullets, Bradley 25-ton IFVs that could turn on a dime to pick off dogs in the vehicle's blind spots, and verbally-abused female military contractors that never existed.

Hatley's case is proof that while no system of justice is perfect, the military system's promise of protecting those who turn in offenders from reprisals works.

Soldiers had to sense of justice to take down a superior (Hatley) and his accomplices for murders. Funny how none of the dozens of witnesses that would have witnessed Beauchamp's minor atrocities ever came forward, even when not doing could have lead to time in Leavenworth.

Far from weakening the Army's case against Beauchamp, that fact that soldiers in his unit are willing to testify against the most horrible of crimes actually bolsters the case that they would have come forward if Beauchamp's poorly-constructed stories were even close to the truth.

Below is a repost of my response to the announcement of Article 32 hearings of Staff Sgt. Jess Cunningham, Sgt. Charles Quigley, Spc. Stephen Ribordy, and Spc. Belmor Ramos, Hatley's fellow murders.

And? [Originally posted Sept. 19, 2008]

Some of the defenders of Scott Beauchamp's trio of fables in the New Republic simply can't let go of the fact that his stories were poorly written fiction. There's always been an odd attachment by some of them to justify his lies, almost as if his stories of minor atrocities were dismissed, then no atrocity claims would ever be taken seriously again.

Today, several left wing blogs have latched on to a story than has been simmering for months, the trial resulting from the execution of prisoners by members of Beauchamp's battalion between mid-March and mid-April of 2007 near Baghdad. They are trying to use that story to somehow resurrect Beauchamp's credibility.

"See? This guys in Beauchamp's battalion committed atrocities, so his stories must have been real!"

Uh, no.

During the debunking of Spencer Ackerman's cartoonishly bad "Notes on a Scandal" roughly a month ago, I compared the military investigation into Beauchamp's lies to that very same far more serious and still developing homicide investigation to make a point:

Ackerman’s biggest point of contention that Beauchamp's stories may be true are the claims that five soldiers contacted the New Republic to vouch for the accuracy of the claims made in the article — but that none of the soldiers were willing to go on the record in the magazine for fear of retaliation by the Army. Ackerman himself presents no evidence that he spoke to a single one of these soldiers, so we don't know if that claim has any merit, but I did get in touch with an officer yesterday involved in the saga who referred to claims of fears of retaliation as "a bald-faced lie."

The claims made in "Shock Troops" — insulting a burned woman, wearing bones as a hat, running over dogs — are barbaric, but at best are minimal crimes if true. Punishment for even those soldiers involved in acts such as those Beauchamp described would be administrative punishments carried out at the base, while those who would have witnessed such acts would face no penalty for reporting them. Lying on a sworn statement, however, is far more serious, and could potentially result in a court martial and prison time. Does anyone seriously want to argue that 22 men would risk their careers and freedom to lie for Scott Beauchamp, a soldier who had gone AWOL on several occasions and who many of these men did not trust?

In addition, whistleblower laws protect witnesses of crimes, whether minor cases of cruelty as reported by Beauchamp, or murder, and we need look no further than Beauchamp's own brigade for evidence proving this.

An Article 32 hearing for Staff Sgt. Jess Cunningham, Sgt. Charles Quigley, Spc. Stephen Ribordy, and Spc. Belmor Ramos will begin next week to determine whether these four soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion executed Iraqi prisoners.

It was other soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion that stepped forward and reported the far more serious crimes of executing captives. It is highly improbable that soldiers trained to do their duty would report their fellow soldiers for serious crimes, while men in the same battalion, presumably with the same training, would participate in a cover-up of far more minor violations, fearing non-existent reprisals, and risking their careers by participating in a cover-up to do so. The argument made by Beauchamp, swallowed so easily be Ackerman, is absurd.

The one particular detail of the murder investigation that has the left so suddenly feisty is that one of the soldiers facing charges (added as a defendent in the 1 1/2 months that has passed since the story cited was written) is SFC John E. Hatley, a soldier that has been cited for an email he wrote to milblogger SFC Cheryl MacElroy (RET).

Vietnam war historian Keith Nolan wrote this afternoon seeking my reaction to this development as he recalled I mentioned Hatley's email, and this is what I told him:

Mr Nolan,

Yes sir, I did quote from and refer to an email between SFC Cheryl McElroy and a SFC Hatley. I've contacted McElroy to see if she can contact the Sgt she emailed and determine it is the same Hatley. If it is the same Hatley, it would certainly destroys his credibility if he is judged to be guilty of such crimes.

What interests me is that Hatley isn't mentioned among the accused at all in this earlier article. I wonder what changed since late July.

As for how that impacts the overall case against Beauchamp? It doesn't.

It was still against SOP (not to mention suicidal) to change a HMMWV tire while on urban patrol in his area, and doubtful that a run-flat equipped vehicle would stop anyway.

There are still no such thing as a square-backed bullet in modern firearms, and Glocks are still among the most popular handguns in Iraqi culture, despite Beauchamp's claim that only Iraqi Police carry them.

There is still no burned female contractor. She simply never existed. I have an independent civilian contractor at that Kuwaiti base and military officers on the record supporting that.

Bradleys and other tracked vehicles still cannot maneuver as he described, and that comes straight from the company that manufactures them.

As for the most plausible story he told, that of someone abusing human remains, I've got two dozen signed affidavits in my hands (well, photocopied onto a CD) that makes the all sorts of slightly different claims you would expect regarding several bones found at a COP under construction, but not a single one of a guy wearing a rotting skullplate with flesh attached for part of the day and night.

Hatley's account was a supporting anecdote I relayed, but it played no significant role in my investigation or conclusions.

Hatley may very well prove to be guilty of murder and of lying in a email about how all of his soldiers are "consistently honorable."

But Hatley's guilt or innocence in a separate matter is of little more than a footnote in Beauchamp's stories, all three works of fiction that editor Franklin Foer finally decided that even he couldn't support.

Update: It looks like some of the liberal blogs found the story of the murder convictions, and predictably, are using faulty logic to insist that since Hatley lied, Beauchamp must be telling the truth.

A sampling.

Crooks & Liars:

If you cannot place the name, Master Sgt. Hatley was the direct superior of Pvt. Scott Beauchamp and the person most used to discredit (along with the gay porn star) the New Republic diary of the life of a soldier in Iraq and the ways they dealt with the pressures of Operation Clusterf*ck. All of which Hatley said was absolutely not what his ever virtuous soldiers did.

TPM Muckraker:

Some of those conservatives, including the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, participated in a concerted (and inaccurate) effort to discredit Beauchamp and tar, for lack of patriotism, the notoriously dovish New Republic and, by association, liberals everywhere.

For his reporting, Goldfarb relied on some...let's call them 'questionable' sources and even got an assist, in a bizarre breach of protocol, from Beauchamp's First Sergeant, who took to the blogosphere to make the case against the beleaguered Private. "My soldiers [sic] conduct is consistently honorable."

This soldier has other underlining [sic] issues which I'm sure will come out in the course of the investigation. No one at any of the post we live at or frequent, remotely fit the descriptions of any of the persons depicted in this young man's fairy tale. I can't and won't divulge any information regarding this soldier, but I do sincerely appreciate all the support from the people back home. Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here.

The name of that Non-Commissioned Officer might ring a bell: John Hatley. And he seems to have protested a bit too much. Hatley had, in fact, committed the murders before he took to the Internet to defend himself and his fellow soldiers against charges of recklessness. We excitedly await Goldfarb's statement on the issue.

Andrew Sullivan:

In many ways, you couldn't make this up. But given Michael Goldfarb's enthusiasm for killing innocents, it's not terribly surprising. Goldfarb was part of the wide bloggy attempt to describe TNR's correspondent, Scott Beauchamp, as an America-hating loser and liar for pointing out that some soldiers in Iraq acted dishonorably and immorally. One of his key sources, Beauchamp's own First Sergeant, was critical in rebutting Beauchamp's charges. Goldfarb's source for defending the honor of his men and himself was just convicted "of executing four handcuffed, blindfolded Iraqi men by shooting them in the backs of their heads." Goldfarb's kinda guy. But who looks more credible now? Goldfarb or Beauchamp?

Looks like we have some liberals trying to rewrite history on a grand scale.

Hatley was not a source cultivated by Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard, and his comments were not solicited by Goldfarb either. Then SFC Hatley wrote his comments in an email responding to milblogger SFC Cheryl McElroy, which you can read in the original form at her blog. It's quite obvious after reading that link that both Sullivan and TPMM's Brian Beutler owe Goldfarb at least a correction, thought I doubt they have the integrity to issue an apology for their rather gutless smears.

Like all of Beauchamp's wannabe defenders, these bloggers and others have overinflated Hatley's importance. Hatley's email on SFC McElroy's blog was a character reference we now know to be worthless.

That said, I have, via FOIA, all of the statements taken from soldiers in Beauchamp's unit, asked about the specific allegations Beauchamp alleges. There were more than two dozen. Even though they would have faced felony jail time if they lied under oath, not one soldier would support Beauchamp.

Not. One.

Bu the evidence that damned Beauchamp more than even the military investigation were details I investigated independently of the military.

I hunted down the manufacturer of the Bradley IFV, gave him Beauchamp's story, and he explained why you can't hit dogs as described in Beauchamp's fictions with a 25-ton tank.

I hunted down both civilian and military personnel in other commands that were stationed at both the camps Beauchamp claimed to have insulted the burned woman at, and all confirm that such a distinctive character would have easily stood out, and yet, she never existed.

As something of a firearms expert in my own right, I can state definitively that "square-backed" pistol ammunition Beauchamp wrote of and claimed to have recovered has never existed. Not was he even close to correct in claiming that Glock pistols were carried only by Iraqi police when they are in fact the most widespread pistol among the military, police, and civilians in Iraq.

Hatley is a murderer who directed a conspiracy to cover up his crime. He's also a liar. We all agree on that, and I think we all agree he earned his life sentence (though I would prefer that he didn't have the opportunity for parole after 20 years).

That said, Hatley's role in the Beauchamp case was a minor one (you can read my archives if you doubt that), and watching liberal bloggers trying to inflate his role so that they can tear down the case against Beauchamp (and thereby justify for their loathing for all things military) is a pathetic attempt at self-edification by a group that would still rather spit on the uniform than honor it.

And?

Some of the defenders of Scott Beauchamp's trio of fables in the New Republic simply can't let go of the fact that his stories were poorly written fiction. There's always been an odd attachment by some of them to justify his lies, almost as if his stories of minor atrocities were dismissed, then no atrocity claims would ever be taken seriously again.

Today, several left wing blogs have latched on to a story than has been simmering for months, the trial resulting from the execution of prisoners by members of Beauchamp's battalion between mid-March and mid-April of 2007 near Baghdad. They are trying to use that story to somehow resurrect Beauchamp's credibility.

"See? This guys in Beauchamp's battalion committed atrocities, so his stories must have been real!"

Uh, no.

During the debunking of Spencer Ackerman's cartoonishly bad "Notes on a Scandal" roughly a month ago, I compared the military investigation into Beauchamp's lies to that very same far more serious and still developing homicide investigation to make a point:

Ackerman’s biggest point of contention that Beauchamp's stories may be true are the claims that five soldiers contacted the New Republic to vouch for the accuracy of the claims made in the article — but that none of the soldiers were willing to go on the record in the magazine for fear of retaliation by the Army. Ackerman himself presents no evidence that he spoke to a single one of these soldiers, so we don't know if that claim has any merit, but I did get in touch with an officer yesterday involved in the saga who referred to claims of fears of retaliation as "a bald-faced lie."

The claims made in "Shock Troops" — insulting a burned woman, wearing bones as a hat, running over dogs — are barbaric, but at best are minimal crimes if true. Punishment for even those soldiers involved in acts such as those Beauchamp described would be administrative punishments carried out at the base, while those who would have witnessed such acts would face no penalty for reporting them. Lying on a sworn statement, however, is far more serious, and could potentially result in a court martial and prison time. Does anyone seriously want to argue that 22 men would risk their careers and freedom to lie for Scott Beauchamp, a soldier who had gone AWOL on several occasions and who many of these men did not trust?

In addition, whistleblower laws protect witnesses of crimes, whether minor cases of cruelty as reported by Beauchamp, or murder, and we need look no further than Beauchamp's own brigade for evidence proving this.

An Article 32 hearing for Staff Sgt. Jess Cunningham, Sgt. Charles Quigley, Spc. Stephen Ribordy, and Spc. Belmor Ramos will begin next week to determine whether these four soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion executed Iraqi prisoners.

It was other soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion that stepped forward and reported the far more serious crimes of executing captives. It is highly improbable that soldiers trained to do their duty would report their fellow soldiers for serious crimes, while men in the same battalion, presumably with the same training, would participate in a cover-up of far more minor violations, fearing non-existent reprisals, and risking their careers by participating in a cover-up to do so. The argument made by Beauchamp, swallowed so easily be Ackerman, is absurd.

The one particular detail of the murder investigation that has the left so suddenly feisty is that one of the soldiers facing charges (added as a defendent in the 1 1/2 months that has passed since the story cited was written) is SFC John E. Hatley, a soldier that has been cited for an email he wrote to milblogger SFC Cheryl MacElroy (RET).

Vietnam war historian Keith Nolan wrote this afternoon seeking my reaction to this development as he recalled I mentioned Hatley's email, and this is what I told him:

Mr Nolan,

Yes sir, I did quote from and refer to an email between SFC Cheryl McElroy and a SFC Hatley. I've contacted McElroy to see if she can contact the Sgt she emailed and determine it is the same Hatley. If it is the same Hatley, it would certainly destroys his credibility if he is judged to be guilty of such crimes.

What interests me is that Hatley isn't mentioned among the accused at all in this earlier article. I wonder what changed since late July.

As for how that impacts the overall case against Beauchamp? It doesn't.

It was still against SOP (not to mention suicidal) to change a HMMWV tire while on urban patrol in his area, and doubtful that a run-flat equipped vehicle would stop anyway.

There are still no such thing as a square-backed bullet in modern firearms, and Glocks are still among the most popular handguns in Iraqi culture, despite Beauchamp's claim that only Iraqi Police carry them.

There is still no burned female contractor. She simply never existed. I have an independent civilian contractor at that Kuwaiti base and military officers on the record supporting that.

Bradleys and other tracked vehicles still cannot maneuver as he described, and that comes straight from the company that manufactures them.

As for the most plausible story he told, that of someone abusing human remains, I've got two dozen signed affidavits in my hands (well, photocopied onto a CD) that makes the all sorts of slightly different claims you would expect regarding several bones found at a COP under construction, but not a single one of a guy wearing a rotting skullplate with flesh attached for part of the day and night.

Hatley's account was a supporting anecdote I relayed, but it played no significant role in my investigation or conclusions.

Hatley may very well prove to be guilty of murder and of lying in a email about how all of his soldiers are "consistently honorable."

But Hatley's guilt or innocence in a separate matter is of little more than a footnote in Beauchamp's stories, all three works of fiction that editor Franklin Foer finally decided that even he couldn't support.

They're Baaack...

And you thought it was over...

Scott Thomas Beauchamp's "Shock Troops" Statements

After the article "Shock Troops" in The New Republic had been challenged by critics , a documentary filmmaker/blogger by the name of JD Johannes narrowed down the search of the author to Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division on July21.

Three days after that on July 24, the military began a formal investigation, which included taking statements from soldiers in Alpha/1-18IN.

Scott Beauchamp gave his initial statement on July 26, published here for the first time.

Later, Beauchamp returned and filed another statement. For reasons as yet unexplained, he backdated the time of the second statement to 1700, an hour an 40 minutes before his original statement at 1840, and yet he directly refers to his statement made at 1840. [Update: perhaps the original statement was made at 15:40 and his penmanship is just bad? That would make a lot more sense...]

At no point during these two statements does Beauchamp directly recant.

He does not provide any support to the claims made in his article, "Shock Troops." There does not appear to ever have been any documentary evidence to support this story, nor the author's two previous stories.

Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, penned a retraction of these stories five months later. Foer has yet to issue an apology to his critics or the military he maligned during the course of this story.

Update: Thanks to Jon Ham at The John Locke Foundation for enhancing the contrast of these images.

Yes, They Said It

Among the documents provided by FOIA requests to U.S. Central Command was this FOIA request from Peter Scoblic of The New Republic.

This particular paragraph is rich with... well, you know.

TNR's senior editorial staff, particularly Franklin Foer, has been the primary if not exclusive source for attacks against the integrity and credibility of the U.S. military investigation from the very beginning of the criticism over "Shock Troops," all the way through Foer's belated, unapologetic retraction.

The Scott Thomas Beauchamp " Shock Troops" Military Investigation, Statements 1-6, 8-12.

Documents released by the Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base Florida, in relation to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests files for documents relating to the military investigation into the Scott Thomas Beauchamp "Shock Troops" article in The New Republic magazine.

The following are the never-before published statements of soldiers interviewed in the course of the investigation. Names are redacted per federal privacy laws.

Statement 1 (click image to enlarge)

More documents follow. Check back in later.

The Scott Thomas Beauchamp " Shock Troops" Military Investigation, Statements 13-24

Documents released by the Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base Florida, in relation to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests files for documents relating to the military investigation into the Scott Thomas Beauchamp "Shock Troops" article in The New Republic magazine.

The following are the never-before published statements of soldiers interviewed in the course of the investigation. Names are redacted per federal privacy laws.

Statement 13

More documents following throughout the day. Check back in later.

Eric Alterman's Alternate Universe

Alterman compares yesterday's circular firing squad of current and former TNR staffers to Rathergate... from a "nuanced" perspective.

The situation is, in many aspects, similar to the CBS Dan Rather mess, as the story has yet to be proven true or false, but remains insufficiently documented.

The community-based reality. Don't leave ours without it.

Open Season

Just when you thought the TNR debacle over "Shock Troops" was over, current and former TNR staffers have begun firing at each other.

In the New York Observer... Bridal blog?

Quoth Elspeth:

"Yeah, it's a bummer, but it's hard to shed any tears over Frank," Elspeth Reeve was telling The Observer in a phone interview Friday, the day before her husband, U.S. Army Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, joined her at her mother’s house in Missouri for his 30-day leave.

And:

Ms. Reeve said she was surprised to learn, in early November while visiting her husband in Germany (where he was transferred upon completing his tour of duty in Iraq), that Mr. Foer planned to retract the stories. She said that she and Mr. Beauchamp had not expected Mr. Foer to take any decisive action until Mr. Beauchamp returned to the U.S. this week, at which point they thought it would be much easier for him to speak up in his own defense.

"I think Scott thought Frank was on his side, you know? And that he understood that he was in a really difficult situation and so would be patient until Scott got out of Iraq," Ms. Reeve said. "I don't think Scott realized the limits on Frank’s patience."

Ms. Reeve also argued that Mr. Foer's retraction, titled "The Fog of War," had failed to prove that any of Mr. Beauchamp’s stories contained fabrications—all it did, she said, was demonstrate that Mr. Foer was tired of dealing with the scandal.

At least one current TNR staffers had other opinions:

According to Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at TNR, the magazine received little cooperation from Mr. Beauchamp throughout the investigation process. "The basis [for the retraction] was just that Scott is maddening," he said. "He's just flaky, he's irresponsible, he doesn't do things that are in his own obvious interest to do. ... Scott was the guy who lives in the group house and is supposed to pay the electric bill and just doesn't, and the lights get shut off. Frank was the guy who had the lights shut out on him."

Hmmm... perhaps they should have figured that out before they published three of his stories?

The most damning comment, however, comes from TNR editor in chief, Martin Peretz—who was notably mute throughout the entire scandal.

"Certainly in retrospect we shouldn't have published them," he told The Observer Monday. "They did not meet the highest standards of proof."

I would have expected Peretz to provide more backing for embattled editor Franklin Foer. Interesting...

Update: And more today, including a previously unmentioned conversation between Peter Scoblic, Elspeth Reeve, and Scott Beauchamp.

Why didn't Frank mention that conversation in his 14-page opus, and why won't Scoblic discuss it now?

Smith Resigns...

...as a freelancer at NRO:

Dear Readers,

After much reflection and consideration, I am withdrawing from my professional relationship as a regular freelancer with National Review Online.

This is my own decision. No one at NRO has asked me to do this, nor has anyone suggested or even hinted I should. But I believe this to be in the best interest of the publication which I have so much respect for.

Both NRO and I have taken far too much heat for something which would never have happened had I been more specific in terms of detailing my sourcing while blogging about Lebanon at "The Tank". That is a responsibility I have to accept.

It was an honor to write for NRO. NRO has stood by me and supported me throughout all of this, and for that — and for so many other things over the years — I will always be grateful. And I will always cherish my relationship with NRO.

As I said in an interview the other day, I'm not sure what the future holds for me in this. But what I do know is that I will continue to march forward into it.

All the best,
W. Thomas Smith Jr.

Franklin Foer, you are on the clock.

Update: Katharyn Jean Lopez provides a full accounting of what went wrong with Smith's reporting from Lebanon at NRO blog "The Tank."

Killing Themselves Softly

"Re-reporting" for The New Republic doesn't apparently consist of going back to talk with experts they've interviewed to discuss discrepancies in their claims.

On August 9, I published When Hidden Experts are Found, an interview with Doug Coffey, the Head of Communications, Land & Armaments, for BAE Systems. He is the corporate spokesmen TNR cited—anonymously— on August 2 (my bold):

The last section of the Diarist described soldiers using Bradley Fighting Vehicles to kill dogs. On this topic, one soldier who witnessed the incident described by Beauchamp, wrote in an e-mail: "How you do this (I've seen it done more than once) is, when you approach the dog in question, suddenly lurch the Bradley on the opposite side of the road the dog is on. The rear-end of the vehicle will then swing TOWARD the animal, scaring it into running out into the road. If it works, the dog is running into the center of the road as the driver swings his yoke back around the other way, and the dog becomes a chalk outline." TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described.

As TNR did not publish his name—or for that matter, any other experts they claim support the allegations made in "Shock Troops"—I stumbled across Coffey purely by accident.

It quickly became apparent that TNR did not ask him to actually review the specific claims made about Bradley capabilities in "Shock Troops," and once he reviewed the exact passages, he didn't seem very convinced:

I can't pretend to know what may or may not have happened in Iraq but the impression the writer leaves is that a "driver" can go on joy rides with a 35 ton vehicle at will. The vehicle has a crew and a commander of the vehicle who is in charge. In order for the scenario described to have taken place, there would have to have been collaboration by the entire crew.

The driver's vision, even if sitting in an open hatch is severely restricted along the sides. He sits forward on the left side of the vehicle. His vision is significantly impaired along the right side of the vehicle which makes the account to "suddenly swerve to the right" and actually catch an animal suspect. If you were to attempt the same feat in your car, it would be very difficult and you have the benefit of side mirrors.

Anyone familiar with tracked vehicles knows that turning sharply requires the road wheels on the side of the turn to either stop or reverse as the road wheels on the opposite side accelerates. What may not be obvious is that the track once on the ground, doesn't move. The road wheels roll across it but the track itself is stationary until it is pushed forward by the road wheels.

The width of the track makes it highly unlikely that running over a dog would leave two intact parts. One half of the dog would have to be completely crushed.

It also seems suspicious that a driver could go on repeated joy rides or purposefully run into things. Less a risk to the track though that is certainly possible but there is sensitive equipment on the top of the vehicle, antennas, sights, TOW missile launcher, commander and if it was a newer vehicle, the commander's independent viewer, not to mention the main gun. Strange things are known to happen in a combat environment but I can't imagine that the vehicle commander or the unit commander would tolerate repeated misuse of the vehicle, especially any action that could damage its ability to engage.

This interview with Mr. Coffey has been cited once or twice, and seems to cast significant doubt on the quality of "re-reporting" done by the editors of The New Republic.

I would think that in the almost four months since this interview first posted that TNR would seek to reestablish contact with Mr. Coffey to discuss the apparent discrepancies between what they suggest he said, and what he said here, especially as this is often cited as one of the strongest claims against the quality and intent of their investigation.

To date, The New Republic still refuses to release the names of the other experts they said supported the claims made in "Shock Troops."

Slowly, Slowly...

The TNR saga is slowly seeping into the media, with posts this morning at the Washington Post and the New York Times, in addition to last night's mention in the New York Observer.

Not a single one of these outlets discusses the fact that Franklin Foer spent the better part of 13 pages alleging a military conspiracy spanning four bases in three countries involving dozens of soldiers, from privates to colonels.

I guess they didn't want to discuss how nutty that explanation sounds.

Nor did they mention that Foer and The New Republic refused to apologize to those soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait they accused of atrocities.

Not a single one them acknowledges that Foer was being deceptive when he claimed back in July "the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published".

Nor did they mention that both of the author's prior stories made statements--at least one unequivocally false--that should have made them doubt his veracity from the beginning. Even Media Matters ripped The New Republic for their handling of this debacle, perhaps marking the first time in history the organization has ever been to the right of major news outlets.

No. I'm not kidding:

Essentially, what unnerved me is that a magazine like TNR was so completely divorced from the military that they did not even have one person on staff -- one single person -- who was personally connected to a career professional in the military (and Elspeth Reeve, an intern at TNR who is now married to Beauchamp -- himself not a career professional in the military -- doesn't count), who could have a) helped them screen what was being sent in the first place, and b) helped them figure out how to fact-check the guy (let alone, after the fact, help them figure out what was really going on). I mean, seriously, how is it that at this point the best de facto depictions of life in-country come ... in Doonesbury?! (The very liberal cartoonist Gary Trudeau is, in a strange twist of journalism, apparently far better wired in to real soldiers on the ground than is the editor of a major magazine? How did this happen?)

Folks, we are six freaking years into a war now. Regardless of how you or I or Eric or anybody feels about the causality of these wars, the fact of these wars remain important for all of us to understand. We are six years into a period in which the military and issues of war have been, like, you know, sort of central. How could TNR remain so divorced from anyone in the military for so long that they eventually fell for this?

Nor have the professional media sought to address, in any way, that The New Republic hid testimony provided to it by military personnel that contradicted their preferred narrative, and have flatly refused to provide the names of their anonymous civilian experts they interviewed, perhaps because the one that was found shows just how disreputable the magazine truly is.

This story is far from over, folks.

But They're Only The Rabble: Ignore Them

Franklin Foer may be telling the truth when he said "no one at TNR has asked him to" resign. Because smart employees rarely tell their bosses such things, of course.

Commenters to his 14-page non-apology were a bit less restrained:

Posted by Chris Christner 7 of 420 | warn tnr | respond You broke every rule of journalism and in the process slandered our military. At the very least you owe them an apology. If you had a shred of integrity and respect for the reputation of TNR, you'd also submit your resignation. It's obvious that you waited until the last possible moment to retract Beauchamp's stories, only doing so now because the new TNR book on Election 08's just come out. However, regardless of your blame-the-messenger retraction, the Beauchamp affair is still going to hammer your book's credibility along with that of TNR. As it should.

...

Posted by Hey, Pierre Salinger!
25 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Franklin Foer, your petulant whine about the bad ol' Army and the stressed-out Beauchamp are less than believable. You were had because you WANTED to be had. Get over your self-pity and resign, already.

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Posted by slp
32 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Franklin: It is time to resign.

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Posted by tdneeley
56 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
I always suspected Beauchamp's stories were crap. I've already canceled my subscription, after 13 or 14 years. Anyone involved in this debacle should do the honorable thing and resign. You people have very nearly destroyed a great magazine, one I enjoyed reading back when Foer and company were going to keggers and sleeping through Journalism 101. What a disgrace. Goodbye.

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Posted by redherkey
60 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Franklin, While your efforts to explain this certainly must have taken considerable energy, it does not address the fundamental issue which allowed this myth to be published: the lack of management controls enforcing organizational policy and adherence to both company and journalistic codes of conduct. As a competent manager would explain, the outcome you experienced is what is expected when organizational controls are ignored. This is the default condition to which management is empowered to correct. We do not have spouses or even parties related through means other than the job conducting reviews, fact-checking, etc. We do not verify anonymous sources with other anonymous ones. In fact, anonymous sources are never primary sources except in shady journalism due to the inherent uncontrolled abuse it facilitates. We maintain higher tests when accusations are more significant. Having attempted to effect an outcome that damages national security and disparages the U.S. Army, a very high standard is required. Instead, TNR's efforts would not suffice at a junior high school newspaper. This is a management failure, not a complex trickery of a confused young man. Given the track record of TNR, this is also an institutional failure. TNR simply does not have controls sufficient to produce credible, objective non-fiction publications and does not appear capable of self-reform. Should you and the editorial staff and senior management of the publication seek to provide TNR with an opportunity to continue, resignation is the only appropriate action. CanWest should either clean house and refocus this damaged brand or terminate it and write it off as a lesson in corporate governance and oversight.

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Posted by Cody B
68 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
"The Plank The smartest blog on the web. Period." No dude, you were busted by many, many blogs who are much smarter than you and don't have an agenda. You should resign right after you apologize to our brave men and women serving our country.

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Posted by FOER-THE-LIER
75 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
FOER: Well, it depends on what the word "LIE" means!! Can you imagine how much time this little dweeb has spent the last month trying to write this? How NIXONIAN. Tricky Dick never weaseled around more. Notice how the libs, when caught in their own morass slither around just like Tricky Dick. Foer - just remember when people look at you now - they are thinking - "There goes that guy that swallowed harder and longer than Monica ever did." Like one other poster said, it couldn't happen to a nicer, more arrogant bastardi. RESIGN NOW.

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Posted by C. Pruett
78 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
To borrow and paraphrase: Let us not assassinate these lads further, Mr. Foer You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Obfuscatory tripe. Check. Refusal to accept responsibility. Check. Failure to sincerely apologize. Check. Complete lack of integrity. Check. Mr. Foer, an honorable man would resign. Accordingly, I expect you to stay on.

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Posted by klfoster
81 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Foer suggests that the Army may be guilty of suppressing Beauchamp through intimidation, thereby holding out the slim hope for himself that one day he and Beauchamp will be cleared of all charges. Foer has not offered an apology. He is as misleading in this regard as the meandering Beauchamp story. The owners of The New Republic have a responsibility to their readers, the public and the Army to make management changes at the magazine to restore its credibility.

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Posted by Gerry Shuller
91 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Is there an ounce of integrity left at TNR? Of course, Foer and other have to go, but more importantly, the next issue of TRN must not only feature an abject apology, but have POSITIVE stories about the American military that is fighting Islamo-fascism in Iraq.

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Posted by Cato the Elder
99 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Now I see why it took your honest effort so many months to reach a conclusion: it must have taken at least a quarter to come up with and write 14 pages of self-serving garbage. Why is it that a magazine with a history of publishing fakes, lies, forgeries etc. continues to be duped by Q-list fabulists? Do you not learn from your mistakes? Why are the editors of TNR still employed? Take a tip from Howell Raines and go write about your dogs for Field & Stream. This episode shames Franklin Foer, CanWest and a once great magazine. In a better world Mr. Foer would open his stomach immediately after issuing a straightforward correction. Mr. Foer's demonstrated lack of honor precludes his taking that honorable step and Carthage must be destroyed.

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Posted by Jim C
110 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
You all should be ashamed of yourselves. You slandered our military, lied to your readers about experts that supposedly corroberated Beauchamp's story, and now you have the nerve to pull the "hey, he pulled the wool over our eyes too" card? I hope canwest gets rid of every last one of you. Jim C

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Posted by fmfnavydoc
122 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
As a member of the military, your apology, Mr. Foer, isn't worth the damn paper it's written on. You and your magazine violated every rule of journalistic and even personal integrity by publishing Scott Thomas Beuachamp's tripe - you have become the latest poster child for "journalistic integrity" - right up there with Dan Rather, CNN and the others that have used the media to spew their vitriol against those that they see as being "inferior" or not holding the same viewpoint. 14 pages to tell the world "we screwed up" - that has to be a record, especially for a journalist. Your actions brought TNR to the level of a gossip mag, or better yet, to a level lower than that seen at a junior high school student paper. Mr. Foer, you need to do the following: 1. Say the following phrase, "I screwed up"... 2. Submit your resignation, effective immediately. 3. Find employment elsewhere - like a fast food restaurant.

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osted by Thom Walker
153 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Agreed. Resign. Better yet, fold TNR. It's time she died, and newer breaths were heard.Even if - and it's a big IF - 75% of Beauchamp's stories turn out by some miracle to be true... or even 'fact-based'... it doesn't excuse this shoddy attempt at journalism, and it absolutely does not excuse this multi-page non-apology. (I can't remember the last time a public figure even offered a GENUINE apology, vs a "Gosh, I'm sorry if YOU were offended" snake-in-the-grass escape from self-ownership of an issue - and sadly, this article is lower than the average snake's belly.) Thank the great American military - by their amazing self-sacrifice, you're free to publish this tripe anytime you want. Just please, from now on, file it under pulp fiction. Better yet, don't bother.

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Posted by Richard
159 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
This is absolute garbage. Come clean, Franklin, and then fall on your sword. Confession is good for the soul. Admit you made an egregious set of editing errors and compounded them by initially standing by your story, and then stonewalling for months. And then do the only honorable thing you've done since this started, and resign. Thank you, by the way, for the $6.00 check you sent, refunding the remainder of my subscription.

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Posted by Takekaze
168 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
When I read those "stories" the first time my reaction was "What the hell?" My brain was screaming "BS alarm!" Let me explain why. I'm not American, but I have served in my country's military for 8 years. I held a rank equivalent to either Staff Sergeant or Master Sergeant (I always mix them up). I was a tankie. When I read about M2 Brads running over dogs as if it was the easiset thing in the world, I was wondering how the hell one would achieve that. Agreed, we don't have Bradleys, but we do have APCs and I seriously doubt that even our best drivers can run over a dog like this (I know my driver can't do it). When I read about "Mandrake's Bride", my only conclusion was: this story is crap. I know that no NCO or officer would allow such behavior in the mess tent. I would bite off my soldiers' heads for something like that. I would make them regret such behavior. As for the pieces of skull on the head. Oh please, such stories come up all the time and they are usually never true. Oldest propaganda. Apart from that, any NCO or officer would stop it right away. In my eight years of service (four active, four in reserves) I had to deal with US troops a few times. They were usually Marines. And, judging from those men and women, I would, without hesitation, put my hand into the fire for their integrity and honor, because I know they would NEVER behave in the ways described in those ridiculous stories. Now, the way I see it, you, the editors, owe the US military and it's men and women an apology. I think you should fly to Iraq, travel from base to base and apologize to every soldier, every marine, every airman, every sailor, every tankie, every grunt, every pilot, every medic, every driver, every NCO, every officer you meet there and then thank them for their hard work in Iraq and A-stan and for protecting your right of slandering them... I mean, your right of free speech, oh those evil typos. You also owe the American public an apology for lying to them.

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G. Lutz
174 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
To me, the "re-reporting" and quasi retraction of these stories smack of the same mistakes made in the Killian documents debacle. The editors at TNR decided to print the Beauchamp stories with no serious regard to their veracity simply because they fit into their political milieu and it's narrow minded view of the war in Iraq, and the conduct of the American soldiers fighting that war. Further, your report and retraction of the stories, much like the Dan Rather retraction, appears to state that while the articles in question may not be accurate, you still stand by the basic premise of the stories themselves, thus exposing a base partisanship and lack of journalist integrity at TNR. I am disgusted and saddened by the half hearted retraction, and the utter lack of an apology to the men and women of the United States armed forces. TNR just confirmed all the horrible things it is accused of by the "right-wing" blogosphere. When reporting on weighty issues with such far reaching implications one must take extraordinary diligence to ascertain the veracity of any and all claims made. TNR obviously did not do this, as allowing the new wife of the author to fact check the pieces clearly shows. The lack of professionalism with which TNR has conducted itself throughout this lengthy affair is astounding. One can only hope that it leads to some major changes in personnel in your organization.

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Posted by Roy Mustang
175 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
Mr. Foer has proven that is not trustworthy enough to hold his current position. This 15 page intelluctually dishonest editoral only serves to highlight this fact. If TNR ever wants to regain the public's trust, it needs to start with the removal of Mr. Foer.

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Posted by JPLodine
227 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
For Chrissake, resign already.

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Posted by Shyron M. Beavers
238 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
As a veteran your I am infuriated that your obvious lies and pure hate for America and the POTUS, this yellow journalism put our fighting men in harms way and the support troops. Next time just say we lied, I'm sorry, and I resign!

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Posted by Steve
246 of 420 | warn tnr | respond
What a convoluted way of saying, "We lied to you." Remember when people used to be noble and just resign when they majorly screwed up? How can anyone ever believe another word printed by your magazine? It's time to clean house or close down.

That is just halfway into the comments section, but I got tired of cutting and pasting. There were also quite a few comments from former TNR subscribers—and future former TNR subscribers—in the comments, but I didn't attempt an accounting.

Ultimately, it will be Canwest that does that... via advertiser feedback, of course. In the end, I'll be surprised if Mr. Foer's wild ride won't end up costing Canwest millions.

TNR Folds

It took fourteen pages--13 of those geared towards Franklin' Foer's attempt to keep his job--but here's the punchline:

When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.

Stay tuned. I'll have much more later, including why Franklin Foer said nothing to justify keeping his job.

Update: As promised.

TNR's Last Stand?

1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, rotated out of Iraqi several weeks ago to their home base in Schweinfurt, Germany. This included noted fabulist Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Whether Beauchamp is still in Germany or has been allowed home on leave is rather irrelevant; he matters quite little now that he has established that he will not support his dark fantasies on the record.

What does matter is that Franklin Foer and The New Republic have lost yet another excuse in their continued failure to account for the actions of the magazine's editors since "Shock Troops" was first questioned July 18, over four months ago. Now that Beauchamp is out of the war zone and back in western civilization, Foer is unable to claim that he military is muzzling his communication or that of his fellow soldiers.

Rumor has it that Franklin Foer is presently attempting to pen his final justification of the story, and that it will be published in a December editor of the magazine.

Foer's story needs to include only three key elements to be successful, and without these three elements Franklin Foer's career and the integrity of The New Republic is shattered.

Names.
What is the name of the fabled woman with the melted face? What was the name of the other soldier in the chow hall that participated in this alleged verbal assault along with Beauchamp against this woman? What is the name of the soldier that wore a fragmented child's skull on his head? What was the name of the Bradley IFV driver who ran over three dogs in one mission?

Will Scott Thomas Beauchamp stand behind his stories on the record, or not?

Dates.
How does the magazine justify standing behind the central theme of "Shock Troops"—that war made the author into a horrible person—when the magazine itself now claims that the alleged verbal attack took place before the author ever entered combat?

Why has it taken so long for the magazine to mount a defense for an article that the editor claims was fact-checked prior to publication?

Places.
Where is the "Saddam-era dumping ground" filled with, "All children's bones: tiny cracked tibias and shoulder blades"?

It All Comes Down to This.

Does The New Republic have the solid factual evidence to support these stories?

Did the editors of The New Republic act unethically by burying collected testimony, deceiving their readers, misleading and hiding expert witnesses, and falsely attacking the military as it conducted a formal investigation?

Franklin Foer's next article on the "Shock Troops" scandal needs to contain names, places, dates, and unimpeachable justifications for unethical behavior that have been sorely lacking in the nearly five months up until this point. If he cannot provide these details, this next article in The New Republic should be his last.

I'm sure TNR's few remaining advertisers will be watching.

Sacrificial Lamb? Head Fact-checker Gone at TNR

Interesting (my bold):

The New Republic is looking for an assistant editor to fill an immediate opening in our Washington, DC office. The assistant editor will be responsible for guiding the magazine's fact-checking department (including overseeing the reporter-researchers), along with writing stories for the magazine and the website. Ideally, you'd be coming into the job with 1-2 years experience fact-checking and reporting, some solid clips, and a passion for the kind of long-form magazine reporting we do. Experience with specifically political journalism is, of course, a major plus — attention to detail and strong research skills are a prerequisite. Send cover letter, resume, and 4-5 clips to Britt Peterson at job@tnr.com with "assistant editor application" in the subject heading.

Looking at the masthead, the Assistant Editor that TNR is replacing seems to be Keelin McDonell, who was the longest-serving of TNR's most recent crop of assistant editors.

If she was indeed the "responsible for guiding the magazine's fact-checking department" during the period Scott Beauchamp published three articles with glaring fact errors in them, it would seem just cause for the magazine to find a replacement.

It would in no way, however, excuse the multiple, high level ethical breaches of more senior editors who seem intent on swearing to the veracity of this proven false fabulist to their very last breath.

(h/t Just a Canuck)

A Matter of Honor: Advertisers Respond II

From Tony Jewell, media contact for Astrazeneca, via email:

Good afternoon and thank you for giving us a chance to respond to your concerns.

We last bought an advertisement in The New Republic in late May, though they ran a free ad as part of a promotion last month. We currently have no plans to advertise in The New Republic for the foreseeable future.

A Matter of Honor: Advertisers Respond

At least two of the leading advertisers for The New Republic are reconsidering their advertising relationships with the magazine in the wake of the magazines handling of the Scott Beauchamp "Shock Troop" scandal.

Kathy Leech, Director of Brand Communications for BP, stated via email that "We are very aware of the allegations against the New Republic and are reviewing the situation prior to making a decision about our advertising."

In a follow-up email, Leech stated that BP did not "need any further information."

When asked on when they might make a decision, she stated, "We are reviewing the situation as we speak, so we're likely to make a decision shortly."

BP's decision will be an internal decision, and will not be made public. The only way the results of the decision will be known is by whether or not BP is still advertising in The New Republic in the months ahead.

According to reliable sources, at least one other key TNR advertiser is re-evaluating their relationship with The New Republic in the wake of the magazine's handing of the Scott Beauchamp "Shock Troops" scandal. The scandal developed when the author, an Army private in Iraq, made allegations of brutality against his fellow soldiers that were found to be false in a formal U.S. Army investigation.

Though apparently unable to produce any evidence to support the claims for almost four months, The New Republic continues to stand by the story.

TNR's Publisher Responds

Along with at least one other person who contacted Canwest Global CFO John McGuire as part of the letter-writing campaign, I received an email from Elisabeth Sheldon, publisher of The New Republic.

Dear Mr. Owens,

Thank you very much for your interest in The New Republic . Your concerns were forwarded to me from John Maguire in our corporate offices.

While getting conclusive information on the Beauchamp file has been challenging, the editorial team posted an update on the website last Friday, October 26.

You will have a complete response soon.

From a business perspective, the Baghdad Diarist represented 3 pages of over 1,100 editorial pages published during the past year. Yet, it has accounted for a hugely disproportioned amount of time in trying to deal with the response.

Please be assured that we share your interest in transparency and in clarifying TNR's position as soon as possible.

Once we publish the final findings of our investigation, we hope that your confidence in The New Republic will be fully restored.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Sheldon
Publisher

I responded to Publisher Sheldon and CC'd CFO Maguire:

Publisher Sheldon,

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond.

I do agree with you on a major point in your letter: getting conclusive information on the Beauchamp file has indeed been challenging, which is why, as an ethical publisher, you no doubt understand that when a part of a story, and entire story, or entire series of story contain elements that cannot be verified, it is incumbent on the publication to immediately retract some or all of those stories, even if conditionally.

We saw examples of how this should be addressed by publishing professionals last summer, when photographs taken by Adnan Hajj were discovered to have been manipulated on August 5, 2006. By August 7, after other discrepancies were found, Reuters "killed" all 920 pictures of Hajj's they had for sale, and by January 18, 2007 a top Reuters photo editor had been fired.

Reuters retracted the initial Hajj photo the same day it was discovered, and the next day disassociated themselves from the disgraced photographer after more evidence of doctored photos was found. 48 hours later, as a precautionary measure, they killed all of his work. A little more than five months later, Reuters fired the photo editor that let these manipulated photos slip into publication.

The comparisons between the Hajj case and the Beauchamp case are quite dissimilar.

When Michael Goldfarb challenged Beauchamp's story "Shock Troops" for the first time on July 18, his immediate responses came from soldiers in our military--experts, if you will--that strongly disputed the claims of the author, along with military vehicle experts. The New Republic had every reason to conditionally retract all three anecdotes in "Shock Troops" pending re-verification of the contentions of the author no later than the evening of July 18.

We all know, of course, that this did not happen. The story stayed up.

By July 20, it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the author fabricated key elements of a previous story, "Dead of Night." In that story, the author claimed to have found a kind of pistol cartridge which does not exist. He also ascribes a murder to the Iraqi police because, "The only shell casings that look like that belong to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police."

Had the editors of The New Republic made even a passing attempt at fact-checking this story, they would have quickly noted that there is no such thing as a square-backed 9mm cartridge. They would know that the Glock pistol chambers a standard 9mm NATO pistol cartridge, easily the most popular and reproduced pistol cartridge on planet Earth. They would also have known, if they had even bothered to try so much as a Google search, that the Glock, far from being a weapon only provided to the Iraqi police, is among the most widespread handguns in the country of Iraq.

Likewise, it was noted that the author's first story, "War Bonds" was predicated on the author meeting an Iraqi boy while pulling security for a Humvee that was having its tire changed on a urban patrol. Because of the threat of ambush, it is standard operating procedure to tow vehicles that are disabled. There is also the not so minor detail that Humvees are all equipped with run-flat tires, a fact published no later than July 25.

At this point a responsible publication should concede to grievous problems with the three stories they published by this author, conditionally retract all three of them, and explain that this was done to ensure that this was done out of a respect for the magazine's readers, and that an investigation would be conducted quickly and competently.

Of course, we know that didn't happen.

Instead, Franklin Foe claimed, and has claimed, that "Shock Troops" was "rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published," a statement disproven by Foer when he had to shift the time of one key claim months into the past, and into another country. Doing so demolished the entire premise of the story, and again, should have necessitated a full retraction of this article. Once again, the editors of The New Republic failed their readers.

It has gotten worse, of course.

On August 2, "The Editors" attempted to claim that in attempting to "re-report" this story they interviewed:

...current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers...

We know that multiple Army Public Affairs officers told The New Republic that the story was false prior to this publication, including Major Kirk Luedeke at FOB Falcon and Sergeant First Class Robert Timmons.

Since then, quite a few more experts have come forward to deny this story, as I noted earlier this week in a comment elsewhere:

Col. Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Multi-National Division-Baghdad. Beauchamp's CO. "He [Beauchamp] did admit to the investigating officer that the incidents did not take place."

Major John Cross, the investigating officer of the formal investigation which found all claims to be false.

First Sergeant Hatley, Beauchamp's Sgt, who stated from the beginning "not a single word of this was true."

Major Kirk Luedeke, FOB Falcon PAO.

Major Renee D. Russo. Kuwait-based PAO, called the burned woman claim an "urban myth or legend." Told that to TNR's Jason Zengerle months ago. TNR refused to print it.

William "Big Country" Coughlin, civilian contractor, Camp Arifjan Kuwait. Said such a woman never existed, other words unsuitable for print.

Doug Coffey, Head of Communications, Land & Armaments, for BAE Systems, manufacturer of the Bradley IFV. Debunked the physics/mechanics of the dog story. Also killed TNR's credibility when it was revealed TNR purposefully refused to provide him details of the story, in order to create their whitewash of an investigation with their "re-reporting."

Richard Peters, Iraq Veterans Against the War (formerly stationed at FOB Falcon in 2005-2006) who called Beauchamp's claims "elaborate lies" and Beauchamp himself a "loser."

There were, of course, more. There was a formal military investigation completed, and all of the claims made in "Shock Troops" we found false. Not just uncorroborated: false.

How have Franklin Foer and The New Republic defended their inaction to date?

They've failed to provide a single on-the-record statement by any expert or soldier to corroborate the author's claims. In fact, one of the experts interviewed by The New Republic, Doug Coffey, Head of Communications, Land & Armaments, for BAE Systems, revealed that The New Republic did not show him the claims made by Beauchamp at all, and once he did review the claims made in the story, found them highly unlikely.

In addition to failing to support the story, there is evidence that they have attempted to orchestrate a cover-up for the fact that they did not fact-check a single one of the author's stories prior to publication, even though claims made in those stories include acts of barbarity, cruelty, and even an spurious allegation of murder.

"Shock Troops" should have been conditionally withdrawn by the evening of July 18, and all three of the author's stories should have been withdrawn no later than July 20.

The Editors of The New Republic passed this point over three months ago. Since then, the editors in this story have only further dishonored themselves and the magazine as they concealed testimony, hid interviews, attacked the military, and other critics, and misused experts.

I would ask you, Publisher Sheldon, just how seriously you regard The New Republic's obligation to act within a framework of journalistic ethics, and to what standards you feel the editors of The New Republic should be held accountable.

Sincerely,

Bob Owens

It will be interesting to note how she choses to respond.

Advertising Age Picks Up TNR Advertisers Campaign

And I love the key line from AdAge's Ken Whelton:

Of course, the news here is that The New Republic still had advertisers!

Not, for long we hope, but that depends on you contacting TNR's advertisers.

This isn't a matter of "pro-war" versus "anti-war" as many have tried to frame this story, but a matter of right versus wrong, truth versus fiction, and media accountability versus editors run amuck.

So agrees Richard Peters, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who stated of Beauchamp back in August that "People like him really get under my skin," and referred to the fabulist as a "loser." Peters may be on the opposite side of the war from I, but both of us agree that Beauchamp "spread elaborate lies."

We—and you—agree that obviously false stories such as those in "Shock Troops" harm the reputations of all soldiers, whether they are military veterans who have come to be against the conflict such as Peters, or they are currently-serving servicemen who want to see the mission through, or they are veterans who have served our country with honor in the past.

And so I say to you: Pick an advertiser, and respectfully ask them if the sick fantasies told in The New Republic and proven false by a formal military investigation are worth supporting with their ad dollars.

My guess is that advertisers can reach this same demographic by advertising through similar magazines that still support our troops.

A Point of Honor

Scott Beauchamp doesn't matter.

He's a twice-AWOL serial liar with a pending mental health evaluation who can't write believable military fiction EVEN WHILE IN THE MILITARY. He's powerless, has been tried, found guilty and punished, and at this point, a distraction. We've been focusing on the wrong things.

What matters is the New Republic's advertisers. No, not their editors, their advertisers.

We know that TNR allowed all three of Scott Beauchamp's stories to be published without being competently fact-checked, if fact-checked at all.

We know that the editors of TNR, led by Franklin Foer, lied when they said that the stories had been competently fact-checked, we know they deceived their readers and misled at least one civilian expert in an attempt to create a whitewash of an investigation.

We know The New Republic attempted to stonewall their way through obvious, blatant, and grievous breaches of journalistic ethics. In so doing, they have attacked the service, integrity, and honor of an entire company of American soldiers serving in a combat zone to avoid taking responsibility for their own editorial and ethical failures.

Foer will win the current game we're playing because he can stonewall his way though it. It is obvious his bosses don't care as long as it doesn't cost them money.

So we change the game.

Below are a list of recent advertisers that have placed ads with either the print edition of The New Republic or the web site tnr.com.

I'd ask U.S. military veterans, military families, active duty personnel, and the vast majority of Americans who support our servicemen and women to call these companies, institutions and agencies to pull their advertising from TNR, effective immediately.

Advertising with The New Republic represents a tacit support of their on-going support of an obvious lie, a continuing, unapologetic assault on the reputation of an American Army unit presently deployed in combat.

Advertising in The New Republic sends a message that advertisers do not care about journalistic ethics, or what most would consider editorial fraud.

I would ask advertisers to pull all of their advertising from the print edition of The New Republic and tnr.com until the senior editors responsible for this debacle are disciplined, with those at the top resigning.

The New Republic doesn't have an obligation to support the troops, or support the war in Iraq. It does have an obligation to retract stories for which they can provide no support.

Canwest MediaWorks, the Canadian company that owns The New Republic, does not have an obligation to decide the editorial policies of The New Republic, but it does have an obligation to discipline all editors who have refused to act ethically, who have misled readers, and who have attacked the military for defending itself from proven falsehoods and gross exaggerations (email Canwest Global CFO John McGuire at jmaguire@canwest.com, and be polite but firm).

We cannot force The New Republic to behave honorably, but we can make their dishonesty come at a price.

Update: I just had a conversation with a friend who had been the target of a boycott, and I agree that the best way to address this is to respectfully ask advertisers to pull their advertising from TNR as a show of support for the troops. The post above has been edited to reflect that.

Update: Added Canwest's CFO email address (h/t Tara).

10/29 Update: Steve Lunceford, Director of Global Communications for Bearing Point, states that "I believe we haven't advertised with that publication in years." As they are not apparently an advertiser, I'm striking them from the list.

And yet, the New Republic has them on a list of " recent advetisers" according to their Media Kit (PDF).

I'm Sorry... Was That Supposed to be Journalism?

There are so many fact errors, hinted slurs and innuendoes piled into Tim Rutten's "Drudge, New Republic battle over 'Baghdad Diarist,' that reading it, you would think you were reading the L.A. Times... oh wait.

You were.

Without fisking every line, here is why Tim Rutten should never be mistaken for a journalist.

He described the ridicule of a disfigured Iraqi woman, attempts to run over stray dogs with Bradley fighting vehicles...

The burned woman has never be described as being an Iraqi... Rutten is the first. Nor were the claims in the Bradley stories described as mere attempt; there were three successful and grisly killings alleged by the author.

The magazine determined that the incident involving the disfigured woman was concocted and corrected that...

No, the editors of TNR did not admit that anecdote was "concocted." They shifted the story to another time, in another country, but still maintain that it occurred.

The Army's investigators refused to release details of their findings...

Under federal privacy laws, the details of administrative cases cannot be released without Beauchamp's permission. He has not yet authorized this release.

Since then, Beauchamp has remained in Iraq with his unit and the magazine has been unable to communicate with him.

Beauchamp has use of his personal cell phone and laptop computer, landline telephone, and may arrange formal interviews with any news outlet that wants to speak to him through the PAO system. He has made the choice not to talk to them, at TNR's explicit request.

Both the New Republic -- still unable to determine whether its story was true or false...

The editors of the New Republic have purposefully suppressed testimony provided them from many sources, suppressed the identities of the experts they've interviewed (military and civilian) to keep others from conducting follow-up interviews, and misled experts and misused their statements to create a whitewash of an investigation. They have only done so because they have been able to determine that they cannot support these stories honestly, and because they cannot support their previous claims that these stories and previous stories by this author had been throughly fact-checked prior to publication.

Far more interesting was the fact that within several hours, Drudge had, without explanation, removed the "exclusive" from his website. The item still can be found in the report's archives, but links to the documents have been disabled. No notice or explanation is appended to the archived item.

Why?

It's a fascinating question, but in the orgy of pro-war Internet comment that surged through the blogosphere, no one bothered to ask in any serious way why Drudge might have dropped an item of this consequence so quickly.

The Drudge Report, by design, adds, reorders, and removes stories after several hours and has done it this way for roughly a decade. To imply that a normal cycling of stories is evidence of some admission of wrongdoing is either ignorant, or purposefully dishonest. Further, considering the size of the documents (2.21 MB, 2.73 MB, 2.89 MB, respectively) and the amount of traffic the site normally receives, bandwidth considerations were the far more obvious reasons these files were removed as the story cycled off the front page.

There are questions to be asked, though you won't see them in the pro-war blogosphere:

* Who leaked the documents to Drudge and why, among all the documents the Army must have collected in this case, was one of them a transcript that could be used to put Foer and Scoblic in a bad light?

It is rather obvious who leaked the documents, at least in general terms, which contrary to Rutten’s ignorance, was published in a widely-read and linked article on September October 25 and on other blogs. The documents came from the military, though most likely outside those directly involved. A reading of the transcript shows what many consider strong-arm attempts by Foer and Scoblic not to retract his story, on at least one occasion alluding the the author's wife, who worked at The New Republic.

* Why did Drudge take the documents down and why hasn't he explained his reasons for doing so?

Answered above, with common sense and normal procedure.

* Why has the Army kept Beauchamp in Iraq where it can control access to him and he's beyond the reach of any other jurisdiction?

Beauchamp is a soldier assigned to a combat unit in Iraq, and Beauchamp chose to remain with his unit in Iraq when given the option of leaving the Army.

* Why hasn't the Army complied with the New Republic's FOI request?

We can start with the fact that The New Republic, by their own statements, did not do the rudimentary legwork necessary to file their FOIA request with the necessary FOIA office in the beginning, creating unnecessary delays.

Once filed with the proper office, FOIA requests to overseas combat zones have documents compiled, transmitted back to the United States, undergo legal review, and then are released, if it is deemed that the material asked for can be released. Depending on the information they have asked for, it is quite possible that releasing some or all of the information they seem most interested in may violate Beauchamp's privacy rights.

Not that Rutten bothered to interview anyone in the CENTCOM FOIA office, or ask TNR about the nature of the information they requested.

Who knew the Army was awash in such compassion?

Al Anbar province, for starters, but current events don't seem to be Rutten's strongpoint, either.

Why the attempt to shift attention off the alleged fabulist, Beauchamp, and onto the editors of the magazine, who after initially supporting the invasion, have turned decisively against the war?

A solider who lied in a series of stories and who has been punished for those lies is a minor story once he drops out of the public spotlight; a national magazine editors attempting to orchestrate a cover-up, smear critics, and then attempts to play the victim card? That's news.

Not that Tim Rutten is capable of finding any. There is a reason he writes for the L.A. Times.

He's not a capable enough journalist to hack it in the blogosphere.

The Never-Ending Story

Franklin Foer, Peter Scoblic, Jason Zengerle and other senior editors at The New Republic can't quite seem to get their hands on enough information to complete their investigation into the Scott Thomas Beauchamp "Shock Troops" story published in mid-July.

As someone who has had a bit of success in separating the facts from the fiction in this and other instances of questionable media content, I can offer them some free consulting advice to expedite their final report.

In yesterday's Washington Post interview with Howard Kurtz, Franklin Foer made the following claim:

Despite the contentious conversation, Foer continued to defend the article days later. He did so again yesterday, reiterating that other soldiers whom the magazine would not identify had confirmed the allegations.

While Beauchamp "didn't stand by his stories in that conversation, he didn't recant his stories," Foer said in an interview. "He obviously was under considerable duress during that conversation, with his commanding officer in the room with him."

We'll overlook the fact that his commanding officer was not in the room. We'll also overlook the fact that the enlisted squad leader actually sided with Foer and Scoblic in their argument that TNR should be allowed to control the narrative and cancel interviews with both Newsweek and the Post. And we'll overlook that the only obvious duress in the transcript was Foer using the emotional blackmail regarding Beauchamp's wife and the further strong-arm tactics of reminding Beauchamp that if he recanted, any future career of his as a writer is over.

We'll ignore all that for now, because want to get to the truth.

So let's focus on this part of the claim:

...reiterating that other soldiers whom the magazine would not identify had confirmed the allegations.

There are 58 pages of sworn statements currently under legal review at Central Command's FOIA Office in Tampa that seem to directly disagree with that assertion, so let's get the facts as we know them out in the open.

To date, The New Republic has been very vague about the specific claims of these anonymous soldiers, including how many soldiers support each allegation, what their relative positions are within the company or incident that puts them in a position to support their allegations and what, precisely, they said in support of their allegations. I think that it is quite reasonable for the editors to release the full claims, if not the names of the claimant.

In addition, specific questions about each anecdote need to be answered for these claims to be regarded as truthful.

The Burned Woman Claim
In relation to the "burned woman" story, where Beauchamp claims to have verbally abused the apparent survivor of an IED attack in a dining facility that the author claims was especially crowded at that time, readers deserve to know: what was the date of the assault?

We don't need the specific day, but a week-long range—say, the first week of May, or the last week of September—that we can then compare that against the records of every known civilian contractor and military serviceperson on that base at the time, if nesessary.

The magazine cannot find asking for that detail of their sources to be objectionable, if they do still in fact maintain that she is real. The formal military investigation interviewed seven of Beauchamp's fellow soldiers and friends (and lists their names), and states they have never seen such a woman.

As a result the official report concluded that this story is "a tale completely fabricated by Private Beauchamp." If Franklin Foer and the other editors of TNR wish to contend this story is in fact true, they need to provide specific evidence stating why they think it is true, starting with when this supposedly took place.

The Skull Story
The second anecdote in "Shock Troops," was the one that triggered the formal military investigation as it involved the alleged desecration of human remains by U.S. soldiers. The author wrote:

...And, eventually, we reached the bones. All children's bones: tiny cracked tibias and shoulder blades. We found pieces of hands and fingers. We found skull fragments. No one cared to speculate what, exactly, had happened here, but it was clearly a Saddam-era dumping ground of some sort.

One private, infamous as a joker and troublemaker, found the top part of a human skull, which was almost perfectly preserved. It even had chunks of hair, which were stiff and matted down with dirt. He squealed as he placed it on his head like a crown. It was a perfect fit. As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter. No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.

The private wore the skull for the rest of the day and night. Even on a mission, he put his helmet over the skull. He observed that he was grateful his hair had just been cut--since it would make it easier to pick out the pieces of rotting flesh that were digging into his head.

The formal investigation relates a different reality.

Upon initial reconnaissance of the area that would become Combat Outpost Ellis, Captain Erik Pribyla reported seeing a "skull and what appeared to be a human femur" at the site. PFC Tracy King recovered the skull (I'd further note that in the wording of the report, the skull seems to be referred to as an intact skull, not fragments) and buried the remains with as much dignity as possible. The other bones recovered were apparently animal bones mixed in with household trash, and were "commonly found on Iraqi farmsteads in trash piles where they are dumped after a meal."

If Foer wishes to maintain that Beauchamp's anecdote is true and that his "other soldiers" support the claim, he needs to provide us with some concrete evidence that there were human remains recovered during the digging process.

To date, the only verified human bones near COP Ellis were those two found on the surface. As only a skull and femur were recovered, it would seem to suggest that they may have come from a body located elsewhere, perhaps the victim of sectarian violence. According to the report Beauchamp's sworn statement says he admits only seeing animal bones.

If The New Republic wants to continue insisting this story is accurate, perhaps they could start by having their soldiers explaining, in detail, how a soldier could wear "the top part of a human skull" under the form-fitting pads of MICH helmets while out on patrol without their squad leaders finding out.

The Bradley Story
Frankly, there is nothing at all that Foer's batch of anonymous corroborating soldiers could do to provide any credibility the dog-killing Bradley driver story. The geography of the land around COP Ellis, the handling characteristics of tracked vehicles, and the physics of the driver's visibility make this claim all but impossible. The editors of The New Republic even made a deceptive attempt to use an armored vehicle company expert to spin this claim, but that didn't turn out very well when he found out the whole story, which leads me to another point.

What About TNR's Other Hidden Experts?
In addition to the anonymous soldiers Franklin Foer claims still support the allegations made in "Shock Troops," TNR has still refused to name the civilian experts which the magazine claims provide technical arguments supporting the possibility that these allegations are true. As we found when we interviewed the Bradley Vehicle company spokesmen, it appears TNR asked purposefully vague questions, which led to predictably vague answers, which the New Republic then claimed as proof the stories were real.

As their civilian experts face no possible penalty from the military, it is incumbent upon Franklin Foer to reveal specifically what questions were asked of them, provide specifically what their answers are, and of course, tell us who these experts are.

And Yet...
Remarkably, even after the release of a formal, thoroughly-documented U.S. Army investigation two days ago which concludes the stories published in "Shock Troops" were false, and the release at the same time of a transcript that shows the author of the piece will not stand behind his story and wished to simply walk away from it seven weeks ago, the editors of The New Republic have not retracted the story, nor have they yet resigned.

What Could They Be Waiting On?
The answer is revealed in the transcript of the September 7 call, where Franklin Foer and Peter Scoblic repeatedly focus on getting the two sworn statements signed by Scott Beauchamp—to the point of conferencing in his TNR-appointed lawyer—to try to get Beauchamp to release them.

I'm not sure what Foer thinks he will find in those two sworn statements by Beauchamp that will carry more weight than the sworn statements of every other soldier interviewed during the course of the investigation that refute the allegations in "Shock Troops."

There is nothing in those statements that can vindicate The New Republic's utter lack of fact-checking this story prior to publication, and then deceiving their readership about this failure even as they are forced to shift a key "fact" to another country and time. Nor is there anything in Beauchamp's statement that can justify the attempt of TNR to unethically spin the testimony of experts that they apparently keep in the dark about the nature of the work for which they were being consulted.

Beauchamp's fiction was long ago superseded by the duplicity and unethical behavior of the senior editors of The New Republic.

Two sworn statements cannot erase that stain to the credibility of The New Republic that has been created by editors who refused to concede the reality that they uncritically allowed the publication of obvious fiction. Nor can these documents excuse the editorial failures and ethical breaches of the magazine's senior editors that seem rooted in their inablity to face valid questions brought about by some of their most vocal critics over differences of political ideology.

On September 7, Executive Editor Peter Scoblic asked Scott Beauchamp if he would object to The New Republic fully retracting not only "Shock Troops," but alsohis previous articles, "War Bonds," and "Dead of Night." Beauchamp did not object.

Exactly seven weeks later, the deceptions of the editors and author still remain unaddressed.

Update: "The Editors" of TNR have once again posted on the "Shock Troops" controversy, and they are still standing behind the story because they claim that Beauchamp called Franklin Foer at home two weeks after the recorded call and stood by everything:

The answer is simple: Since this controversy began, The New Republic’s sole objective has been to uncover the truth. As Scoblic said during the September 6 conversation: "[A]ll we want out of this, and the only way that it is going to end, is if we have the truth. And if it's—if it's certain parts of the story are bullshit, then we'll end that way. If it's proven to be true, it will end that way. But it's only going to end with the truth." The September 6 exchange was extremely frustrating; however, it was frustrating precisely because it did not add any new information to our investigation. Beauchamp's refusal to defend himself certainly raised serious doubts. That said, Beauchamp's words were being monitored: His squad leader was in the room as he spoke to us, as was a public affairs specialist, and it is now clear that the Army was recording the conversation for its files.

The next day, via his wife, we learned that Beauchamp did want to stand by his stories and wanted to communicate with us again. Two-and-a-half weeks later, Beauchamp telephoned Foer at home and, in an unmonitored conversation, told him that he continued to stand by every aspect of his story, except for the one inaccuracy he had previously admitted. He also told Foer that in the September 6 call he had spoken under duress, with the implicit threat that he would lose all the freedoms and privileges that his commanding officer had recently restored if he discussed the story with us.

So if we are to beleive "The Editors," Scott Beauchamp called Franklin Foer at home two weeks after the transcribed call and claimed that he "continued to stand by every aspect of his story, except for the one inaccuracy he had previously admitted." That "inaccuracy," of course, being the placement of a woman that nobody else has ever seen in a different country (Kuwait) and time (pre-combat) than the country in which she had not been seen in previously (Iraq).

Sadly, this claimed conversation comes at a time when Beauchamp seemed to have rededicated himself to his fellow soldiers and has been making a concerted effort to re-earn their trust. If true, it would certainly damage the hopes his superior officers had of rehabilitating an already problematic Army career.

Update: Someone get Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger a stick. He's going to need it to scrape Franklin Foer off his shoe.

Did I Mention Those Other TNR Investigation Documents?

My latest on the Beauchamp/TNR is up at Pajamas Media.

I'd also advise reading the latest from Michael Yon and Laughing Wolf at Blackfive. For all of his issues with the creative writing , Scott Beauchamp isn't the focus of this story any more, and more importantly, seems to be trying to earn back the trust of his fellow soldiers.

The New Republic, however, long ago ran out of second chances.

Never Ascribe to Malice What Ignorance Will Explain...

...though there is probably copious amounts of both in this commentary on The New Republic's handling of the Scott Beauchamp "Shock Troops" affair.

I'll be rather more kind to Mr. Sargent than he probably deserves.

There's been a very interesting turn in the saga of The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist," the American soldier in Iraq who's been accused of fabricating negative stories about U.S. troops and publishing them in the mag.

For those of you who haven't been following this story, the soldier, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, came under withering criticism a few months ago by conservative bloggers who alleged he'd made up the stories about the troops. The Army conducted an internal investigation into the affair and concluded he'd largely fabricated them. TNR has stuck by Beauchamp, demanding that the Army publicly reveal whatever documents it had supporting the probe's conclusion. The Army has refused.

Time, facts and federal law have conspired against The New Republic, none of which are the exclusive domain of the United States Army.

Many documents related to this investigation, such as the sworn statements signed by PV-1 Beauchamp and other soldiers interviewed, in addition to certain aspects of adminstrative investigations (which this was), are not releasable to the public except as authorized by the soldier who is the subject of the report or statement.

In plain English, Beauchamp could likely release some or all of this documentation, if he desired to do so. The Army cannot release the information the magazine has asked for without his permission as a matter of federal privacy laws.

Well, guess what -- the Army may not be willing to reveal its docs to TNR, the target of its investigation, but it has just acknowledged that someone internally has willingly leaked them to Matt Drudge.

This again calls into question the Army's handling of this affair in a big way. It's bad enough that the Army hasn't been willing to show any transparency with regard to its probe into this. It's worse still that someone -- apparently an Army official -- is leaking some of the probe docs to Drudge, likely as part of an effort to get back at TNR.

"The Army" is a tremendously large organization, with varying viewpoints and points of contact. The PAO most directly involved with the overall story, Major Kirk Luedeke, came out almost immediately and acknowledged that the leak was in fact an Army leak. The Central Command FOIA office which has these and other documents related to the investigation stated in a pair of phone calls this morning that they were unaware of the Drudge story and the associated fall-out until today, and seemed genuinely surprised these documents could have become part of the public record.

I have good reason to believe, but cannot confirm, that this was an operation that happened outside the proper chain of contact for these documents. Those who are more involved with the story that would have had access to these documents know that they are part of pending FOIA requests in their final stages of preparation and legal review. The disclosure of these documents, in the manner they were distributed, is actually detrimental to the truth of the matter, which favors the military.

The Army's acknowledgment of this leak comes in Howard Kurtz's article today about this whole affair. Kurtz was following an item that appeared yesterday on Drudge revealing some of the docs from the investigation. At the end of Kurtz's article comes this, concerning TNR editor Franklin Foer:

Foer said the Army has refused to turn over supporting documents in the case, despite a Freedom of Information Act request, and then "selectively leaked" material to Drudge. In an e-mail to the magazine yesterday, Army spokesman Maj. Kirk Luedeke said he was "surprised and appalled that this information was leaked" and that the military would investigate.

In other words, an Army spokesman basically acknowledged here that while they're not willing to reveal the docs supporting their case to TNR, which is the actual target of its probe, someone internally is willing to give some stuff to Drudge, almost certainly with the intent to carry out payback against the mag. I'm not necessarily defending TNR here -- as Kevin Drum notes, this remains murky -- but the bottom line is that this Army conduct stinks really, really badly.

A completely inaccurate assessment. Acknowledgement of the leaks was occurring almost as soon as the story aired on Drudge. Far from Sargent's assertion that the military is in the process of stonewalling TNR on one hand while carrying out a smear on the other, the Central Command FOIA request office has been nothing but courteous, responsive, and professional when I've checked in for status updates and made additions to my original FOIA request, which was submitted September 9.

A simple phone call from TNR to the Centcom FOIA office in Tampa would provide them with the status of their request, a fact Foer and Sargent either did not know, or chose not to reveal. It is again worth mentioning that the documents Franklin Foer has directly asked for, such as Beauchamp's statements, could easily be released by Beauchamp himself.

The conduct of those soldiers I've worked with has been one of utter professionalism, not partisanship. We cannot say the same for Foer, or in regards to getting the facts accurately represented in this post, Sargent.

Glenn Greenwald, with his own sordid history of misrepresenting the truth in regards to the military, likewise attacks the Army in a similar manner, using the same flawed premises.

Greenwald accuses the military of being an "increasingly politicized, Republican-controlled division of the right-wing noise machine."

Reality, however shows us that as far as this story is concerned, it seems that only bloggers are doing the job that most journalists won't do, such as sending emails, asking questions, and making phone calls to those involved in the still-developing story.

Perhaps if Greenwald exhibited some interest in doing actual journalism from time to time, or even getting his facts in order before opining, I would not find him so easy to dismiss.

Boom: Drudge Scoops Docs to Sink TNR

Drudge scooped me (arrgghhh!) with two documents related to the Beauchamp/TNR story. I had asked for in a FOIA request submitted more than a month ago to the U.S. Army. Those documents including a transcript of the call between Scott Beauchamp, TNR editor Franklin Foer, and TNR executive editor Peter Scoblic on September 7. I first wrote about the conversation itself previously.

The other document was the Army's official report, which I first discussed with the investigating officer, Major John Cross, on September 10.

Knowing the documents exist is one thing; having them is quite another. Now that they have been posted on the public record, these disclosures should end careers at The New Republic.

Have at it:

Transcript, Part 1

Transcript, Part 2

Army Investigation

As always, Allahpundit is on top of the story over at Hot Air, so I'll send you over there for analysis until I can delve into the story again in more detail.

I would ask one question before I go, though:

Did Foer really get an email from Beauchamps' wife during the conference call, or was it merely the lie of a desperate editor trying futilely to save his job?

We know that Beauchamp had his cell phone and laptop returned to him after his op-sec violation investigation was over, which he could use every day when he was not working.

If Foer was bluffing, Beauchamp probably knew it in advance.

Update:A huge apology to Michael Goldfarb. If he hadn't had the sharp eyes to note probable fiction and ask for help from the blogosphere back in July, there is every possibility that Beauchamp's false narratives would have gone unchallenged as ""truth." The story started with Mike, and continues there today.

"Stonewall" Wasn't Just the Name of a General

Franklin Foer continues to erode the credibility of The New Republic as he refuses to address the Scott Thomas Beauchamp "Shock Troops" scandal, which started out as series of questions about the veracity of anecdotes told by an anonymous soldier, but has now developed into a desperate bid by TNR's editors to stonewall their way through mounting evidence that they orchestrated an ill-conceived cover-up of their own editorial failures.

All three of the anecdotes told under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas" in "Shock Troops" have been debunked by a combination of civilian contractor testimony, military veteran testimony, subject matter experts, and a formal U.S. Army investigation that spoke to every relevant soldier in the author's unit, only to come away without so much as a single corroborating account.

There was no "burned woman" at FOB Falcon that was abused by the author as a result of the horrors of battle he'd seen, which undermined the entire premise of the article. TNR sought to spin this as a trivial matter, even as it moved the location of this dark fantasy from FOB Falcon in Iraq after the author had been in combat and seen the horrors of war, to a staging camp in Kuwait before he had ever seen battle.

Instead of posting an immediate retraction, of course, TNR continued to slog on, even though it was quickly determine that there was no burned woman at the base in Kuwait, either, which was relayed to TNR senior editor Jason Zengerle, who was told the story was a rumor or "urban legand [sic]." Zengerle was told this well in advance of the August 10 story that has become the last word from TNR on the subject. Zengerle declined to tell his readers that this story was an urban legend. No one yet has come forward to say that they have seen such a woman, probably because she does not exist.

The second claim, that soldiers discovered human remains in what was described as a Saddam Hussein-era dump during the creation of Combat Outpost (COP) Ellis, and that one soldier wore part of a child's skull, was the anecdote in "Shock Troops" that was the single greatest concern in the formal military investigation, as told by the investigating officer, Major John Cross. Veterans, active duty soldiers, and civilians alike were dubious that someone would wear rotting human flesh directly against their skin for any length of time, much less the hours-long period told in this tale. Veterans familiar with the design of the close-fitting helmet flatly denied it was possible to even put such material between the wearer's head and the helmet. In the end, the formal investigation could find not a single member of Beauchamp's unit that would corroborate this story, which the author himself apparently refuses to support.

The third and perhaps the most outlandish claim, of a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV: a kind of tracked and armed armored personnel carrier with a crew of three) driver who used his vehicle to smash infrastructure and run over dogs, was one of the easiest stories to debunk, and one that also showed just how deceptive the editors of The New Republic were willing to be in continuing with their charade.

Veteran APC and IFV crewmen, including commanders and drivers, quickly discounted the possibility that the driver in the author's fantasy could make the Bradley do what he claimed; it simply wasn't designed in a way to move as he said it moved. Every single Bradley driver and and commander in his unit was interviewed during the course of the Army investigation, and all said the account was false.

But the depths of how far The New Republic was willing to go to deceive their readers was exposed when one of the anonymous experts the magazine claimed had supported their version of events in the Bradley story was found, and told a quite different story, indeed.

This morning at Powerline, Scott John keeps the pressur eon the dishonest and deceptive editors of The New Republic with It's the coverup that kills you, part 3.

We now know that TNR editor Franklin Foer and executive editor Peter Scoblic spoke with Scott Beauchamp on September 7. Dogged blogger Bob Owens learned of the call from an Army spokesman. Why have "the editors" not disclosed the substance of their conversation with Beauchamp?

In their conversation with Beauchamp, Beauchamp must not have provided Foer and Scoblic a single fact with which to substantiate his "Shock troops" column. Six weeks after speaking with Beauchamp "the editors" have not addressed the report that Beauchamp recanted his column in the course of the Army investigation of its allegations. And commanding officer Colonel Ricky Gibbs has since confirmed that report.

In their September 7 phone call with Beauchamp, Foer and Scoblic asked their author to cancel interviews he had scheduled with the Washington Post and Newsweek. Again, they seem to think that stonewalling will allow them to ride out the scandal. They must be counting on the kindness of their friends in the MSM to cooperate. And to date their confidence has not been disappointed.

Upon taking the reins of TNR, editor Franklin Foer declared: "My priority is to put out the most intellectually provocative, intellectually honest magazine possible." Foer's aspiration for TNR now reads like a piece of black humor.

Far from intellectual honesty, the senior editor staff of The New Republic have proven their intractable corruption. Editor Franklin Foer, Executive Editor J. Peter Scoblic, and Senior Editor Jason Zengerle failed to do their jobs as editors, published a false story (though there are indications that all three of the author's stories were fabricated, in whole or in part), more than likely lied when they claimed the allegations made had been fact-checked prior to publication, and then ran a false investigation that involved misrepresenting the claims of at least one expert, while attempting to bury the story and exerting influence over the author to cancel interviews with other interested publications.

As Ed Morrissey notes today of a previous TNR scandal:

Near the end of Shattered Glass, Peter Sarsgaard as editor Charles Lane (now at the Washington Post) scolds Chloe Sevigny as Caitlin Avey after she keeps making excuses for Stephen Glass. "He handed us fiction after fiction and we printed them all as fact. Just because... we found him "entertaining." It's indefensible. Don't you know that?"

TNR knew it in 1998. Unfortunately, they no longer understand it in 2007. It's just as indefensible now as it was then -- in fact, given their history, even more indefensible now. Franklin Foer has managed to do more damage to the magazine than Stephen Glass did, thanks to an inept response and continued stonewalling in the face of the truth. In their silence, TNR has acknowledged that they care more for narrative than fact.

Details will continue to trickle out revealing just how deceptive the editorial staff at The New Republic has been to its readership and critics alike, and once those details are made public, I very much doubt that Franklin Foer, Peter Scoblic, and Jason Zengerle will be able to survive the coming purge.

It's the Coverup that Kills You, Part 2

At Powerline this morning, Scott Johnson is keeping the screws on the editors of The New Republic in a post entitled It's the Coverup that Kills You, Part 2, in which he continues to hammer editor Franklin Foer and executive editor Peter Scoblic:

On August 10, after assuring their readers that they had "not thus far uncovered factual evidence (aside from one key detail) to discount his personal dispatches" (how can a detail be key, but not factual?) the editors asked the Army to allow them, "or any other media outlet, for that matter," to speak with Beauchamp. This statement is particularly galling in retrospect, as we now know that it is TNR -- not the Army -- that has gagged Beauchamp. On September 7 "the editors" asked their author to cancel interviews he had scheduled with the Washington Post and Newsweek. Given their "commitment to the truth," one wonders why they would make such a request. But do they deny that they did?

TNR editor Franklin Foer and executive editor Peter Scoblic seem to think that they can keep up this charade indefinitely, but it is only the indifference of the MSM that has let them get away with it for this long. "The editors" closed their August 10 update by saying that they "refused to rush to judgment on our writer or ourselves" -- virtually the only honest statement we've ever gotten from TNR on this matter. But it should not be the last. At some point they'll have to say something on the subject, only then the questions won't be about Beauchamp. They will be about "the editors."

Johnson is keying in on what has emerged as the real story involving The New Republic in regards to the Scott Thomas Beauchamp stories.

We know, due to expert testimony from civilians in the region and in the United States, from veterans and soldiers, and a formal military investigation, that Beauchamp’s claims were without merit. For all practical intents and purposes, Scott Beauchamp’s role in this story is over.

The story of his editors at The New Republic, and why they have chosen to deceive both their critics and their readership, is the story now.

To borrow a paraphrase from another time, what did the editors of TNR know, and when did they know it? How will the Washington Post and Newsweek react to being "punk'd" by Franklin Foer? What do their advertisers think about the magazine’s continued refusal to admit their editorial failures, and will they be disgusted enough to consider suspending or closing their accounts?

The days and weeks ahead promise to be interesting for the editors of The New Republic.

Update: Beauchamp's second story, "Dead of Night" was quickly pegged from the very beginning as evidence of the fact that The New Republic was not making any attempt at all to fact-check Beauchamp's stories, back even before we knew his name was Beauchamp.

In "Dead of Night" Beauchamp alleged the Iraqi Police must have committed a murder, because according to him, only Iraqi Police carry Glock pistols.

Glock wishes that were so.

TNR Has Too Many Readers?

An interesting email from "Mahon," who states he is a The New Republic reader... or would be, if they didn't cancel his subscription.

Try this on. Although mainstream Republican, I have subscribed to TNR for many years and liked it (more for Jed Perl and the book reviews lately, but never mind.) So I get a bulk email from Marty Peretz asking me to renew, and I "reply" politely castigating them for the Beauchamp matter and suggesting I was unlikely to send them any more money until they came clean. Two weeks later I get a $31.00 check from them apparently refunding the balance of my subscription – which I never asked them to cancel in the first place. In fact, although I think they look like fools over Beauchamp I no doubt would have renewed eventually, and probably still will. They start bugging you six months early anyway, so why not fuss a while?

This seems like bizarre behavior for a small magazine. Possible explanations:

1. They are getting so many cancellations they just figured this was another one and dropped it in the hopper.
2. They have some new business strategy that calls for only having lefties as subscribers, so I've been purged.
3. Someone there is so huffy about this that he/she just said "well, we’ll fix you" regardless of business implications.

None of which really computes. You would think they would either ignore me or send back a note saying – something – and hoping I would reconsider, to which I would have been receptive. The whole thing suggests a pervasive lack of adult supervision top to bottom.

Mahon

Their advertisers must be thrilled that they are turning people away... don't you think?

It's The Coverup That Kills You

Scott at Powerline weighed in last night on the Beauchamp Controversy with It's the coverup that kills you: A case study.

A taste:

Why would Beauchamp go silent and TNR along with him? Well, there can really only be one reason: the Army isn't stonewalling, its investigation isn't a whitewash, and Beauchamp's commanding officer isn't a liar. We already knew Beauchamp's stories weren't true, but now we must conclude that Beauchamp has told his editors at TNR that he no longer stands by his tales of petty cruelty and serious misconduct by himself and the men in his unit.

As for The New Republic, they are quite aware of the allegations being leveled against them of incompetence and a cover-up, as they are here every day, usually several times a day. You could say they are among my biggest fans...

But hopefully not of the Annie Wilkes variety.

The New Republic Re-Interviewed Beauchamp... Over a Month Ago

For reasons as yet unknown, Memeorandum.com dredged up a Josh Marshall entry on Talking Points Memo from August 10 this past Sunday afternoon. Marshall cited a subscribers-only post by the editors of The New Republic released the same day, captured in its entirety by Google's cache.

It bears reading in full.

For several weeks now, questions have been raised about Scott Beauchamp's Baghdad Diarist "Shock Troops." While many of these questions have been formulated by people with ideological agendas, we recognize that there are legitimate concerns about journalistic accuracy. We at THE NEW REPUBLIC take these concerns extremely seriously. This is why we have sought to re-report the story, in the process speaking with five soldiers in Beauchamp's company who substantiate the events described in Beauchamp's essay.

Indeed, we continue to investigate the anecdotes recounted in the Baghdad Diarist. Unfortunately, our efforts have been severely hampered by the U.S. Army. Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What's more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants "to protect his privacy."

At the same time the military has stonewalled our efforts to get to the truth, it has leaked damaging information about Beauchamp to conservative bloggers. Earlier this week, The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb published a report, based on a single anonymous "military source close to the investigation," entitled "Beauchamp Recants, " claiming that Beauchamp "signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only 'a smidgen of truth,' in the words of our source. "

Here's what we know: On July 26, Beauchamp told us that he signed several statements under what he described as pressure from the Army. He told us that these statements did not contradict his articles. Moreover, on the same day he signed these statements for the Army, he gave us a statement standing behind his articles, which we published at tnr.com. Goldfarb has written, "It's pretty clear the New Republic is standing by a story that even the author does not stand by. " In fact, it is our understanding that Beauchamp continues to stand by his stories and insists that he has not recanted them. The Army, meanwhile, has refused our requests to see copies of the statements it obtained from Beauchamp--or even to publicly acknowledge that they exist.

Scott Beauchamp is currently a 23-year-old soldier in Iraq who, for the past 15 days, has been prevented by the military from communicating with the outside world, aside from three brief and closely monitored phone calls to family members. Our investigation has not thus far uncovered factual evidence (aside from one key detail) to discount his personal dispatches. And we cannot simply dismiss the corroborating accounts of the five soldiers with whom we spoke. (You can read our findings here.)

Part of our integrity as journalists includes standing by a writer who has been accused of wrongdoing and who is not able to defend himself. But we also want to reassure our readers that our obligations to our writer would never trump our commitment to the truth. We once again invite the Army to make public Beauchamp's statements and the details of its investigation--and we ask the Army to let us (or any other media outlet, for that matter) speak to Beauchamp. Unless and until these things happen, we cannot fairly assess any of these reports about Beauchamp--and therefore have no reason to change our own assessment of Beauchamp's work. If the truth ends up reflecting poorly on our judgment, we will accept responsibility for that. But we also refuse to rush to judgment on our writer or ourselves.

And how true that last line is, especially the part where they admit to not wanting to rush to judgment on themselves.

Tomorrow marks the two-month anniversary of this rather deceptive post, which also happens to be the last official word from Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the other editors and reporters of The New Republic intimately tied to what one media critic has already labeled as one of the top 101 incidents of media dishonesty.

It was clearly established that as an administrative action, that Beauchamp's statements were not legally releasable by the Army to the public. In short, to give his statements to the media without his permission would be illegal, something that TNR knew, or should have known, prior to accusing the Army of being deceptive.

That said, Beauchamp himself could have released these documents to the public, including the media, as soon as the investigation was over if he so desired back in August. He has not apparently seen fit to do so.

Beauchamp was free to speak to the media as early as August 6, four days before The New Republic said that they could still not contact him. On September 10, Pajamas Media published my exclusive interview with Major John Cross, who led the official U.S. Army investigation into the allegations made in "Shock Troops" and found that not a single soldier would corroborate any of Beauchamp's claims.

After re-reading the August 10 statement by the editors of The New Republic, I contacted Major Kirk Luedeke, PAO for Forward Operating Base Falcon where Beauchamp is stationed, and asked him several questions in hopes of updating the story thus far.

The answers seem to indicate that Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle and the editors of The New Republic have indeed been pursuing their incestuous relationship with Scott Beauchamp further; they've just refused thus far to publish any of the answers they've obtained, for reasons yet unknown.

The interview discussed comments made in the August 10 TNR article cited above, and asked about developments since :

Q: At that time [August 10], the editors of TNR claimed that there were "five soldiers in Beauchamp's company who substantiate the events described in Beauchamp's essay." Have the editors of TNR made any requests to interview soldiers in Beauchamp' s unit, identified of them, or made any attempts to find out about their credibility?

A: Other than requesting and receiving interviews with Pvt. Scott Beauchamp and Maj. John Cross in September, TNR has not asked to speak to any additional Soldiers in the 1-18th Infantry Battalion through the 4th brigade public affairs channels.

Q: At that time, the editors of TNR claimed that, "the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation." At the time those statements were made by TNR's editors on August 10, were they factually accurate? Since that time, have the editors of The New Republic spoken with anyone who would have, "information or evidence from its investigation, " such as Major Cross, the investigating officer I interviewed a month ago on September 10?

A: 4th brigade public affairs Soldiers were present for separate interviews conducted between TNR and Pvt. Beauchamp and Maj. Cross.

On Aug. 10, the Army was still in the process conducting an investigation into the possible violation of Operational Security by Pvt. Beauchamp, and therefore, he was not at liberty to conduct interviews pending the outcome of the active investigation. He was, however, able to communicate with his family during that time.

The interviews with Beauchamp and Maj. Cross occurred in the first two weeks of September, and to my knowledge, are the only ones conducted through official channels between TNR and any member of the Vanguard Battalion.

Q: TNR also claimed that, "the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants 'to protect his privacy.'" At the time those statements were made by TNR's editors on August 10, were they factually accurate? To your knowledge, have the editors of The New Republic spoken with Scott Thomas Beauchamp since August 10, and if so, when? Does Scott Beauchamp currently have the capability to speak to The New Republic if he so desires, and release all documentation relating to the investigation if he so desires?

A: The statements made by TNR on Aug. 10 about Beauchamp's availability were accurate- given the investigation's status, he was not authorized to conduct interviews with media outlets. However, as soon as the investigation concluded in mid-August, he was free to speak openly if he so desired. He rejected interview requests from Confederate Yankee and the Weekly Standard, but did in fact speak to TNR on the 7th of September, while Maj. John Cross conducted a separate interview with TNR roughly one week later.

Pvt. Beauchamp also canceled scheduled interviews with Newsweek and the Washington Post after speaking to TNR.

TNR interviewed Scott Thomas Beauchamp over a month ago. TNR interviewed investigating officer Major John Cross after I interviewed him for Pajamas Media roughly a week later.

At this stage of the game, one must wonder how much longer Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the other TNR editors involved in this farcical investigation can continue to hide the obvious fact that this was a series of stories that has not been corroborated, are partially or entirely fictional in nature, and poorly (or never) fact-checked, probably because of the author's relationship with a TNR staffer that he later married.

One must begin to wonder just how ethical Editor-In-Chief Martin Peretz and Executive Editor J. Peter Scoblic are in not reacting to the obvious facts that key elements of the stories written by Scott Beauchamp were not fact checked, and that Franklin Foer and Jason Zengerle are running what appears to be a purposefully deceptive investigation to cover up the lack of fact-checking prior to publication, while apparently lying to readers, experts, critics, and perhaps even their own employers at TNR and CanWest Mediaworks.

I'd love to know what Scott Thomas and Major Cross had to say to TNR, but The New Republic seems content to continue to answer questions about their credibility and ethics with silence.

Still Waiting

Just how long does it take to pen a retraction?

I only ask because it's been roughly a month since The New Republic had their first solid chance to interview Scott Thomas Beauchamp since he returned from duty at COP Ellis.

Since then, he's been online--hence, available--at least several days every week, including today. Beauchamp even had time to talk with Laughing Wolf from Blackfive as recently as September 30. Why not TNR?

Is Scott not talking to Franklin Foer, or is Franklin Foer simply unwilling to print what Scott has to say?

Update: More from Michelle Malkin.

Another "Beauchamp-related" Vacancy at The New Republic

The first known departure related to the Scott Thomas Beauchamp scandal was assistant to the publisher Robert McGhee, who was let go by the New Republic when he leaked TNR's dirty laundry.

A screen capture posted on mediabistro.com's FishbowlDC seems to indicate that TNR fact-checker and Beauchamp's wife Elspeth Reeve is also no longer with the beleaguered magazine.

Update: Patrick Gavin, who posted the Facebook entry noting that Reeve was no longer at The New Republic, has followed up on his original post, noting that Reeve has indeed left the magazine, but:

...not for any sinister reasons. Her year-long internship had expired and she is currently working as a research assistant for Mike Grunwald.

Reeve's first published story for TNR, "Patriot Act," was published May 3, 2006. Reeve was still on the Masthead in July of 2007, and according to Robert McGee, she was still employed at The New Republic when he was fired July 26 for revealing her marriage to Beauchamp, more than 14 months later.

The New Republic is apparently no better at keeping time than they are checking facts.

A Journalistic Farce

Today is the two-month anniversary of Franklin Foer claiming that he and The New Republic would run an honest investigation into the claims made in a story written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp:

Several conservative blogs have raised questions about the Diarist "Shock Troops," written by a soldier in Iraq using the pseudonym Scott Thomas. Whenever anybody levels serious accusations against a piece published in our magazine, we take those charges seriously. Indeed, we're in the process of investigating them. I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation.

--Franklin Foer

Editor Foer has also argued on July 26 that the article "was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published."

Since that time, a few things have happened:

• It has been conclusively proven that The New Republic did not fact-check a claim made in a previous "Scott Thomas" story, even though that claim was an allegation of murder. A simple Google Search would have proven the basis for the claim categorically false on the first two pages of results. It was 30 seconds they didn't take.
• The first claim made in "Shock Troops," was that "Thomas" and a fellow soldier verbally abused a burn victim at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon because combat left them desensitized to basic human decency and dignity. After it was noted that no such woman has ever been at FOB Falcon, the story was changed to another base, in another country, at a time before the unit saw combat. This of course, completely undermines the premise of the claim, and Foer’s claim that the article had been "rigorously edited and fact-checked." As it turns out, both military personnel and civilian contractors at the Kuwaiti base also dispute the story having occurred there, either. They state on the record that no soldier or civilian contractor matching this description has ever been at this base, and that the story is an urban legend or myth. This was told to TNR editor Jason Zengerle. Zengerle never relayed that to the readers of The New Republic. No such woman has ever been found, and yet TNR has yet to have the decency to retract this claim.
• A second claim made in "Shock Troops" by Thomas was that while his unit excavated ground for the creation of a new combat outpost, that the remains of children were uncovered, and one soldier in his unit wore part of a rotting child's skull on his head for amusement. Neither Foer nor any other editor at TNR have been able to substantiate this claim. An official U.S Army investigation that was launched primarily because of this specific claim found no credible evidence for this or the other claims made by "Thomas." Two months later, TNR has not issued a retraction for this claim.
• A third claim made by "Thomas" in "Shock Troops" was that a Bradley armored vehicle driver used the 25-ton tracked vehicle to crush "curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs." Since this time, every Bradley IFV commander and driver in Alpha Company has refuted this story as part of the military investigation, and Bradley IFV experts, including active duty and retired drivers and commanders, and even the company's spokesman, have stated that the vehicle could not perform the actions described in the story. Once again, Franklin Foer and The New Republic has had two months to substantiate this claim. They have failed, and yet still lack the decency to print a retraction.

The honorable thing to do when a publication cannot substantiate the claims made by one of their writers is to retract the claims made in the disputed article, and all previous articles by the same author where questionable facts cannot be corroborated. There is a simple reason for this: credibility is a publication's only real currency, and if they tarnish their credibility, then the unreliable publication becomes worthless as a news source.

The New York Times realized this when Jayson Blair was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of many of his stories. Blair, executive editor Howell Raines, and managing editor Gerald M. Boyd eventually resigned as a result of the fallout of scandal. When Jack Kelly was caught fabricating stories at USA Today, publisher Craig Moon ran an investigation and issued a front-page apology. Editor Karen Jurgensen and News section managing editor Hal Ritter resigned as a result.

But what is occurring at The New Republic seems to far exceed the actions of a single rogue journalist, and instead seem to point to an editorial staff as corrupted as the fabulist they seek to protect.

Unlike the Blair and Kelly scandals, editors from The New Republic seem to be involved in deliberately covering up, shutting down, and stonewalling possible avenues of approach, and are clearly more interested in stifling an investigation that conducting one.

On August 2, The New Republic released "A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp" (Beauchamp had "outed" himself on July 26).

In that statement, the editors of The New Republic had claimed to have interviewed a number of experts that corroborated the claims made in "Shock Troops."

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

Tellingly, The New Republic would not divulge the names of the experts they vaguely claimed supported the claims made in "Shock Troops."

One of them was credited by TNR thusly:

TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described.

One week later, that unnamed spokesman was found. After being identified, Doug Coffey of BAE systems revealed that as it related to him, TNR's investigation was a whitewash:

To answer your last question first, yes, I did talk to a young researcher with TNR who only asked general questions about "whether a Bradley could drive through a wall" and "if it was possible for a dog to get caught in the tracks" and general questions about vehicle specifications.

The New Republic had not asked Coffey about the claims made by Beauchamp at all.

Once provided with the claims made in "Shock Troops," Coffey found the claims relating to his company’s vehicle very hard to believe.

By August 11, unable to corroborate any element of a story they claimed to have "rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published," the editors of The New Republic went on the offensive, claiming:

...we continue to investigate the anecdotes recounted in the Baghdad Diarist. Unfortunately, our efforts have been severely hampered by the U.S. Army. Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What's more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants "to protect his privacy."

Like the August 2 story using hidden experts, this claim by the editors of The New Republic was also deceptive.

The Army has a legal obligation not to release the investigation's findings, with confidentiality being Beauchamp's right. Further, it was Beauchamp himself that declined to be interviewed by The New Republic. The Army did not reject TNR, Private Beauchamp rejected The New Republic... and obviously still does today.

By being deceptive and argumentative since the beginning (a tragic flaw of hubris that the magazine also had preceding the Stephen Glass scandal almost a decade prior) of their investigation, The New Republic editorial staff have destroyed their credibility.

They attempted to cover up the fact that they did not fact check Beuchamp’s articles prior to publication, and even attempted to cover up the fact that the author was married to a TNR fact-checker. Faced with legitimate questions about the veracity of claims made by their author, the editors instead attacked those raising these questions, while at the same time running a whitewash of an investigation designed to give them rhetorical cover instead of uncovering the facts.

Ultimately, it seems that even the author won't support the articles, and The New Republic is left twisting in the wind, hoping that noone will notice just how naked, exposed, and yes, corrupt they have been over the course of this sordid story.

The editorial staff of The New Republic, led for the last time by Franklin Foer, should retract all three stories penned by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, apologize profusely to the readership of The New Republic for deceiving them for over two months, and resign.

It remains to be seen if they retain that much integrity.

Fabulist, Junior?

According to his web page, Scott Thomas Beauchamp and his wife, The New Republic fact checker Elspeth Reeve, are apparently expecting a child.

The TNR fabulist/Army private has the following posted on his MySpace page:

""SCOTT BEAUCHAMP CLAIMS TO DESIRE THE BABIES OF ELSPETH, HIS SUPPOSED WIFE!""

He includes as his interests "raptors having babies." His wife, TNR fact-checker Elspeth Reeve uses a raptor (a kind of dinosaur) as the avatar for her MySpace page.

Beauchamp first came to light when a story he wrote entitled "Shock Troops," alleging the barbarity of his fellow soldiers, was challenged on July 18 by The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb.

Since that time, the U.S Army has denounced the claims made in "Shock Troops" as fiction, and Franklin Foer, the editor of The New Republic, has failed to release the findings of the magazine's internal investigation into the veracity of the stories.

Two Months In: Franklin Foer, Will You Honor Your Word?

Two months ago today, Michael Goldfarb challenged the Scott Thomas story "Shock Troops" posted in the New Republic, igniting a firestorm of criticism by military personnel and bloggers who found the published claims to be less than credible.

In response to growing doubts from critics and his own readers, Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, stated on July 20:

I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation."

Now, almost two months after making that promise and precisely two months after the story was first questioned, Foer has yet to announce the findings of that investigation.

We know that Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the author of the three stories Foer ran in The New Republic, had a chance to speak with The New Republic 12 days ago. We also know that Beauchamp has refused to discuss his original claims with any other media organization, and gave a blanket statement to the PAO to relay to media organizations that he will not discuss the incidents in his stories, period. It appears that Beauchamp will not speak to Franklin Foer any more about these articles, and that he may have frozen him out, perhaps upon the direction of a lawyer.

Foer now knows, or should know, whether or not Beauchamp will stand by his earlier claims.

If he can provide further support for Shock Troops and the two previous articles, Foer needs to produce it. If he cannot, Franklin Foer owes it to his readers to retract all three of Scott Beauchamp's stories, which a military investigation revealed to be completely uncorroborated, and portions of which one of the magazine's own experts found "highly unlikely."

To date, Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the rest of The New Republic have been unable to provide so much as a single named expert, a single named witness, or a single concrete fact to support the claims made in "Shock Troops."

I call upon Franklin Foer to honor his word: present the findings of TNR's investigation.

If you will not, resign.

Update: Lessons unlearned:

The High and Mighty Just after Baghdad fell in early 2003, CNN ran an astonishing confession on the New York Times’s op-ed page admitting that it had known, but kept secret, some “awful things” about the regime of Saddam Hussein over the years. “Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard—awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff,” wrote Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive. “I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed.” The piece went into some gruesome detail of atrocities CNN “could not report,” for fear of reprisal from the dictator. “I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me,” he confessed.

Then why didn’t CNN leave Iraq and alert the rest of the world about these “gut-wrenching tales” and atrocities?

For a couple of weeks, other mainstream media reported moral outrage. The New Republic's Franklin Foer shot back that this couldn't even be called a belated outbreak of honesty. "If it were, Mr. Jordan would be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry—and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships." CNN was, Foer stated, the network of record. "It makes rich reading to return to transcripts and compare the CNN version of Iraq with the reality that has emerged."

The lesson never quite sank in.

Obviously.

TNR Writer: Dishonest journalists "should be named, shamed, and driven out of the profession altogether, never to write again."

The New Republic has a writer named James Kirchick who got righteously indignant when a HuffPo writer plagiarized his original work.

Says Kirchick:

There is no worse offense in the journalistic profession than stealing someone else's work and those who do should be named, shamed, and driven out of the profession altogether, never to write again.

Oh James... I think we can come up with just a few journalistic offenses more damning than mere plagiarism.

Here's a few for starters.

Unquestioningly run fake stories of American atrocities, where you can't even correctly pin down even the country in which one of them takes place.

Allow a police force to be accused of murder based upon a claim that was disproven with a simple Google search.

Blatantly lie to your readers and your fellow journalists about fact-checking said stories beforehand.

Hide the marital relationship between the dishonest author and your staff fact-checker for as long as possible, and then fire the person who discloses it.

When you try to justify the fact you didn't do basic fact-checking before you ran these stories by citing experts in your "re-reporting", keep them anonymous and in the dark, asking them only vague, almost meaninglessly general questions. That way, they don't know how they are being used, and they can't be given the whole story (because if they knew all the facts, they'd tell a quite different story).

Refuse to acknowledge or print the testimony of authorities and witnesses that directly contradict your claims, and refuse to answer any of the substantive criticism leveled against you, while alleging that others aren't allowing the truth the come out, so that you can avoid resigning in disgrace for another day.

These things might be just a bit worse than putting your name on someone's else's story, but I think we all agree with your preferred punishment.

What Else Remains

At this point in the Scott Beauchamp/The New Republic scandal, only two questions really matter:

1. Have the editors of The New Republic spoken with Scott Beauchamp since his July 26 statement outing himself?
   
   
2. If so, does Beauchamp still stand by his stories as he then claimed?

There are several reasons to ask this question now, starting with the fact that we know Scott Beauchamp has very recently been available for interviews.

It was quite easy to verify this: I sent in a request for an interview with Private Beauchamp several weeks ago. When he turned it down this past week, it verified that he had returned from COP Ellis to FOB Falcon. His log-in to his MySpace page on September 6 also corroborates his return.

Under intense pressure to provide support for the stories that have tarnished the magazine's image, Franklin Foer was no doubt first in line to try to speak with Private Beauchamp once he returned to FOB Falcon. It would also be reasonable to assume that because of their previous relationship, Beauchamp would choose to speak to Foer or other editors of The New Republic if he chose to speak with anyone at all. Could we interpret the magazine's continuing silence to mean that Beauchamp himself has backed away from his previous claims?

If Franklin Foer cannot get Scott Beauchamp to provide supporting evidence for the claims he posted, then Foer has an obligation and a duty to retract all three of Beauchamp's stories.

The problem with doing so, however, is that the retractions would also show that "the Editors" previous claim that "the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published" to also be a dishonest fabrication, and that deception would demand editorial resignations at TNR as well.

Update: I made a few minor tweaks o the text above, but nothing substantial.

High Noon for TNR

I'll ask all of my readers to please check out Pajamas Media after noon (Eastern U.S.) today [update: it's up now], and see what you think of my exclusive interview which should be coming online right about then.

In the meantime, Michelle Malkin and her team at Hot Air released a crushing "Vent" today, interviewing Michael Goldfarb, the writer for The Weekly Standard that broke the story with his post, "Fact or Fiction?" on July 18, and also paying a surprise visit to the offices of The New Republic to try to get in to see Franklin Foer.

Watch the whole thing.

All in all, this is going to be a very bad day for Franklin Foer and The New Republic, who by now, just wish this story would go away. What they don't seem to grasp is that at this point, they are the story.

We know that the events Beauchamp wrote about in "Shock Troops" were fabrications, and that has become something of a non-story at this point.

Now, what has become a far more important story is the devious means by which the editorial staff of The New Republic has sought to cover-up their own inadequacies. If they had simply admitted in the beginning that they did not adequately check Beauchamp's stories because they never thought that the husband of a staffer would so boldly and blatantly lie to them, then this would have blown over weeks ago, with minor consequences.

Instead, The New Republic launched an investigation "re-reporting" the story, and tried to justify the unjustifiable with a combination of willful deception and obfuscation. They've attempted to deceive or hide information their readers, fellow journalists, at least one of the experts they claimed supported the veracity of the story, the blogosphere, and the United States Army, in a pathetic attempt to justify a minor incompetence, and in the process, created a significant scandal.

In the end, if TNR owners CanWest Mediaworks hopes to retain any corporate credibility at all, a purge of the defective detectives that make up the editorial staff The New Republic is certainly warranted.

They've run out of second chances.

Update: Read all of my Beauchamp/TNR related coverage here. For those of you who have the means, please consider supporting citizen-journalism (specifically, mine).

Thanks.

The New Republic, Tom Cruise, and Post Turtles

"Help me, Help you."
Photo from TomCruiseFan.com

Dear "The Editors,"

I noticed with some bemusement earlier this week Jonathan Chait's attempt to rally the TNR faithful by attacking William Kristol, and note that Jonathan Cohn returned to that theme once again yesterday afternoon, with the slight exception of focusing on Ramesh Ponnuru's criticism of Chait's rant. I find it fascinating that you have the time to dedicate to critiques of critiques, but I'd really rather prefer that you just did your jobs as editors.

It has been precisely two weeks since your last attempt to whistle past those "legitimate questions that have been raised" about Scott Thomas Beauchamp's articles. It has been even more troubling that you have stone-walled those who have asked legitimate questions about your own investigation, which is far from transparent.

As Scott Johnson notes at Powerline this morning, Fridays seem to be a big day for TNR editors when it comes to releasing Beauchamp investigation-related news.

Towards that end, and knowing it is a little late, I'd still like to offer up my services to help you with your investigation.

You see, it doesn't often take very long to conduct a legitimate investigation into matters such as these.

For example, once I was finally able to reach Doug Coffey at BAE Systems, the company that manufacturers the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles that you refused to identify, it took only one email to determine that you didn't provide him with Beauchamp's dog-killing story to review for plausibility. I did, and his same-day response... well, we know how that ended up, don't we? It seems your researcher "re-reporting" the story just didn't know quite which questions to ask.

I seem to have a knack for knowing what to ask, so if you would be so kind, please provide the names of the civilian experts you claim to have interviewed during the course of your re-reporting, and I'll be happy to take a few minutes out of my day to make sure that you asked them the right questions, or for that matter, determine if you even asked the right experts the right questions.

Doing a thorough, transparent, and competent investigation doesn't take weeks.

Of course, that assumes that you want a thorough, transparent, and competent investigation.

Like you, dear readers, I find it rather doubtful that The New Republic will provide me or anyone else with the names of their civilian experts.

As details leak out, it seems Franklin Foer and his collaborators have become the cliché, and their continuing attempts to cover-up their editorial failures with even more questionable ethical violations and purposeful deceptions is worst than Beauchamp's fabulism. At this point, Franklin Foer and TNR's senior editors aren't so much editors as they are post turtles.

What's a post turtle? I recall an email where a doctor asked that same question when an old farmer whose hand he had been suturing used the term.

The farmer replied:

"When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

"You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just want to help the dumb thing get down."

A Sorry State of Affairs

I don't normally read Jonathan Chait and know little about him. I don't know what role he normally plays at The New Republic, or what role he may or may not have played in the magazine's latest fabulism scandal.

What I do know of Chait is that his attack on William Kristol this morning is written with the obvious intent of distracting TNR readers from the editors' compromised ethics by attacking an ideological opposite.

It is perhaps not the oldest trick in psychology or politics, but it is close: attack a common enemy to shore up your own faltering base. Chait's none-too-subtle-variation on this is to get readers riled up at Kristol for a comment where he states that liberals are turning against the troops. I would imagine that the quote is probably accurate, even though Chait provides neither a link to the original editorial, or the context in which this passage appeared.

But what is far more interesting—both to myself, and based upon their comments, some of the magazine's readers—is what Chait doesn't say in his attempt to distract us away from the magazine's editorial deceptions with his assault on Kristol.

The topic was The New Republic's decision to publish an essay by Scott Beauchamp, an American soldier serving in Iraq, detailing some repugnant acts he said he and his comrades committed. Legitimate questions have been raised about this essay's veracity. (We've been publishing updates on our continuing efforts to get answers to them at tnr.com.) But Kristol rushed past these questions, immediately declaring the piece a "fiction."

Legitimate questions were raised about Beauchamp's articles: all three of them, in fact. And we know now based upon an internal investigation by the United States Army, interviews with military personnel, contractors, vehicle experts, and even simple Google searches, is that the major allegations made in "Shock Troops" and in at least one of Beauchamp's other stories ("Dark of Night") are indeed, fiction. They are fabrications. Untruths. Lies.

The questions that remain surrounding this fabulist's train-wreck are concerned with the editorial decisions of Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and perhaps even Chait and other editorial staffers.

Those questions—what did the editors know, when did they know it, and why do they continue to cover it up—those are the questions that remain unresolved and of interest to those following this on-going example of gross editorial misconduct.

To recap:

• TNR editor Franklin Foer claimed on July 20 that, "I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation." Foer has never provided any corroborating details to support these claims, despite his promise.
• The editors claimed that "the article [Shock Troops] was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published." The fact of the matter is that TNR subsequently had to change the "burned woman" assault story from happening at FOB Falcon and as the result of the psychological trauma experienced by the author as the result of combat, to another location in another country before Beauchamp ever went to war, precisely because they did not rigorously edit or fact check the article before publication. This is a not only evidence of a lie by the editors when they said they "rigorously edited and fact-checked" the article before publication, it fatally undermines the entire premise of the article.
• TNR has not released, and appears to have purposefully hidden, unfavorable testimony of those it interviewed in the course of their investigation. We know that TNR editor Jason Zengerle admitted to John Podhoretz of The Corner that a Kuwait-based PAO regarded the "burned woman" story as a myth or urban legend, yet TNR editors have never revealed these findings as part of their investigation. So much for the promise to "release the full results of our search when it is completed." We have no way of knowing if they have hidden other unfavorable information.
• TNR's editors have led a purposefully vague investigation that does not disclose the names, qualifications, or expertise of anyone they claimed to have interviewed during the course of their investigation, hindering anyone who would like to follow behind them and verify the veracity of their claimed research. They have not disclosed the questions they asked their experts, and have thus far refused to provide their answers directly.
• One of the experts has been located and re-interviewed, and discloses the fact that he was never specifically interviewed about the claims made by Beauchamp at all. Further, once provided with Beauchamp's direct claims, he cited the physical properties and characteristics that would make Beauchamp's claims highly unlikely if not impossible. TNR staffers are well aware of his new, more fully-informed response, and have yet to respond.

In short, TNR's editors, led by Franklin Foer, have misled their readers, hidden testimony, and perhaps even rigged an investigation in order to claim some sort of vindication for their editorial and ethical failings.

These are the matters of importance that Johathan Chait, Franklin Foer, and other staffers at The New Republic would rather we didn't focus on.

They would much rather gin up "us versus them" conflicts between liberals and conservatives, between The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, and supporters of the war versus those who would bring the troops home now, than focus on the all-too-apparent fact that the editorial leadership of The New Republic has lied to its readers, compromised their integrity, and dissembled to fellow journalists and critics alike. They've done all of this to cover-up just how poor of a job they did in allowing a staffer's husband to publish inflammatory articles without any apparent editorial controls in place.

The editors of The New Republic have rather obviously lied to us all. They continue to do so today, and no amount of blame-shifting or "look over there!" sleight-of-hand will hide that brutal fact.

In the comments to Chait's article, TNR subscriber "PJmolloy" states:

This is a vile piece. It almost makes Beauchamp look tolerable if this is the alternative.

I've subscribed to TNR off and on for forty years. But it looks like it'll be more off than on in the future. Isn't there someone who can help this magazine?

There is, of course.

Why CanWest MediaWorks refuses to do so is yet another mystery.

Update: Captain Ed pulls no punches:

Chait should save his shocked, shocked! hypocrisy for the people in his own office who violated journalistic standards to publish Beauchamp, apparently based on the word of his wife and sweetened by the themes of his inartful fabulism. Attacking Kristol for essentially nailing the strangely-silent editors and publisher of TNR may conform to the strategy of going on offense as the best defense, but it's rather transparent, like the glass house TNR has chosen to occupy.

Nor does Bryan at Hot Air:

Chait’s article is another example of TNR’s defense by offense, and it’s the work of a smear artist and a scoundrel.

Powerline's Scott Johnson rips the TNR editor's "Chaitred" as well.

It seems at this late stage that even an offensive by The New Republic is quite transparent and doomed to fail.

I also seem to have someone's undivided attention at the home office.

Sucker-Punched

At Pajamas Media this morning, Richard Miniter has posted a devastating article called How The New Republic Got Suckered. It is the most incisive look into the heart of The New Republic during the early days of the Scott Thomas Beauchamp scandal thus far.

Miniter draws heavily from former TNR assistant to the editor Robert McGee, who recounts his experiences inside The New Republic before being terminated and then slapped with a cease and desist order by the magazine's lawyers for revealing that Beauchamp was married to a TNR fact-checker and writer, Elspeth Reeve.

It is because of this relationship that I suspect Franklin Foer and other TNR editors failed to adequately fact-check Beauchamp's three articles. What still remains unanswered is if Reeve was the fact-checker on her husband's stories, as such a conflict of interest would be yet another violation of journalistic ethics.

Also telling, if accurate, is McGee's observation that Foer may have approached, and may still be approaching, the scandal with ideological blinders firmly in place.

Later that night, Robert McGee, a then-assistant to The New Republic's publisher, went looking for the host. He is curious what Foer thinks about the building scandal. He wants the inside dope.

He finds Foer on the front porch and asks as casually as he can: "So, what's up with this?"

As McGee recalls the conversation, Foer immediately volunteered the standard answer: conservatives have an ideological grudge to settle because they perceive the magazine to be anti-war, anti-military and so on.

"He sounded almost rehearsed," McGee said.

What bothered McGee about the conversation was that Foer saw the questions from the bloggers as a completely ideological attack. "Foer wasn't acknowledging that at least some of the attacks on the [Beauchamp's] 'Shock Troops' piece came from active-duty military members whose skepticism was factually grounded, and not just from stateside political pundits."

Discounting criticism merely as a result of the ideological position of the critics was a serious mistake by Foer, though hardly the first, and certainly not the last.

Just because political pundits made these observations does not make them invalid. It matters little who tells you that Glocks do not fire "square-backed" bullets; this fact does not change if it comes from a liberal or a conservative, a Republican or a Democrat.

Nor does it matter that it was this conservative blogger blew away TNR's insistence that they fact-checked Beauchamp's claims before publication by pointing out that if TNR has run so much as a Google search before publishing Beauchamp's libelous murder claim in “Dark of Night," then he would have likely been exposed as a fabulist well in advanced of "Shock Troops."

Time and again, it seems, Franklin Foer and perhaps other senior TNR editors allowed personal loyalties to subvert their editorial responsibilities.

In the beginning, these were small sins.

One wants to be able to trust the spouse of a staffer. I can understand why the fact-checking that should have occurred may have been minimized in Beauchamp's first post.

But in "Dead of Night," Beauchamp makes significant fact errors in leveling an accusation of murder. Personal relationships should matter little when an author makes such an inflammatory charge, and the editor's have a significant duty to verify that the facts support such a potentially divisive claim.

It is painfully obvious that even a passing attempt to verify the claims was never made. No handgun on the planet fires a "square-backed" pistol bullet, and if the editors had so much as bothered to click on the Glock web site, they would have readily discovered that Glocks use the same ammunition as every other 9x19mm caliber pistol, and that this claim was absurd.

Further, the editors of The New Republic made absolutely no attempt to verify the demonstrably false Beauchamp claim that "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police."

This fabrication is easily discredited within seconds with a simple Google search.

Glocks are a common and favored handgun on the Iraqi black market:

Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa, showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900. Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.

There are literally dozens of stories of Glock pistols being recovered from insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen. They have been captured in cordon-and-search operations, in targeted raids, recovered in weapons caches, and taken from dead and wounded insurgents, militiamen, and criminals.

American soldiers also have them, as do civilian contractors. Ordinary Iraqi civilians (men and women) buy them to protect their families. Glock are quite likely the most ubiquitous handgun in Iraq, carried officially or unofficially by those on all sides, and those on no side at all.

But Franklin Foer's editors did not fact check any part of the murder claim made in "Dead of Night." That is clear, and in doing so, the editors' of The New Republic slipped from being loyal friends making an innocent mistake, into what can only be described as an overt case of editorial malpractice.

Had the editors of The New Republic actually edited this article and fact-checked it before publication, there is every reason to believe that these significant fact errors in "Dark of Night" would have eventually led to the quiet termination of Scott Thomas Beauchamp's writing career at The New Republic after one article.

But Franklin Foer and the other editors at The New Republic utterly failed in their editorial responsibilities.

Instead, the willful disregard of editorial standards allowed Beauchamp not only to libelously assign a murder based upon false claims, it also allowed him to later publish his most infamous post, "Shock Troops," in which he wrote three vignettes that effectively slandered every soldier in his entire company and within the other companies with which his unit served.

But this editorial dereliction of duty was by no means the greatest sin of the editors of The New Republic.

Once caught, they escalated their editorial incompetence with a series of readily apparent purposeful deceptions, dissembling to readers and critics alike.

Franklin Foer stated that The New Republic fact-checked "Shock Troops" before publication. That statement is an obvious falsehood. Foer's magazine utterly failed to fact-check the article prior to publication, and therefore had to move the time, location and underlying premise of Beauchamp's primary charge to another time and country when they did finally attempt to fact-check it well after publication.

Foer's editors attempted to further deceive readers and critics on at least two other known occasions.

The New Republic claimed to publish the findings of an internal investigation that they said vindicated the magazine, but was in actuality nothing more than an apparent attempt to save their jobs via a whitewash.

The magazine offered no named witnesses or experts, no evidence or testimony, and when one of the experts TNR claimed to have supported their story was located, it became abundantly obvious that TNR avoided a real investigation, did not provide him with any context, and was attempted to only provide itself with rhetorical cover. The attempt failed, miserably.

The magazine has also apparently made it a practice to bury dissenting viewpoints, such as when a military PAO based in Kuwait told TNR editor Jason Zengerle that the story was regarded as an urban legend or myth. Zengerle acknowledges he was told this, but the account was never published in The New Republic.

Foer's magazine then attempted to avoid responsibility for their editorial malpractice, purposeful deception, and account burying by blaming the Army, claiming that the Army was obstructing their investigation.

But the Army never obstructed any investigation by The New Republic. This is presumably fine, as The New Republic had no intention of really conducting one.

But now we are left with a magazine where the editors have moved beyond merely partisanship and incompetence to obvious willful deception of their readers and critics alike, and perhaps actionable fraud.

It remains to be seen how CanWest Mediaworks, owner of The New Republic and other media properties, will respond.

The New Republic: Duck and Cover, Still

Tomorrow marks precisely one month since Michael Goldfarb published Fact or Fiction? at The Weekly Standard, calling into doubt the veracity of claims made by a soldier later revealed as Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

Since that time, key "facts" in two of three Beauchamp-authored stories have been discredited.

• Glock pistols do not fire a unique "square-backed" 9-millimeter pistol cartridge.
• Glocks, far from only being used by the Iraqi Police as the author claimed as he libeled the Iraqi Police for murder, are instead one of the more common handguns in Iraq.
• Thee was never a "burned woman" in the dining facility at Camp Falcon as the author alleged. Nor was there a burned woman at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, a fact attested to by both named military personnel and named civilian contractors.
• There is no evidence there was ever a garbage-stratified grave as the author alleged (though there was a cemetery that was relocated), and no support than anyone could or would wear a section of rotting human skull under the close-fitting helmets currently used by the U.S. Army.
• There is no evidence of a dog-murdering Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle driver, and literally dozens of Bradley crewmen, commanders, drivers, infantrymen, and even the spokesman for the company that builds the Bradley all consistently stating it is all but impossible for a Bradley to be used as the author described.

In addition to the factual problems published in the articles, there have been significant issues revealed about the editorial management of The New Republic, the magazine that published the claims of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, issues that should call into question their ethics and credibility.

• TNR editor Franklin Foer claimed on July 20 that, "I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation." Foer has never provided any corroborating details to support these claims, despite his promise.
• The editors claimed that "the article [Shock Troops] was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published." The fact of the matter is that TNR subsequently had to change the "burned woman" assault story from happening at FOB Falcon and as the result of the psychological trauma experienced by the author as the result of combat, to another location in another country before Beauchamp ever went to war, precisely because they did not rigorously edit or fact check the article before publication. This is a not only evidence of a lie by the editors when they said they "rigorously edited and fact-checked" the article before publication, it fatally undermines the entire premise of the article.
• TNR has not released, and appears to have purposefully hidden, unfavorable testimony of those it interviewed in the course of their investigation. We know that TNR editor Jason Zengerle admitted to John Podhoretz of The Corner that a Kuwait-based PAO regarded the "burned woman" story as a myth or urban legend, yet TNR editors have never revealed these findings as part of their investigation. So much for the promise to "release the full results of our search when it is completed." We have no way of knowing if they have hidden other unfavorable information.
• TNR's editors have led a purposefully vague investigation that does not disclose the names, qualifications, or expertise of anyone they claimed to have interviewed during the course of their investigation, hindering anyone who would like to follow behind them and verify the veracity of their claimed research. They have not disclosed the questions they asked their experts, and have thus far refused to provide their answers directly.
• One of the experts has been located and re-interviewed, and discloses the fact that he was never specifically interviewed about the claims made by Beauchamp at all. Further, once provided with Beauchamp's direct claims, he cited the physical properties and characteristics that would make Beauchamp's claims highly unlikely if not impossible. TNR staffers are well aware of his new, more fully-informed response, and have yet to respond.

In short, TNR's editors, led by Franklin Foer, have misled their readers, hidden testimony, and perhaps even rigged an investigation in order to claim some sort of vindication for their editorial and ethical failings.

A month into this story, it seems apparent that the Editors at TNR and their owners at CanWest MediaWorks have no intention at all of dealing honestly with the continuing editorial and ethical failures of this magazine.

Few people read The New Republic before they self-immolated their credibility. If there is any consolation to their deplorable behavior, it is the knowledge that their audience will grow smaller still as a result.

Carrying Them Out on Their Shields

Milblogger and two-tour Iraq veteran John Rohan, who writes at The Shield of Achilles, absolutely eviscerates some of the more vocal defenders of Franklin Foer's whitewash of an investigation, and the poorly-written combat fiction of Scott Beauchamp that appears in The New Republic.

Rohans delivers Sullivan, Yglesias, Drum, Marshall and others take a well-deserved thrashing, administered by their own words in this retrospective, but I'd advise you not to hold your breath for any of them to apologize.

Liar's Parade

Why do the Scott Thomas Beauchamp stories published in The New Republic matter?

Beauchamp's stories—"War Bonds," "Dead of Night", and "Shock Troops"—contained material either suspect, exaggerated, or in several proven instances, completely fabricated.

It is suspect that the soldiers in "War Bonds" would stop their vehicles in a "dark brown river of sewage" to change a tire; both Humvees and Strykers feature run-flat tires and automatic tire inflation systems that allow the vehicles to continue on for miles after experiencing a puncture.

Beauchamp's libel of the Iraqi Police as murderers in "Dark of Night" is based upon not one, but two completely false claims. The first is that Glock pistols can be identified by a unique "square-backed" 9mm pistol cartridge. This is utterly preposterous. There are no "square-backed" pistol cartridges chambered by commercial weapons manufacturers. The 9mm NATO (AKA, 9mm Luger, 9mm Parabellum) cartridge chambered and fired by Glock pistols is common in military, police and civilian handguns, carbines, and submachine guns worldwide, they do not use unique identifying ammunition.

The second claim is that only the Iraqi police carry Glock pistols. A simple Google search easily disproves that claim. Glocks are common among all military, police, militia, insurgent, and civilian populations. In "Dark of Night," Beauchamp based his libel upon two easily demonstrated falsehoods.

In Beauchamp's final article, "Shock Troops," he provides us with three distinct tall tales that a U.S. military investigation has concluded were categorically false.

It was this third account, "Shock Troops," that matters most to active duty soldiers, veterans, and their families. In three separate accounts, Beauchamp tells stories of large groups of soldiers that allowed, encouraged, or participated in barbaric behavior, and in so doing, Beauchamp assaulted the honor and integrity of not just a rogue soldier or even a small unit, but his entire company and every soldier in every other company Forward Operating Base Falcon.

This mass libel offends or should offend everyone who supports our soldiers, even those who are against the war. Several weeks ago when Beauchamp was still nominally shielded by his pseudonym, I suggested that a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War who was based at FOB Falcon from Nov. 2005 to Nov. 2006 named Richard Peters might be in a position to tell us if he has heard or of witnessed these or similar stories while at the base.

After reading Beauchamp's "Shock Troops," and hearing of the various debunkings of Beauchamp's claims, IVAW member Peters responded via email:

Ok, yes it does seem to be "case closed" on this Scott Thomas fellow. People like him really get under my skin. The trouble with the antiwar movement is one of image, when losers like him spread elaborate lies it only weakens that image and the message is lost.

Whether you support the continuation of the conflict in Iraq, or if you favor a withdrawal as do Mr. Peters and the IVAW and other critics of the war, is frankly irrelevant to the discussion. Beauchamp's stories matter because they were fabrications created in the hopes of furthering the career of an arrogant, untalented writer, at the expense of the reputations of his fellow soldiers.

As a result of a military investigation into the allegations made in "Shock Troops," all of Beauchamp's claims were determined to be false, and Beauchamp himself faces administrative punishment for his serial fiction.

But Beauchamp's attempted collective character assassination is only part of the story, and at this point, isn't even the most offensive part of the tale.

Since this series of stories was first brought to the attention of milbloggers by Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard, the editors of The New Republic have continued to defend Beauchamp's stories, and have gone to disconcerting lengths to do so.

Perhaps most disturbing is that on July 26, TNR editors flatly lied to its readers, when they stated:

Although the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published, we have decided to go back and, to the extent possible, re-report every detail. This process takes considerable time, as the primary subjects are on another continent, with intermittent access to phones and email. Thus far we've found nothing to disprove the facts in the article; we will release the full results of our search when it is completed.

Let me make this very clear: none of Beauchamp's three stories bears any evidence of fact-checking or rigorous editing.

The editors did not ask why vehicles with automatic tire inflation systems and run-flat tires designed to run for miles even after being punctured had to stop in waist-deep rivers of raw sewage in "War Bonds."

The editors did not catch the blatant "square-backed" cartridge claim, nor did they show enough diligence to even run a rudimentary Google search to check Beauchamp's claim that would have sent up immediate red flags when their correspondent alleged murder based upon a flagrant untruth that "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police" in "Dead of Night."

In "Shock Troops," an act of depravity—verbally assaulting a female contractor for severe facial burns—at a combat base that the author blamed on the psychological trauma of combat was quickly exposed as not having occurred at the base in question at all. This bit of undone fact-checking exposed, TNR's editors shifted the story to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, never admitting the fact that that the shift in time and place means that the story was utterly false: one cannot be traumatized, hardened, or emotionally deadened by the horrors of combat in the Iraq War before having actually gone there.

TNR senior editor Jason Zengerle admitted that he received information from the U.S. Army PAO in Kuwait that "a couple of soldiers did say that [they] heard rumors about the incident, but nothing based on fact. More like an urban legand [sic]."

The editors of TNR has decided not to share this or similar conflicting information with their readers.

Nor have they shared the fact that named contractors at Camp Arifjan, named U.S. Army officers, and literally dozens of soldiers have disputed ever seeing a contractor at Camp Arifjan or anywhere else who has matched this description. The New Republic's anonymous soldiers and fact-checking apparatus have not produced the name of a contractor, the specific date or even a likely date range for the incident, and fall back on insisting that that anonymous soldiers that they claim corroborate the burned contractor assault, and that we must take their word for it, despite all the documented claims from named military and civilian sources to the contrary.

Another claim made by Beauchamp and "fact checked" by TNR's legion of diligent staffers was the discovery of children's bodies under layers of garbage, and the subsequent wearing of part of a child's rotting skull by one soldier for an extended period of time.

The editors of The New Republic would deceive their readers, and pretend that the acknowledgement that a children's cemetery was uncovered and relocated during the creation of a combat outpost proved Beauchamp's claim that a soldier wore rotting human body parts during the day and into the night to the amusement of fellow soldiers, and without a single dissenting voice or reprimand from an NCO. It does nothing of the sort, and merely shows that Beauchamp likely took a rather mundane event—the discovery and relocation of a cemetery—and wove fiction around it to create an atrocity tacitly supported and even laughed at by his fellow soldiers.

Beauchamp's third claim, of a murderous rogue Bradley IFV driver, has been refuted by the U.S. military, Bradley drivers, commanders, crewmen, and soldiers, the crewmen of similar tracked vehicles such as the M113, virtually without contradiction, with the one notable exception coming, once again, from anonymous TNR sources.

One of their anonymous sources was actually discovered and re-questioned openly about the Bradley's capability to be used as described in "Shock Troops."

Despite TNR's claim that he supported the Bradley's ability to operate as described, Doug Coffey, Bradley manufacturer BAE Systems spokesman, actually tore TNR's claims apart when presented with all of Beauchamp's claims, in context.

It makes one wonder just how much "in the dark" The New Republic kept their other experts in order to create the illusion of an investigation that supported their initial claims.

The New Republic posted the results of an "investigation" that hides the names, positions, companies, and qualifications of their experts, and when one of their experts was tracked down, he told a quite different story. It becomes readily apparent that TNR, never "rigorously edited and fact-checked" Beauchamp's articles before publication. They still haven't.

Nor have they responded to valid criticisms...

...even though we know they have following such criticisms closely, and have been, daily.

What Franklin Foer and other editors of The New Republic have done is establish a pattern of deception, obfuscation, and blame-shifting. They continue to attempt to deceive their journalistic peers, their readers, and as their critics. TNR even purposefully hid the fact that one of their staff members is married to Beauchamp, and fired the temporary employee that disclosed this fact.

The New Republic seems convinced that despite the ever-growing collection of evidence that shows a clear breach of journalistic ethics, that if they simply find a way to "fool all of the people, all of the time," that they just might be able to save their credibility and their readership. Editor-in-Chief Marty Peretz does not seem willing to comment or act upon Franklin Foer's "rather" blatantly dishonest whitewash of an investigation, and Foer's obviously deceptive comments that the stories were fact-checked before publication.

As of yet, CanWest MediaWorks, the company that bought full interest in The New Republic in early 2007, has refused to act to salvage the credibility of their newest magazine.

One must wonder if they will wait to act until the magazine's already tarnished reputation is irreversibly damaged, or if that time is already passed.

More Easily Debunked Beauchamp Fiction: It Never Ends (Update: Joke?)

Had it not been hidden behind the subscriber firewall, I would have found this example of The New Republic's unwillingness to fact check Scott Beauchamp long ago.

It is already widely know that in Beauchamp's second dispatch, "Dead of Night," TNR editors did not take the common-sense step of fact-checking the article submitted, allowing Beauchamp to claim he saw "square-backed" pistol cartridges when such a cartridge does not exist. They also allowed him to claim that Iraqi policemen must have committed a murder, because they did not bother to do so much as the basic Google search that would have revealed that Glock pistols are very common throughout Iraq.

Yesterday evening I finally read of all "Dark of Night," and discovered this gem of a claim at the end.

As we slowly started moving back toward the Humvee, we could hear the dogs filling in the space behind us. I turned around and saw their green eyes flashing in the deep shadow where we'd left the body. Part of me thought we should have shot the dogs or done something to keep them from eating the body, but what good would it have done? We only would have been exposing ourselves to danger longer than we needed to.

Back in the Humvee, Hernandez started talking to me without looking in my direction. "Man, I've never seen anything like that before," he said.

"What? A guy killed by a cop?" I asked.

"No, man, zombie dogs. That shit was wild," he said, laughing.

Something inside of me fought for expression and then died. He was right. What else was there to do now but laugh?

"I took his driver's license," I said.

"You did?" questioned Hernandez.

"Yeah. It said he was an organ donor."

We chuckled in the dark for a moment, and then looked out the window into the night. We didn't talk again until we were back at our base.

Was anyone else the least bit surprised by Beauchamp's assertion that he stole the dead man's license, that he could read the Arabic on it, and that the deceased in an Islamic country was an organ donor?

It didn't seem to raise suspicions among TNR's editors, but it is obvious that nothing did with this post or his following fiction in "Shock Troops."

I contacted Bill Costlow, a former member of CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Teams) now working in the D.C. Metro area, and he confirmed that Iraqi driver licenses are written in Arabic. He also confirmed that:

Muslims have some pretty strict requirements on the treatment of bodies — mostly geared towards respect for the dead and privacy for the families — autopsies are very difficult to get permission for because it's viewed as desecration and this has been an issue in a number of investigations.

From Baghdad, Hassan Elsaadaoui, a CPATT liaison with the Iraqi Interior Ministry concurs:

I think in the Iraqi or Muslim tradition they don't accept this practice of donating organs. Maybe in the future, it will be possible. There is no indication now on the back side of Iraqi driver's license. Also our medical system and doctors are not ready for this type procedure, because of the situation. They do not have the equipment and many of the very good doctors are now outside the country.

So I agree with Bill's notes that he sent to you.

Organ donation is not unheard of in Iraq, and indeed, there is a small black market where the destitute will sell a kidney for several thousand dollars, but this practice seems confined to living donors.

There is apparently no such thing as an official Iraqi organ donor program, much less one run through the government and noted on drivers licenses, when such donations of organs of the deceased are viewed as desecrating the dead.

It took me a grand total of two emails to get confirmation that this claim, like so many others written by Beuachamp, and published by The New Republic, was rooted firmly in fiction.

Beauchamp made up another one, and once more, Franklin Foer and the editors of The New Republic are proven to be dishonest when they claim that Beauchamp's stories were fact checked before publication.

Update: Is Beauchamp merely making a joke above? I admittedly didn't read it that way, but it very well could be the case.

The first experience most of us had with Beauchamp was with his last article first, and his allegation that he verbally assaulted a burn victim. It doesn't seem much of a stretch from abuser of the burned to robber of the dead, so I took his comments at face value as a real claim.

I suppose that it is just an indication of just how little credibility TNR and Beauchamp have that it isn't easy to tell his joking fake claims from his sincere fake claims.

Update: Ace seems quite unimpressed by Beauchamp's joke, and seems to think it should have been viewed as a red flag by TNR editors.

I think the angle here is not that he was outright fabricating, so much as he was employing literary devices in his stories-- playing a role in order to establish himself as a literary character for his coming novel, a hardass, seen-it-all veteran dripping with BAMFism...

Despite the fact that, you know, while his service in Iraq is no doubt dangerous, he's hardly seen much in the way of combat or actual danger. He's seen the possibility of danger, but, alas for his book proposal, not so much the real sort.

The Right to Remain Silent

It appears that Bill Roggio and I were working parallel paths in running down--or perhaps over--the claims made in The New Republic's latest Scott Beauchamp defense, which consists of failing to take responsibility for their repeated editorial failings, and attempting to blame-shift all their ills on to the Army:

...we continue to investigate the anecdotes recounted in the Baghdad Diarist. Unfortunately, our efforts have been severely hampered by the U.S. Army. Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What's more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants "to protect his privacy."

But that isn't exactly the truth, is it? The Army has a legal obligation not to release the investigation's findings, with confidentiality being Beauchamp's right. Funny, how TNR decided not to publish that little detail.

As for who Beauchamp communicates with and why, Roggio reports:

I recently emailed Col. Steve Boylan asking for whatever information he could provide regarding the status of the investigation of Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Here is his response:

His commands investigation is complete. At this time, there is no formal what we call Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) actions being taken. However, there are other Administrative actions or what we call Non-Judicial Punishment that can be taken if the command deems appropriate. These are again administrative in nature and as such are not releasable to the public by law.

We are not stonewalling anyone. There are official statements that are out there are on the record from several of us and nothing has changed.

We are not preventing him from speaking to TNR or anyone. He has full access to the Morale Welfare and Recreation phones that all the other members of the unit are free to use. It is my understanding that he has been informed of the requests to speak to various members of the media, both traditional and non-traditional and has declined. That is his right.

We will not nor can we force a Soldier to talk to the media or his family or anyone really for that matter in these types of issues.

We fully understand the issues on this. What everyone must understand is that we will not breach the rights of the Soldier and this is where this is at this point.

I contacted Major Steven Lamb this afternoon to once more ask about about Beauchamp's ability to communicate. You may remember that five days ago he had stated that:

...the PAO system is only responding to specific inquiries, and little more is expected to be released unless PV-2 Beauchamp decides to discuss the matter further, which he is free to do.

I wanted to check in, to see if that was still the case.

It is:

All Soldiers have access to make morale calls however Beauchamp is not conducting interviews right now in order to protect his privacy and rights.

It would appear that Beauchamp has the ability to make calls, but no desire to speak any further with the media at this time, including The New Republic.

When Hidden Experts Are Found

Exactly one week ago today on August 2nd, the editors of the magazine The New Republic posted A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp, in which they claimed:

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

What is most interesting about the The New Republic's statement is that while they state they spoke to "dozens of people" in fact-checking their stories, they refused to cite the names of their experts, or explain their qualifications—those qualities that make them experts.

The reasoning behind that purposeful obfuscation is becoming ever more clear with each passing day.

In addition to avoiding the statements made by Army PAOs that Beauchamp's claims were "false" in their totality, and that one claim in particular was the stuff of "urban myth or legend," it appears that one of the experts cited by The New Republic's editors was not fully appraised of what TNR was trying to justify in one claim in particular.

The New Republic stated:

The last section of the Diarist described soldiers using Bradley Fighting Vehicles to kill dogs. On this topic, one soldier who witnessed the incident described by Beauchamp, wrote in an e-mail: "How you do this (I've seen it done more than once) is, when you approach the dog in question, suddenly lurch the Bradley on the opposite side of the road the dog is on. The rear-end of the vehicle will then swing TOWARD the animal, scaring it into running out into the road. If it works, the dog is running into the center of the road as the driver swings his yoke back around the other way, and the dog becomes a chalk outline." TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described. Instructors who train soldiers to drive Bradleys told us the same thing. And a veteran war correspondent described the tendency of stray Iraqi dogs to flock toward noisy military convoys.

Once again, no sources were named. That TNR would not reveal who these sources are who was a decision many interpreted as an attempt by TNR to keep others from interviewing these same experts. In the paragraph above, TNR mentions that they spoke to a spokesman of the company of manufacturers the Bradley.

Guess what? I did, too.

Doug Coffey is the Head of Communications, Land & Armaments, for BAE Systems, the Bradley IFV's manufacturer that TNR wouldn't name.

He was indeed contacted by a TNR staffer, but that the questions asked by the researcher were couched in generalities.

Bob, I received your earlier email and wanted to talk to some others about the specific questions you asked. To answer your last question first, yes, I did talk to a young researcher with TNR who only asked general questions about "whether a Bradley could drive through a wall" and "if it was possible for a dog to get caught in the tracks" and general questions about vehicle specifications.

In short, the TNR researcher did not provide the text of "Shock Troops" for Mr. Coffery to review, and only asked the vaguest possible questions. It seems rather obvious that this was not an attempt to actually verify Beauchamp's claims, but was instead designed to help The New Republic manufacturer a whitewash of an investigation.

Feeling that a little context was in order, I provided Mr. Coffey with Beauchamp's text from "Shock Troops" related to his company's Bradley IFV:

I know another private who really only enjoyed driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles because it gave him the opportunity to run things over. He took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs. Occasionally, the brave ones would chase the Bradleys, barking at them like they bark at trash trucks in America—providing him with the perfect opportunity to suddenly swerve and catch a leg or a tail in the vehicle's tracks. He kept a tally of his kills in a little green notebook that sat on the dashboard of the driver's hatch.

One particular day, he killed three dogs. He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road. A roar of laughter broke out over the radio. Another notch for the book. The second kill was a straight shot: A dog that was lying in the street and bathing in the sun didn't have enough time to get up and run away from the speeding Bradley. Its front half was completely severed from its rear, which was twitching wildly, and its head was still raised and smiling at the sun as if nothing had happened at all. I didn't see the third kill, but I heard about it over the radio. Everyone was laughing, nearly rolling with laughter. I approached the private after the mission and asked him about it.
"So, you killed a few dogs today," I said skeptically.

"Hell yeah, I did. It's like hunting in Iraq!" he said, shaking with laughter.

"Did you run over dogs before the war, back in Indiana?" I asked him.

"No," he replied, and looked at me curiously. Almost as if the question itself was in poor taste.

Along with the context the TNR researcher didn't provide, I'd asked a set of questions, including these:

Would a Bradley driver who "took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market," run a significant risk of damaging the vehicle's track systems? Would such actions also possibly damage the vehicle's armor? Could it have an adverse affect on other crucial vehicle components? Please elaborate as much as possible. I'd also like to ask you about the claims made by the author as he describes the process of killing three dogs using the tracks of the Bradley IFV. I recognize this is more speculative in nature, but would ask that you comment about the possibility that a Bradley's driver could "jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road."

I don't pretend to be the most mechanically-minded person, but I think that a tracked vehicle such as a Bradley turning "hard to the right" would have a right tread that is either stationary, or nearly so. Is this a correct statement?

If this is a true statement, then it seems the possibility of any animal being run over by a stationary or near stationary track is quite slim. Would you agree with that assessment?

What is the likelihood that a Bradley's track system would "drag a dog for a little while?

Mr. Coffey's response:

I can't pretend to know what may or may not have happened in Iraq but the impression the writer leaves is that a "driver" can go on joy rides with a 35 ton vehicle at will. The vehicle has a crew and a commander of the vehicle who is in charge. In order for the scenario described to have taken place, there would have to have been collaboration by the entire crew.

The driver's vision, even if sitting in an open hatch is severely restricted along the sides. He sits forward on the left side of the vehicle. His vision is significantly impaired along the right side of the vehicle which makes the account to "suddenly swerve to the right" and actually catch an animal suspect. If you were to attempt the same feat in your car, it would be very difficult and you have the benefit of side mirrors.

Anyone familiar with tracked vehicles knows that turning sharply requires the road wheels on the side of the turn to either stop or reverse as the road wheels on the opposite side accelerates. What may not be obvious is that the track once on the ground, doesn't move. The road wheels roll across it but the track itself is stationary until it is pushed forward by the road wheels.

The width of the track makes it highly unlikely that running over a dog would leave two intact parts. One half of the dog would have to be completely crushed.

It also seems suspicious that a driver could go on repeated joy rides or purposefully run into things. Less a risk to the track though that is certainly possible but there is sensitive equipment on the top of the vehicle, antennas, sights, TOW missile launcher, commander and if it was a newer vehicle, the commander's independent viewer, not to mention the main gun. Strange things are known to happen in a combat environment but I can't imagine that the vehicle commander or the unit commander would tolerate repeated misuse of the vehicle, especially any action that could damage its ability to engage.

In other words, BAE System's Head of Communications over the division than manufactures the Bradley IFV was never specifically asked to comment on the claims made in "Shock Troops" by TNR's legion of fact-checkers.

When he saw the claims made in "Shock Troops," he stated, by citing the physical properties of his company's vehicle, that it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, for the Bradley story told in "Shock Troops" to have been correct.

Once more, we have to question the accuracy and the integrity of The New Republic's editors, who ran an investigation apparently designed to provide merely cover instead of facts.

Update: I'll be on Hugh Hewitt's radio show tonight with Dean Barnett after Mark Steyn around 6:20-ish to talk about this, unless I get bumped or something.

Deceiver

In the New York Times this morning:

In an e-mail message, Mr. Foer said, "Thus far, we've been provided no evidence that contradicts our original statement, despite directly asking the military for any such evidence it might have," adding, "We hope the military will share what it has learned so that we can resolve this discrepancy."

And in the Washington Post:

But New Republic Editor Franklin Foer is standing his ground. "We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account," Foer said. The magazine granted anonymity to the other soldiers it cited.

And also at WaPo:

Foer said the New Republic had asked Maj. Steven Lamb, an Army spokesman, about the allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, and that Lamb had replied: "I have no knowledge of that." Before going incommunicado, Beauchamp "told us that he signed a statement that did not contradict his writings for the New Republic," Foer said.

"Thus far," he added, "we've been provided no evidence that contradicts our original statement, despite directly asking the military for any such evidence it might have."

In both newspapers, Foer issued the statement that "we've been provided no evidence that contradicts our original statement, despite directly asking the military for any such evidence it might have."

That, gentle readers, is a deception.

TNR senior editor Jason Zengerle has admitted to receiving an email from U.S. Army PAO Renee D. Russo that as far as the "burned woman" claim in "Shock Troops" goes, that:

"a couple of soldiers did say that [they] heard rumors about the incident, but nothing based on fact. More like an urban legand [sic]."

This was published at National Review Online's The Corner in an email from Zengerle to John Podhoretz.

I'd note further that Zengerle claims here that he got this information only after the editors at The New Republic posted their August 2 goal-post moving claim that Beauchamp changed both the date and location of the alleged verbal abuse (From FOB Falcon after Beauchamp had been scarred by the horrors of war, to Camp Beuhring, Kuwait, before he ever entered combat).

No one at TNR seems willing to address the obvious fact that for one to blame his callousness on being psychologically traumatized by the horrors of combat, it is necessary to first be in combat.

By shifting this critical goalpost, Beauchamp is admitting that not only had he not "seen the elephant," he hadn't even been to the zoo.

And probably much to Foer's chagrin, it isn't just the military that is disputing this claim.

Last night I posted an email from a contractor at Camp Arijan, Kuwait, where Beauchamp seems to have been suffering from "pre-traumatic stress disorder."

William "Big Country" Coughlin has been at Camp Arijan since February, and flatly denies that such a woman exists:

I've been in the Middle East since March of 2004. I started contracting with CACI and have worked for KBR as well. I have had one six month break 'in service' from October of 2006 to February of 2007. (I had to let the kids remember who Dad was and who was paying the bills!) I was in Baghdad at Camp Victory for 22 months, and I have been here on Arifjan since February of this year, and NEVER have I seen ANY female contractor with ANY sort of wounds described by PV2 Beauchamp. I work EXTENSIVELY with ALL aspects of personnel here on Arifjan and can say without a doubt that he's full of it. Also, for the record, in my experience, ANY and ALL contractors who are wounded in any way, shape or form are usually evacuated posthaste due to the liability issues involved with the companies that hired them. KBR and CACI both had in place strict rules regarding hostile action and evacuation of ANYONE who might have been wounded or otherwise "injured in line of duty" so as to cover themselves legally in case of potential lawsuits and otherwise.

The idea that a female contractor with a 'half melted face' beggars belief...

Let's look at the facts as we now know them:

• "Scott Thomas" published three separate stories in The New Republic.
• "Scott Thomas" made two claims in his second article, "Dead of Night," that were flatly false:
  1. That he saw a spent "square-backed" pistol cartridge. As a firearms "expert" who deals with literally dozens of different kinds of pistol, rifle, and shotgun ammunition on a near-daily basis, I flatly deny that such a thing exists. Please feel free to quote me on that.
  2. Beauchamp claims that the "square-backed" cartridge was proof that the Iraqi Police were involved in the shooting, because "The only shell casings that look like that belong to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police." Someone should tell that to the New York Times, military press releases, video-sharing web sites and other media outlets that would have shown that Glocks are very common in Iraq.
  3. Glocks are quite likely the most ubiquitous handgun in Iraq, carried officially or unofficially by those on all sides, and those on no side at all.
  4. A simple Google search would have disproved both of these claims made in "Dead of Night" within seconds or minutes.
  5. This strongly suggests that The New Republic did not even make a cursory attempt to fact-check "Dead of Night" before publication.
• Beauchamp's stories has been flatly denied by named U.S. Army PAO's Col. Steven Boylan (PAO to General Petraeus), LTC Andy Sams, Major Steven Lamb, Major Renee D. Russo, and Major Kirk Luedeke.
• Beauchamp's First Sergeant Hatley also flatly refuted the claims.
• Contractor William "Big Country" Coughlin has been at Camp Arijan since February, and flatly denies seeing such a woman.
• TNR senior editor Jason Zengerle admits to have received email from PAO Russo stating that this story was regarded as an urban legend or myth, but refuses to publish this contradictory account.
• TNR has not named a single witness, of any type. This included not only the soldiers they granted anonymity, but the civilian personnel they said they spoke with at the company who manufactures the Bradley IFV (BAE Systems), who are presumably not subject to a military gag order. TNR would not even disclose the name of the manufacturer, much less who their experts were, or precisely what they said.
• TNR has failed to cite or name the forensic experts they spoke with, reveal the questions they asked, or reveal their expert's responses.
• TNR has failed to cite or name the current or former solders they spoke with, what their qualifications were, reveal the questions they asked, or reveal their expert's responses.
• TNR has failed to cite or name the journalists they spoke with, explain why they are more qualified than TNR's own crack staff, reveal the questions they asked, or their expert's responses.
• TNR has utterly failed to address the obvious fact errors in "Dark of Night" that seems to prove their lack of fact-checking prior to the publication of that article.
• TNR has purposefully and willfully deceived their readers when they claimed "all of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication," as the various Glocks-in-Iraq-related links above abundantly prove beyond any shadow of a doubt.
• TNR did not present conflicting accounts from Major Luedeke or Major Lamb denying Beauchamp's claims as "urban legends of myths" and as "false".

Someone please explain to me why we should have any faith at all in what Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the other editors and reporters at The New Republic claim. They've proven they have not fact-checked articles they claim to have fact-checked prior to publication, they have not proved a single named credible source to support their charges, and they refuse to admit that their time-shifting, country-hopping "burned woman" claims have completely undermined the premise of the entire article.

I cannot think of a single reason that we should trust them, when all they seem to be trying to do is muddy the waters just enough that they might possibly escape with their careers intact.

Another Camp Arifjan Account

An email just in from a long-term contractor at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, where Scott Beauchamp says he verbally abused a female contractor, and the New Republic refuses to admit that they've been "Glassed" yet again:

I've been in the Middle East since March of 2004. I started contracting with CACI and have worked for KBR as well. I have had one six month break 'in service' from October of 2006 to February of 2007. (I had to let the kids remember who Dad was and who was paying the bills!) I was in Baghdad at Camp Victory for 22 months, and I have been here on Arifjan since February of this year, and NEVER have I seen ANY female contractor with ANY sort of wounds described by PV2 Beauchamp. I work EXTENSIVELY with ALL aspects of personnel here on Arifjan and can say without a doubt that he's full of it.

Also, for the record, in my experience, ANY and ALL contractors who are wounded in any way, shape or form are usually evacuated posthaste due to the liability issues involved with the companies that hired them. KBR and CACI both had in place strict rules regarding hostile action and evacuation of ANYONE who might have been wounded or otherwise "injured in line of duty" so as to cover themselves legally in case of potential lawsuits and otherwise.

The idea that a female contractor with a 'half melted face' beggars belief. If in fact there was such an unfortunate individual around, they would have been evacuated as soon as humanly possible. Hope this helps!

Best Regards

William "Big Country" Coughlin

We've had several weeks for the New Republic to provide something, anything, in the way of actual proof. They have failed, and stories such as this of William Coughlin add to an ever-expanding list of those who dispute their claims.

Suddenly Shrinking Sources

The editors of The New Republic seem to be sticking to their story... just quite a bit less of it:

We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, "I have no knowledge of that." He added, "If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own." When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, "We don't go into the details of how we conduct our investigations."

Just five days ago, TNR editors claimed far more support for Beauchamp's stories, stating that they spoke to all sorts of experts—none that they would cite by name or position, but they assured us they were experts all the same—in addition to the soldiers they interviewed, and of course, Beauchamp.

They seem to have dropped their experts, Beauchamp, and claims of fact-checking before publication, all of which were murky at best, and deceitful at worst.

Now, they seem to hang their ever-less-descriptive claims on an unknown number of "military personnel."

Showing poor-form, TNR editors seem to be laying the framework to claim that they could have proven their contentions, gosh-darn it, if that mean old military would just let them dig into the military investigation, Beauchamp's personnel records be damned.

Is there a moral to this story? Perhaps.

If you're going to stick to your guns, make sure they don't fire square-backed bullets.

It Didn't Have To Be This Way

Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard reports that according to an anonymous source close to the investigation, PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp has recanted:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

The military sources I contacted will neither confirm nor deny Goldfarb's report, citing Beauchamp's right to privacy and on-going administrative actions.

I think that in light of everything else we know about this unfolding scandal, however, that the statement is quite plausibly correct.

Sadly, if the editors of The New Republic had actually fact-checked Beauchamp's claims prior to "Shock Troops," obvious fact errors in his second post, "Dead of Night," should have alerted them to the fact that Beauchamp was not a reliable or accurate source of information.

It didn't have to be this way

In "Dead of Night," Beauchamp wrote a paragraph that contained two factual inaccuracies that should have been quite easy to discern with even a minimal attempt at fact checking, fact checking that it is obvious that The New Republic did not engage in.

Beauchamp wrote:

Someone reached down and picked a shell casing up off the ground. It was 9mm with a square back. Everything suddenly became clear. The only shell casings that look like that belong to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police.

Anyone with even minimal familiarity with firearms--and by "minimal," I mean anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to firearms in news stories, television programs, or movies--should know that there is no such thing as a "9mm with a square back." All modern cartridges in common use are tubular cases with a round base, or in Beauchamp's parlance, "back."

Here is an excellent photo of the base of a spent 9mm cartridge casing as captured by PAXcam:

Note that this is a fired case manufactured by CCI, and in the middle is the primer. In the center of the primer, lending to a "bull’s-eye" visual effect, is an indentation made by a standard firing pin. It is round in shape, due to the fact that most pistols in common use have rounded firing pins.

Taken in the context of the paragraph, it could be reasonably be concluded that what Beauchamp probably meant to say was that the indentation made on the primer was square or rectangular in shape, leading him to believe that the indentation was made by the squared striker used by Glock pistols. As a matter of fact, this is what I stated when I first addressed this "red flag" article on July 20.

Oddly enough, though, he returns to state "The only shell casings that look like that belong to Glocks." He is once again talking about the case itself, and not the mark on the primer.

In retrospect, as such shell casings do not exist as a clear matter of fact (and this is beyond dispute), I don't think it unreasonable to conclude that Scott Thomas Beauchamp never saw such a shell casing, and that this entire paragraph was fabricated based upon stories he probably heard from other soldiers, and then was inaccurately retold in this tale.

I could reasonably forgive The New Republic for missing this factual untruth, as it may simply be that they had no one on staff to vet this article that has even a passing familiarity with firearms.

The second factual error, however, was exceedingly easy to fact check, and would have exposed Beauchamp as being a fact-challenged writer well in advance of the publication of "Shock Troops."

This is the statement that should have sent the red flag:

And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police.

The obvious implication of this statement is that Scott Thomas Beauchamp was specifically implicating the Iraqi police in a shooting.

Such a implication demands at least a cursory attempt at fact-checking the claim that only the Iraqi police carry Glock pistols, and the easiest way to do that is to simply Google the words "Glock" and "Iraq."

If TNR's editors had taken even that minimal fact-checking step, they would have discovered articles from the New York Times, military press releases, video-sharing web sites and other media outlets that would have shown that Glocks are very common in Iraq. Glocks are quite likely the most ubiquitous handgun in Iraq, carried officially or unofficially by those on all sides, and those on no side at all. The New Republic utterly failed to fact-check an inflammatory charge made by Beauchamp that implicated the Iraqi police as the only group that could have fired that cartridge.

In one paragraph in his second article, Beauchamp should have been exposed as a questionable writer, whose articles needed to be thoroughly vetted before publication. Franklin Foer's editorial staff utterly failed to fact-check "Dead of Night." Had they caught these errors, it is possible that "Shock Troops" would have faced more scrutiny that it obviously did, and the article that now has caused such a firestorm, and may yet cost Foer and other TNR editors their jobs, may have never gone to publication.

Even after "Shock Troops" was published, it wasn't too late

After "Shock Troops" went to press and Michael Goldfarb called the account into question in "Fact or Fiction?, various bloggers and military officers starting to pick the story apart.

Franklin Foer should have admitted at that time that they were relying on the word of a soldier well-known to them, and that they did not see a need to fact-check the stories prior to publication as a result.

Instead, Foer announced that TNR would conduct an investigation, and that conversations with soldiers have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions." Foer was conveniently and self-servingly ignoring structural problems with the story, apparently convinced that fervent testimony has more use than facts.

Just four days later, TNR made the rather outlandish claim that "the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published," which is a blatant untruth.

As a matter of fact, it was obvious that fact-checking had not been completed prior to TNR's August 2 publication of the results of their investigation, as senior editor Jason Zingerle admitted yesterday at The Corner, when he stated that he did not receive word back from Kuwait-based PAO Major Renee D. Russo prior to publication of their self-styled vindication, and perhaps more damning, did not deem fit to print her statement that Beauchamp's story was a "likely urban legend or myth" once he had it.

Where do we go from here?

PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp is probably finished as a writer, and possibly finished as a soldier. At this point, if he has the common sense to keep his mouth shut, his role in this sad drama, at least in the public eye, should be over.

We in the blogosphere will move on at some point in the near future; as a matter of fact, so many of those who have defended Beauchamp and TNR on ideological grounds alone already have.

Others--myself included--will likely follow the incident for a while longer.

The New Republic's ordeal, however, is only just beginning.

TNR's owners, Canwest MediaWorks International and the TNR's editor-in-chief Martin Peretz have some tough decisions to make in the days ahead.

It seems obvious that TNR did not fact-check Beauchamp's stories before they were originally published, which is not by itself an unpardonable sin. What is far harder to justify is the decision of the editors to try to insist that they fact-checked Beauchamp's articles when they clearly did not. That, in my opinion, amounts to a lie.

Franklin Foer and other editors at The New Republic apparently tried to fool their readers with a combination of what they said and what they decided not to say, and abusing your readership in such a manner is one way to assure that an already shrinking readership will continue to collapse.

If The New Republic is to survive this latest scandal, it appears that that excising a significant portion of their editorial staff is the only real option.

Sadly, it the editors had only been forthright and admitted their mistakes early on, their futures at The New Republic--and perhaps even the future of the magazine itself--would not now be in doubt.

Further Confirmation: No Burned Woman Here

Adding to the debunking of The New Republic's new claim that "burned contractor" story took place in Kuwait before PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp deployed into a combat zone, U.S. Army Public Affairs Chief PAO for US ARCENT Kuwait LTC Andy Sams replies to an emailed inquiry about the claim:

Mr. Owens,

We have absolutely no record of this. MAJ Russo contacted Buerhing and our Area Support Group and they do not have anything either.

Sincerely,
LTC Andy Sams

This follows an earlier refutation from Kuwait-based U.S. Army PAO Renee D. Russo at Camp Arifjan, and the discovery of the fact that Jason Zengerle, Senior Editor of The New Republic knew in advance (update: this claim was unsupported. See correction here) of the publication of TNR's own investigation, which conveniently refused to address the fact that the U.S. Army has been unable to find any record of a burned female contractor at bases in Iraq or Kuwait, and considers the story "a urban legend or myth."

U.S. Army Col. Steven Bolyan, Public Affairs Officer for U.S. Army Commanding General in Iraq David Petraeus, responded to an inquiry of mine on August 3, and stated that:

An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the command and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas' platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.

Further email exchanges with U.S. Army PAO Major Steven Lamb with Multi National Division-Baghdad states that any administrative punishment handed down to PV-2 Beauchamp is a personnel matter, and therefore, will not be discussed publicly. Access to the findings of the Army investigation of Beauchamp's claims, where all soldiers in his platoon and company were interviewed and could not substantiate his claims, has not yet been determined.

As Col. Boylan has released the findings conclusions of the Army investigation of this matter to this blogger and the information is in the public domain, the Army is not planning a press release discussing the findings at this time. Instead, Major Lamb states that the PAO system is only responding to specific inquiries, and little more is expected to be released unless PV-2 Beauchamp decides to discuss the matter further, which he is free to do.

Commenters on this and other blogs have speculated that since PV-2 Beauchamp is receiving only administrative and not criminal punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for the allegations he made in The New Republic, that he has likely refuted his allegations when interviewed during the course of the Army investigation. I'd caution that this is idle speculation, and we have no evidence to support this theory.

The New Republic, which published a defense of the stories they published from Beauchamp that excluded contradictory statements from Major Russo and which failed to provide any documentation to support their claims that the Beauchamp stories were fact-checked before publication, and which failed to identify the experts that they say confirmed the plausibility of the claims by either name, organization, or qualifications, has taken a pre-scheduled vacation and is not apparently available for comment, even though the credibility of the editorial staff and the magazine's veracity are now in question.

TNR: Not Quite All the News that's Fit to Print

***Major Correction Below***

A funny thing happened on the way to The New Republic's verification/justification/re-investigation of the series of stories published in TNR by one Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

The editors of The New Republic declared:

... After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers...

It's quite interesting that in publishing the findings of an investigation in which the magazine's very reputation hangs in the balance, that The New Republic somehow forgot to cite the names and positions of the experts who corroborate their magazine's printed claims. Typically, the providing of such information is viewed as lending credibility to the organization attempting to defend itself.

Fortunately for The New Republic, I was able to find one of their experts, and the conversation I had with her was enlightening, to say the least.

As noted above, among the experts that TNR relied on were Army Public Affairs Officers, or PAOs.

Among the reasons The New Republic contacted Army PAOs was an attempt to verify this claim:

Beauchamp's essay consisted of three discrete anecdotes. In the first, Beauchamp recounted how he and a fellow soldier mocked a disfigured woman seated near them in a dining hall. Three soldiers with whom TNR has spoken have said they repeatedly saw the same facially disfigured woman. One was the soldier specifically mentioned in the Diarist. He told us: "We were really poking fun at her; it was just me and Scott, the day that I made that comment. We were pretty loud. She was sitting at the table behind me. We were at the end of the table. I believe that there were a few people a few feet to the right."

The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp's on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit's arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.

The New Republic posted the results of their investigation, including the passages cited above, late on the afternoon of August 2nd.

On August 3rd, I contacted Major Renee D. Russo, Third Army/USARCENT PAO at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, in an attempt to fact-check the new claim that the verbally assault on a female burn victim occurred at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, and not at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Iraq as he had claimed after his series of articles published by The New Republic was first disputed.

In a response posted on August 3rd, Major Russo stated:

Mr. Owens,

We have received other media queries on the alleged incident, but have
not been able to find anyone to back it up. There is not a police
report or complaint filed on this incident during that timeframe. Right now it is considered to be a Urban Legend or Myth.

I am still researching the incident and will have to get back with you
later with any new developments.

This statement was viewed by many as quite problematic for the credibility of The New Republic and Beauchamp; not only had they been put in a position where they felt compelled to retract a key element that established the tone of narrative in "Shock Troops"--and one that fatally undermined Beauchamp's premise that the horrors of combat had caused him psychological trauma, as he had not yet been to war--it also cast serious doubts on the claimed event having occurred at Camp Buehring as well, or perhaps at all.

After publishing the information above, that the Beauchamp story is "considered to be an urban legend or myth," I asked Major Russo if she had been contacted by Franklin Foer or any other reporter or editor from the New Republic attempting to verify their new Camp Buehring claim.

It seemed odd to me that with their magazine's reputation on the line, they would go to press without attempting to verify the story of Beauchamp's location shifting.

It so happens that Jason Zengerle, Senior Editor of The New Republic did contact Major Russo. What did Major Russo tell Editor Zengerle?

According to Major Russo:

I released the same information that I gave you. The process and answers are the same when dealing with media queries.

In other words, the Army PAO contacted by The New Republic was told by the PAO that the claim could not be verified, and that the burn victim story was regarded as an "urban legend or myth"... and The New Republic ran their story without disclosing this apparent contradiction.

Apparently, The New Republic decided for their readers and critics that they did not need to know that the military considered Beauchamp's claim an urban legend.

It makes one wonder if any of their other un-credited, unnamed people relayed a similar tale, only to have that news covered-up by the editors of The New Republic.

Update/Correction: Though he has not attempted to refute these claims directly with me, Jason Zegerle, senior editor at The New Republic, is disputing them via John Podhoretz at The Corner:

Zengerle has emailed me to say he actually received an communique about this from Maj. Renee Russo (yes, that's her real name), an Army public-affairs officer, the day after the Note was published rather than before. He also points out that Russo's email to him differs from other statements by Russo in that she told him "a couple of soldiers did say that [they] heard rumors about the incident, but nothing based on fact. More like an urban legand [sic]."

The public-affairs officer told Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee that "we have received other media queries on the alleged incident, but have not been able to find anyone to back it up. There is not a police report or complaint filed on this incident during that timeframe. Right now it is considered to be a Urban Legend or Myth." She did not mention the "couple of soldiers" who "did say that [they] heard rumors about the incident," but the repetition of the "urban legend" term kind of implies that.

Is Zengerle's claim that he didn't receive word from Russo until after the August 2 TNR investigation accurate?

I don't know that for a fact, and didn't know that for a fact when I published, and so I owe Jason Zengerle an apology.

It doesn't much matter if what he says is factually true; what matters is that I made an assumption that in my mind was obvious. It was, in retrospect, guided by what I thought was probably true based upon the way the magazine has and continues to act, instead of what I could support with the facts.

I apologize to Jason Zengerle, and I apologize to my readers for making that unsupported assumption.

That said... why did TNRdecide once again to publish before their fact-checking had been complete?

It's Official: Beauchamp's Claims Debunked by Army Internal Investigation

Col. Steven Boylan, Public Affairs Officer for U.S. Army Commanding General in Iraq David Petraeus, just emailed me the following in response to my request to confirm an earlier report that the U.S. Army's investigation into the claims made by PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp made in The New Republic had been completed.

He states:

To your question: Were there any truth to what was being said by Thomas?

Answer: An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the
command and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas' platoon and
company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.

As to what will happen to him?

Answer: As there is no evidence of criminal conduct, he is subject to
Administrative punishment as determined by his chain of command. Under
the various rules and regulations, administrative actions are not
releasable to the public by the military on what does or does not
happen.

Let's look at that once more: "members of Thomas' platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims."

Presumably thorough, in-person interviews of all of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, and Beauchamp's platoon within Alpha Company by military investigators, and not one of those soldiers could confirm Beauchamp's stories as told in The New Republic.

Note that the investigation didn't just stop by stating that the claims were uncorroborated; Col. Boylan states categorically that Beauchamp's allegations were false. Not a lot of wiggle room there.

It appears that the proverbial ball is now in The New Republic's court. It will be interesting to see what their next move will be.

Breaking: Kuwait-Based Army PAO Calls Beauchamp/New Republic Claim an "Urban Legend or Myth"

I've been silent on the New Republic's latest attempt to explain their editorial dereliction of editorial duties in the Scott Thomas Beauchamp collection of stories know as "Shock Troops" when those latest explanations surfaced yesterday, but that doesn't mean I've been disinterested.

Instead, I've been trying to run down some of the claims TNR has made by contacting experts for on-the-record discussions of Beauchamp's allegations... a level of transparency that Franklin Foer and The New Republic doesn't seem to want to provide.

One of the revisions to the Beauchamp story was the new claim that Beauchamp's verbal assault of a badly-burned female contractor for wounds he claimed were caused by an IED happened not in Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon in Iraq after Beauchamp's psyche had been scarred by the horrors of war, but instead occurred in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, before Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division had even deployed into combat.

This, of course, completely undermines the narrative Beauchamp was seeking to establish, and that Franklin Foer claimed to have fact-checked.

But beyond those tiny inaccuracies--you know, that the incident happened in the wrong country, and before he experienced the horrors of war, and not after--we are left to ask the obvious question: did Foer put any effort into checking to see if this new claim was any more accurate than Beauchamp's previous one?

I did.

This morning, I contact Major Renee D. Russo, Third Army USARCENT PAO in Kuwait, to ask her if she knew of "a female civilian contractor at Camp Buehring with severe facial burns, and if so, when" she was there.

Here is her emailed response, in full.

Mr. Owens,

We have received other media queries on the alleged incident, but have
not been able to find anyone to back it up. There is not a police
report or complaint filed on this incident during that timeframe. Right now it is considered to be a Urban Legend or Myth.

I am still researching the incident and will have to get back with you
later with any new developments.

As it stands now, the U.S. Army in Kuwait, like the U.S. Army in Iraq, is casting strong doubts on the veracity of Beauchamp's claims, stating that to the best they can determine at this time, the female contractor Beauchamp claims to have abused is either part of an "urban legend or myth."

I've also attempting to get verification form a total of five PAOs in Kuwait to see if they have any record of Franklin Foer or any other reporter or editor from The New Republic attempting to contact them prior to publishing the revised Camp Buehring claim to see if TNR made a good faith effort to verify that a contractor matching this woman's description was based in U.S. military bases in Kuwait.

Update: Both Bryan at Hot Air and Ace link to a post by Matt Sanchez from FOB Falcon, claiming that the military investigation into Beauchamp's stories was completed August 1, and that his claims have been:

"...refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false."

That quote comes from Sergeant First Class Robert Timmons, the acting public affairs official of the 4th IBCT, 1st ID.

I'll post any documentation as it becomes available.

Sanchez on Beauchamp

... from FOB Falcon itself.

A taste:

"Record Media Attention"

New York Times, O'Reilly Factor, ABC, CNN, Hot Air, in the past two weeks, Major Luedeke has dealt with more media inquiries over the Beauchamp controversy than any other subject in his entire career.

After several terse conversations, it was obvious soldiers at FOB Falcon took the events described in The New Republic very seriously. What was not so obvious was how seriously The New Republic editorial staff treated the matter. If the investigation proves the "Baghdad Diarist" stories to be false, what will The New Republic do? Will they retract the story? Will they reveal the process they used to vet the original information? Every soldier I spoke to realizes he or she is accountable for what is said and done while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Careers can be ruined because of scandals like the "Baghdad Diarist."

Getting a Fair Shake

"The Army works hard to get the soldier's story out to the media, unfortunately the media only wants to hear about bad things," said several soldiers who did not want to be identified. Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp is currently on FOB Falcon, but unavailable for comment. Once the official investigation started, the key issue was to protect the soldier's rights. Needless to say, The New Republic has no such responsibility.

I'll have a bit more to say about the subject--specifically, the dishonesty of some of those blogging about the unfolding Beauchchamp/New Republic scandal--in the very near future.

Scott Beauchamp's Problems Are Just Beginning

In addition to his short-lived career as a probable fabulist in The New Republic, Scott Thomas Beauchamp's blog has turned up a self-incriminating clear violation of operational security:

Another long day...cleaning an M16, landscaping, dipping Pro Masks (gas masks to civilians) into strange concotions, a little bit of office work...basically a hodpodge of menially tasks to keep me busy. We finally got official dates on Iraq deployment: May 15 - Our Bradleys get shipped to Kuwaite June 11- Advanced Units move in June 28 - Bravo Team, second squad, first platoon, Alpha Company, first battalion, 18th brigade, first infantry division (the breakdown of who I belong to) deploys. Were probably going to sit in Kuwaite for some unknown amount of time, and then move into Baghdad...

That post is over a year old and was obsoleted be a changed deployment schedule, but the facts are clear: Beauchamp clearly violated operational security regulations by posting the deployment schedule for his unit to his blog.

Major Kirk Luedeke, PAO for 4th IBCT, 1st ID at FOB Falcon, stated in response to my inquiry about this blog entry:

It most certainly is an OPSEC violation.

What the U.S. Army decides to do about this operational security violation will probably be kept under wraps until their investigation is complete, but I would not be surprised if Beauchamp soon finds himself charged with UCMJ violations.

Scott Thomas Comes Forward... And Answers Precisely Nothing

The New Republic blog The Plank is featuring an entry from disputed diarist Scott Thomas, who has now come forward as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and now the fun truly begins.

There are two parts to this entry: a preface from "the editors," and then a statement by Beauchamp himself. I'll now discuss each at length, and in turn.

The Editor's Preface
They state in full:

As we've noted in this space, some have questioned details that appeared in the Diarist "Shock Troops," published under the pseudonym Scott Thomas. According to Major Kirk Luedeke, a public affairs officer at Forward Operating Base Falcon, a formal military investigation has also been launched into the incidents described in the piece.

Although the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published, we have decided to go back and, to the extent possible, re-report every detail. This process takes considerable time, as the primary subjects are on another continent, with intermittent access to phones and email. Thus far we've found nothing to disprove the facts in the article; we will release the full results of our search when it is completed.

In the meantime, the author has requested that we publish the statement below. --The Editors

First, I think it is a bit unfair of TNR's editors to claim that "some" have questioned the details of Beauchamp's three dispatches, including many active-duty soldiers in Iraq, and several at FOB Falcon in specific.

The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of those who have written about this subject at all are overwhelming critical of TNR, their editors, the apparent failings of their editorial vetting process, and their seeming unwillingness to address the substantive criticisms leveled at the accuracy of the accounts Beauchamp related in these stories.

This criticism comes not only from without, but from within: scan the comments on"A Note to Readers" by Franklin Foer on July 20, "A Note to Readers" by the Editors on July 24, and a substantial number of commenters on today's "A Statement from Scott Thomas Beauchamp," and many of TNR's own subscribers continue to heavily criticize Beauchamp's stories and Franklin Foer's supposed vetting process... and with just cause.

It gives me no joy to say this, but say this I must: Franklin Foer and the editorial staff of The New Republic are inaccurate—purposefully, I suspect—when they claim that the article "Shock Troops" was, "rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published."

If they had done their due diligence as editors, they would have discovered that outside of Beauchamp himself, no other soldier stationed at FOB Falcon—including both named and anonymous sources stationed at FOB in the recent past and present—have ever seen the mysterious disfigured female contractor Beauchamp claims to have so brutally verbally assaulted.

No Time for Fact-Checking
How easy would it have been for Franklin Foer to do a cursory fact-check to even see if a contractor matching that description has been on base in recent memory?

About this hard:

Dear Major Luedeke,

My name is Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic.

I've recently been submitted a story that mentions the existence of a female contractor that is said to have significant facial burns and scarring as the apparent result of an IED attack in the past. She was not recently injured, and is apparently healthy, other than the scarring. I would like to simply check to see if someone matching that description is presently at FOB Falcon, to make sure that this description is correct.

Franklin Foer
The New Republic

I didn't have Major Luedke's email address when I started composing this email containing just one of the questions Franklin Foer should have asked before going to press with Beauchamp's now heavily disputed accounts.

It took my a grand total of 29 minutes to get Major Luedeke's email address, within which time I was able to compose this fictitious email of Foer's, and a very real email that I did send with far more probing questions that I'd hoped to have answered.

Unfortunately, Major Luedke responded just 38 minutes later to let me know he could not respond to my questions, citing the "active, formal investigation on the allegations Pvt. Scott Beauchamp has made in the New Republic."

57 minutes... apparently that was too much time for TNR to invest in fact-checking Beauchamp's claim.

Rigorous Editing and Fact-Checking?
Nor do I think there is any way Foer can claim that Beauchamp's two previous articles could have been "rigorously edited and fact-checked."

In fact, the editors don't make that claim, which is a smart move on their part: I think I have proven beyond a doubt that Foer and his team didn't so much as crack open a Web browser window in fact-checking Beauchamp's second post, Dead of Night, or they would have known that there are no such things as a square-back shell casing, and that Glock pistols are common among all strata of people in Iraq, and not just the Iraqi police.

That Franklin Foer "and the Editors" at The New Republic did not do their jobs as editors in vetting the stories submitted by Beauchamp before publication seems readily apparent.

If they had done their jobs as editors adequately, TNR would not have needed to launch an investigation which has now stretched over a week, nor would they find a need, as they've phrased it, "to the extent possible, re-report every detail." This strikes me as nothing less than an admission that they did not vet these stories prior to publication.

Franklin Foer seems to be well on his way towards being known as the "Mike Nifong of Journalism," rushing to push a narrative before the facts have been established, based solely on the unverified claims of a witness who has, shall we say, "credibility problems."

Editors can't be disbarred, but they can be replaced, and I've yet to hear a compelling explanation from Foer or The New Republic explaining why that should not occur.

And now on to the statement of Scott Thomas Beauchamp:

My Diarist, "Shock Troops," and the two other pieces I wrote for the New Republic have stirred more controversy than I could ever have anticipated. They were written under a pseudonym, because I wanted to write honestly about my experiences, without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, my pseudonym has caused confusion. And there seems to be one major way in which I can clarify the debate over my pieces: I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name.

I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier's view of events in Iraq.

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

Beauchamp claims he wants to "talk honestly about my experiences," and that his words "were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military."

Really?

A Purposeful Deception
In his alleged verbal assault on the IED-disfigured woman in the FOB Falcon dining facility (the one that no other soldier stationed at the base seems to have been able to see):

I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq. She wore an unrecognizable tan uniform, so I couldn't really tell whether she was a soldier or a civilian contractor. The thing that stood out about her, though, wasn't her strange uniform but the fact that nearly half her face was severely scarred. Or, rather, it had more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head. She was always alone, and I never saw her talk to anyone. Members of my platoon had seen her before but had never really acknowledged her. Then, on one especially crowded day in the chow hall, she sat down next to us.

Not just any day, but an especially crowded day. Beauchamp then goes on to describe how he and his friend verbally assaulted this disfigured woman:

...loud enough for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables.

According to his story Beauchamp and his friend loudly abused a burn victim during "one especially crowded day" in the chow hall, loud enough "for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables" to hear them, with no registered response from the surrounding soldiers, and that is not meant as a reflection of every soldier stationed there?

In his claim that a fellow soldier wore part of a child's rotting skull on his head, he indicts his fellow soldiers by stating:

As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter. No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.

Again, how is this not an assault on the integrity and basic humanity of his entire unit?

Once more, waxing poetic about the dog-murdering Bradley driver:

One particular day, he killed three dogs. He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road. A roar of laughter broke out over the radio. Another notch for the book. The second kill was a straight shot: A dog that was lying in the street and bathing in the sun didn't have enough time to get up and run away from the speeding Bradley. Its front half was completely severed from its rear, which was twitching wildly, and its head was still raised and smiling at the sun as if nothing had happened at all.

I didn't see the third kill, but I heard about it over the radio. Everyone was laughing, nearly rolling with laughter. I approached the private after the mission and asked him about it.
"So, you killed a few dogs today," I said skeptically.
"Hell yeah, I did. It's like hunting in Iraq!" he said, shaking with laughter.
"Did you run over dogs before the war, back in Indiana?" I asked him.
"No," he replied, and looked at me curiously. Almost as if the question itself was in poor taste.

Again, he implicates everyone in his unit as being a sadist or a sociopath, and that is not meant as a reflection of everyone around him?

Far from being accidental, I think that implicating every soldier he is serving with as an accomplice to sadism is his express intent in "Shock Troops," in every line of florid prose.

But he isn't quite done yet:

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq.

This might come as something of a shock to Private Beauchamp, but it doesn't take combat experience to spot suspicious stories based upon even a rudimentary knowledge of human nature.

Few men, military or not, are going to stand idly by while a couple of punks publicly berate a burn victim. Few men, military or not, are going to find a man prancing about with a rotting section of a long-dead child's skull on his head entertaining, and no matter how entertaining a single sociopath or even a pair find it to be, I strongly doubt than anyone wants to wear rotting flesh in the hot sun for his own amusement.

Nor does it take a rocket scientist to figure out that the commander, crew, and soldiers riding in a Bradley IFV would not appreciate being thrown about the cramped metallic interior, and would not allow such events to occur repeatedly, much less find themselves "nearly rolling with laughter" as a sadist allegedly repeats attempts at canine murder and smashes through the corners of buildings and market stalls.

No, I've never served in the military, but I've done several tours in upper-level undergraduate and graduate level writing courses including several creative fiction courses. In each one, peer review was a staple. The subject matter was different; but the lack of ability of some writers to tap into the humanity of others in any meaningful way is remarkably echoed here.

And Scott just for the record: civilian or not, I suspect I know far more about firearms than you do, but at the very least, I know that the square-backed 9mm pistol cartridges you claim to have found does not exist, and I also know that your claim that only Iraqi police have Glocks is likewise laughably false.

Initially reluctant
Beauchamp states:

I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join.

Interestingly enough, his blog entries seem to indicate a rather different mindset, from his stating that he feels "retarded for joining the army" to the statement he is "getting more liberal each day."

Beauchamp, at some point, established contact with Franklin Foer and The New Republic.

Beauchamp established a relationship with the magazine—one that, if Ace's tipster is correct, one that will end in a wedding to a TNR staffer this October—and decided to write articles for them.

Not only was Beauchamp willing to join an ideological battle; he had to go out of his way to join it.

Ain't That a Kick in the Head
Beauchamp closes:

That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

The laughable irony of all this? It was Beauchamp, and Beauchamp alone, that called his fellow soldiers' character, integrity, and basic humanity into question.

Before Beauchamp wrote these words and had them delivered to the New Republic for publication, the most prominent stories written about the 1st Infantry Division were quite positive.

Even though the author is finally revealed, Scott Thomas Beauchamp remains unconvincing as a probable fabulist, and Franklin Foer and The New Republic have thus far provided no evidence corroborating the claims that they have promised that they "rigorously edited and fact-checked."

They keep telling us that Beauchamp's story is true, and yet to date, they have utterly failed to come up with the facts that support their claims.

I suspect that the reason for this is that the facts simply aren't there.

Update: I screwed up and impropery cited Beachamp is belonging to the 4th ID a couple of paragraphs up. As he clearly states, he is a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

House of Glass

Incredible Claims
It was precisely one week ago yesterday that Michael Goldfarb focused the blogosphere on the third in a series of dispatches from a U.S. Army soldier in Iraq, posting under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas" in the magazine, The New Republic.

The name of third dispatch was "Shock Troops," (subscription apparently no longer required). In it, Thomas showed a callous and shocking disregard for a series of brutalities. These included a vicious verbal assault on a woman for disfiguring facial injuries she sustained as the result of an explosion of an improvised explosive device, or IED. This assault allegedly occurred in the dining facility at Forward Operating Base Falcon.

Thomas maintains that during the construction of a combat outpost southwest of Baghdad, soldiers constructing the outpost uncovered the bones of children, and a fellow soldier wore part of a skull he found that "...even had chunks of hair, which were stiff and matted down with dirt," on top of his head for the rest of the day and night, and even wore it under his helmet. Thomas further claims that:

No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.

The third story Thomas relays in "Shock Troops" was of a sadistic Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) driver who liked:

...to run things over. He took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs.

In his blog entry entitled "Fact or Fiction?," Goldfarb, asked the milblogging (military blogging) community to investigate the veracity of Thomas claims.

Doubters—including active duty U.S. Army soldiers currently or formerly posted at FOB Falcon and nearby areas—immediately began to deconstruct and dismiss Thomas' claims as probable works of fiction.

Soldiers stationed at FOB Falcon in the recent past and present deny ever seeing a burned woman such as Thomas described as being on the base. To date there has been no corroboration that a wounded woman matching this description has ever been at FOB Falcon.

Other soldiers have cost doubts on whether there was ever a grave full of children's remains uncovered while constructing a combat outpost southwest of Baghdad, though others find it plausible that an unmarked cemetery—apparently not all that uncommon in the area—may have been found and moved. Regardless of whether or not a cemetery may have been uncovered, other soldiers flatly deny that the close-fitting modern Army helmet has enough room for anything other than the wearer's own skull.

Soldiers and military vehicle specialists intimately familiar with Bradley IFVs have flatly stated that these vehicles cannot be driven as described in Thomas' account due to their construction and the limitations of the laws of physics.

In all three examples cited by Thomas in this third dispatch, the behavior of the actors and the apathy displayed by apparently dozens of soldiers during each atrocity has been heavily criticized by military veterans who flatly deny that such events could take place in a military culture where such inaction can be a criminal offense for those who refuse to report it or intervene.

Absolutely Fabulist
Elements of Thomas' two previous dispatches have also come under fire for being very unlikely.

In "War Bonds" (subscription required), Thomas claims that:

In Baghdad, a busted infrastructure has left entire neighborhoods navigable by vehicle only. The sector we soldiers patrol is known unaffectionately as "Little Venice" because of the dark brown rivers of sewage that backwash from broken pipes. The biggest fear in these parts isn't sniper fire or IEDs, but a flat tire that forces you to wade through the reeking fluids.

The brief amount of information allowed outside the New Republic subscriber firewall neglects to mention the specific kind of vehicle in question, but as only wheeled vehicles have tires, the description weeds out both Bradley IFVs and M1 Abrams tanks. That leaves us with HMMWVs (Humvees) and eight-wheeled Stryker Infantry Combat Vehicles (ICVs) as the two most-common wheeled vehicles used on patrols. Both of these vehicles classes are equipped with run-flat tires designed to go for miles before needing to be changed. That intentional design detail engendered into both vehicles would make changing a tire in a river of "reeking fluids" a very unlikely event.

Sandwiched between these two increasingly suspect stories was Thomas' second dispatch, one that I think should have sent up a red flag to the editors of The New Republic.

In "Dead of Night," (subscription required), Thomas made an embarrassing gaffe, followed by a potentially defamatory charge:

Someone reached down and picked a shell casing up off the ground. It was 9mm with a square back. Everything suddenly became clear. The only shell casings that look like that belongs to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police.

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of modern firearms knows that no pistol, rifle, submachine gun, or machine gun deployed in the world today uses ammunition "with a square back," in 9mm Parabellum, or in any other caliber. For feeding reliability, all currently used ammunition has tubular cases with a round rim. But past this wildly inaccurate of description of the recovered casing , Thomas went on to defame the Iraqi police, inaccurately stating as fact that, "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police."

That statement is so astoundingly incorrect as to be laughable. While Glocks are carried by many Iraqi police officers, Glocks are among the most common handguns in Iraq, easily found and purchased, and carried by those on each side of the conflict and Iraqi civilians alike.

A Pattern of Failed Editorial Oversight
All three stories sent to The New Republic by the soldier writing under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas" has elements that may have been worth questioning by an alert editor.

I honestly doubt that most editors would have known that many American wheeled combat vehicles have run flat tires, and so I can readily forgive them for not making that particular catch. I'm still left to wonder, however, if having a sharp editor with a military background might have been able to deflate Thomas as a fabulist in advance of the publication of his very first post.

But even without a military background, I'd expect for most editors to recognize the red flag present in his second post--when he makes the claim of a "square back" cartridge casing--just from watching the occasional episode of CSI. I'd also expect them to make at least a cursory attempt to check Thomas' inflammatory claim only the Iraqi police carry Glocks, and recognize all the political undertones that such a loaded charge implies.

It would have taken very little effort—no more than several minutes on Google with any variation of "iraq" and "glock" as the search terms—to note that these pistols are very popular and quite common in Iraq, being coveted by soldiers, police, militiamen, insurgents, criminal gangs, contractors, and civilians alike. These few brief moments un-taken would have shown Thomas' claim and implication to be flatly wrong.

The editors at The New Republic did not bother to take that time.

TNR editors apparently did not bother to challenge Thomas to provide support for the verbal assault he claims to have committed again a disfigured woman on FOB Falcon. There is no indication that they ever made the attempt to contact the Public Affairs Officer at FOB Falcon to see if such a woman even existed, even though I've found in my experience PAOs are typically far more likely to respond to requests from journalists—and even bloggers—in a more timely manner than would an infantry soldier on extended patrols.

TNR editors apparently failed to ask the common sense questions about the desecrated bodies claim. Why would any soldier subject himself to wearing a section of a human skull covered with rotting flesh both day and night? Even if the audience did find it uproariously funny, what sight gag remains entertaining for hour after hour? Why would any group, no matter how jaded, be "folding in half with laughter" at the sight of a man parading around wearing a portion of child's rotting skull as a cap? Could a soldier even get a piece of skull into an Army helmet and wear it?

There is no evidence that TNR saw fit to question any of this story at all.

Likewise, either through carelessness or laziness, Franklin Foer and his editorial staff never apparently made the common-sense connection that Bradley drivers do not have the latitude to joyride alone through the streets of Iraqi towns, randomly and sadistically destroying infrastructure, buildings, and stalls in crowded markets, while swerving recklessly to attack dogs. The unlikelihood of this story being true, again, apparently went unchallenged until after publication.

Picking Up The Pieces at The New Republic
So what becomes of Franklin Foer and the now twice-fooled New Republic? We'll know soon enough if there are any jobs lost as a result of this scandal, but I would opine that if dismissals do result, there is certainly enough justification for them.

One thing I would hope that TNR and other news organizations might now consider is hiring military veterans to vet stories coming out of combat zones for obvious inconsistencies. It would, at the very least, provide a more contextual, experienced layer of fact-checking to flag stories that may not be accurate.

And What of Scott Thomas?
The New Republic has an interesting decision to make regarding Scott Thomas. While I'd generally consider advising against "outing" lairs hidden by pseudonyms, Thomas apparently created stories that were little more than defamous fiction.

They owe Scott Thomas nothing for his treacherous deceit of both TNR and the U.S. Army. Publicly publishing who he is—or at least communicating his name to his commanders—might be the first step in recovering from this debacle.

It's time to pay the piper. I wonder how many people will share paying the bill.

Two Simple Questions for Franklin Foer

Yesterday, after days of withering criticism by named military officers, well-recognized combat journalists, and anonymous soldiers over the claims made by pseudonym-hidden "Scott Thomas," I suggested that the New Republic boil down their investigation to answering two simple questions:

• When did the verbal assault take place on the badly-burned woman at FOB Falcon?
• What was the name and location of the combat outpost where a mass grave was discovered?

This are eminently reasonable questions to ask at this time and I think most would agree that these questions should have been asked by Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, well before Thomas' claims were published in the first place.

The New Republic has had six days to investigate Thomas' disputed claims. I think the time has come for Franklin Foer to provide detailed answers.

Near Certainty

For his sake, I hope that Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, is merely suffering from unfortunate phrasing:

The magazine granted anonymity to the writer to keep him from being punished by his military superiors and to allow him to write candidly, Mr. Foer said. He said that he had met the writer and that he knows with “near certainty” that he is, in fact, a soldier.

Considering the explosive allegations made in Thomas' claims against both American soldiers and the Iraqi Police, Foer meant "absolute certainty," didn't he?

(h/t reader AMac)

Update: Yes, he did.

Doubting Thomas: Simple Questions for the New Republic

As time wears on, it seems increasingly unlikely that the writings of the pseudonym-shielded soldier "Scott Thomas" in the New Republic are anything other than works of macabre creative fiction.

"Thomas" has written three "dispatches" for the New Republic thus far, but once the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb began questioning the veracity of claims made in Thomas' third story, experienced military veterans and observers in the blogosphere who read the account began to doubt that these claims took place.

In his third dispatch, Thomas claimed that he and another soldier openly, verbally assaulted the appearance of a severely burned woman who had survived a prior attack by an improvised explosive device, or IED. The alleged attack took place at the dining facility of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon.

Presumably, this episode was meant to show the brutality and inhumanity of soldiers thoroughly desensitized to basic human decency and dignity because of the on-going violence of the Iraq War.

It is perhaps a "larger truth" that war does horrible things to the psyche of those who experience it. That some do and say horrible things as a direct or indirect result of their experiences during such turbulent circumstances, and sometimes for years afterward, is beyond dispute.

But though strong adverse reactions may indeed be true for some veterans who experience such brutality, it is by no means true for all.

It is also equally true that there seems to be very little concrete support for this specific allegation, and significant anecdotal evidence against it.

Major Kirk Luedeke, the Public Affairs Officer at FOB Falcon, categorically denies the presence of a woman with these unmistakable severe burns at the base. Another man who claims to be a soldier currently deployed to FOB Falcon states that:

In the 11 months I've been here I've never once seen a female contractor with a burned face. In a compact place like this with only one mess hall I or one of my guys would certainly have noticed someone like that. There are a few female contractors, I think maybe a dozen, but none fit the horrific description given in that article. Further, I've personally seen guys threatened with severe physical harm for making jokes of any kind about IED victims given the number of casualties all the units on this FOB have sustained. It is not a subject we take lightly.

Another claims:

I was based at Falcon last year for six months with the 101st Airborne. I never saw a woman who fits Thomas's description. That's not conclusive since I haven't been there for almost eight months.

Another soldier (an officer whose ID I have positively identified but whose name I do not have permission to publish) who has been at FOB Falcon since March describes the claims of Thomas as "total nonsense."

The New Republic must establish the following if they intend to continue claiming that this story of abuse by Thomas is true.

They must produce the year, month, and week that this attack took place, and make this time public knowledge.

If the New Republic cannot or will not release the time-frame during which the claimed assault took place, then there is no way for the military and agencies employing contractors at FOB Falcon to check their logs to prove or disprove the existence of a severely wounded soldier or contractor matching the description provided by Thomas.

The only reason for the New Republic not to release this information is to cover up the distinct possibility that Thomas' claims is false.

If the New Republic wants its readers to believe it is operating honestly and ethically, they cannot refuse to release the date of the alleged assault as precisely and as soon as possible.

Tuesday, July 24, while an arbitrary date, is a reasonable release date for this information, as the New Republic claims to have been investigating the claims made by Thomas for nearly a week, and they should have already acquired this information prior to the story's publication.

Another claim made by Thomas in his third dispatch to the New Republic is that his unit, while spending several weeks building a combat outpost southwest of Baghdad, uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of children, presumably from the time of Saddam Hussein's reign. Thomas then claims that an extended desecration of the bodies was perpetrated by a fellow soldier, without fellow soldiers, more senior enlisted men, of officers stepping in.

Returning once again to the blog of combat correspondent Matt Sanchez, we encounter the claim from FOB Falcon PAO Major Luedeke there were no mass graves uncovered during the construction of any combat outposts in the Rashid District, at any time.

This strong refutation is a definitive statement by a U.S. Army soldier, for the public record.

If the New Republic wishes to continue to stand behind this Thomas claim, they have no choice but to publicly publish the name and location of the combat outpost where the mass grave is supposed to exist.

I am fairly certain that if the New Republic were to make this information available, that the United States military would be very interested in exhuming those who fell at Saddam's brutal hands so that they could be given a proper, dignified burial. Further, I'm reasonably confident that the military would allow the media to document the exhumation and reburial... if such a mass grave exists.

Once again, the only plausible reason for the New Republic to not release the name of the combat outpost and the location of the mass grave in question, is to obfuscate whether or not Thomas is providing the New Republic with an accurate account, or a clever work of fiction.

As the New Republic should probably have already obtained the name of the base and the location of the alleged mass grave prior to publication, and would certainly ask for this information during the course of their investigation into Thomas' claims, a Tuesday, July 24 deadline to publish this information seems quite reasonable.

In my mind, Thomas' third claim, that a private took great joy in smashing a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) through curbs, concrete barriers, and market stalls, along with using the vehicle to deftly attack and kill dogs with the vehicle's tracks, is too absurd to even need further refutation.

While apparently a claim that the New Republic was willing to publish based upon Thomas' credibility, it ignores the fact that Bradley drivers are not left unattended to use their vehicles as destructive playthings as they see fit. A driver follows the orders of his vehicle commander, who must protect the lives of his crew and the soldiers in the fire team the IFV carries. Further, Bradley IFVs rarely, if ever, operate alone.

Bradleys typically operate in the support of larger American formations involving other Bradley IFVs, American Abrams tanks, Stryker armored vehicles, Humvees, other medium and heavy trucks, and squads, platoons, and companies of soldiers.

For Thomas' claims to be true regarding this driver, it would probably require that dozens of soldiers and their commanders repeatedly allow their lives to be needlessly risked and their mission subverted, so that one sadistic, destructive driver could attempt canine homicide.

Thomas' story would also require that the driver and vehicle perform at or beyond a Bradley IFV's upper limits of performance, stealth, vision, maneuverability, and structural strengths.

There is no evidence that the New Republic can produce to substantiate this claimed series of atrocities short of unedited videotaped footage showing the vehicle and driver performing these incredible acts.

And so we we are left asking the New Republic to answer two very basic, very simple questions that any journalism student should have been able to answer before publishing a similar story:

• When did the verbal assault take place on the badly-burned woman at FOB Falcon?
• What was the name and location of the combat outpost where a mass grave was discovered?

If the New Republic cannot or will not specifically answer these quite reasonable and very basic journalistic questions, then we will be forced to ask the magazine's senior editors and its publisher far more probing questions in the near future.

Update: Via Sitemeter, I noticed three different visitors from the New Republic dropped by early this afternoon in the span of half an hour. Obviously, they got the message, and it only remains to be seen whether or not they will provide a response.

The Previous Libel of the New Republic's Scott Thomas

Michael Goldfarb, who been leading the charge against suspicious and apparently false reporting by the New Republic's "Scott Thomas," posts some interesting content from a previous Thomas story:

Someone reached down and picked a shell casing up off the ground. It was 9mm with a square back. Everything suddenly became clear. The only shell casings that look like that belong to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police.

Many people have keyed in on the fact that no Glock pistol (or any modern mass-produced commercial or military firearm, for that matter) has ever fired a 9mm cartridge that had a square case rim as "Thomas" so poorlyand inaccurately wrote here. What Thomas was ineptly trying to describe is that the striker of Glock pistols can leaved a squared mark on the primer of a fired shell, as opposed to the more common rounded edges of marks of firing pins of most other pistols.

But far more damning than Thomas' incompetence is the demonstrably false assertion he made that "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police."

Glock pistols have been on the commercial market for decades, and are quite common worldwide. Glocks are a common and favored handgun on the Iraqi black market:

Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa, showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900. Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.

There are literally dozens of stories of Glock pistols being recovered from insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen. They have been captured in cordon-and-search operations, in targeted raids, in weapons caches, and of course, from the dead and wounded in violent confrontations.

American soldiers have them, as do civilian contractors from many nations in many lines of work. Ordinary Iraqi civilans (men and women) buy them to protect their families as well. Glock are quite likely the most ubiquious handgun in Iraq, carried officially or unofficially by those on all sides, and those on no side at all.

For "Scott Thomas" to claim that "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police" is laughable, and coming from someone who claims to be a United State soldier in Iraq who would certainly know that to be a false statement, is perhaps as clear an audacious a display of willfully libeling the Iraqi police as has been written in the American media.

A Matter of Lessening Credibility

I just sent the following to letters@tnr.com:

Dear The New Republic,

I just finished re-reading the claims made in Shock Troops, an article by "Scott Thomas" in The New Republic containing very inflammatory, very hard to believe claims.

TNR states that Thomas is a pseudonym for someone that claims to be a soldier operating in Iraq.

An active duty officer currently serving at Camp Falcon considers the Thomas stories "absolute nonsense." Highly-respected Iraq War combat journalist Michael Yon, who has embedded with the 1-4 Cav stationed at Camp Falcon, emailed me a while ago to state that the story "sounds like complete garbage."

But perhaps more problematic for TNR are the biological, medical, and forensic improbabilities--and what some experts consider absolute mechanical impossibilities--of the stories told by this author. I am forced to conclude that the claims made by "Scott Thomas" are either gross exaggerations or outright lies that TNR editors could have easily verified before publishing this inflammatory article if they were interested in publishing an account that meets assumed journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness, and editorial integrity.

Did New Republic editors ask for credible documentation from "Scott Thomas" to prove his identity as a present duty soldier or as a discharged veteran? If so, did they receive such documentation, and did New Republic editors make an attempt to verify the accuracy of that documentation? Considering not dissimilar and thoroughly debunked claims by fake Ranger and former member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Jesse MacBeth, this would be the only prudent first reaction upon reading such dramatic claims as those made by Thomas, especially considering TNR's own Stephen Glass problem.

Did it ever cross the minds of New Republic editors to determine the approximate date that the burned woman in the dining facility was verbally brutalized by Thomas? Did it ever occur to the New Republic to check with the military to see if such a person existed at that base, at that time, or ever?

Did the New Republic ask for verification of the mass grave discovered at the site of a combat outpost south of Baghdad, to see if the story was even possible? Did it not seem unlikely to NR editors from even the fictional television forensic dramas such as CSI, that Saddam-era mass graves would contain extremely decomposed bodies, not those like the author claimed were still rotting?

Did it ever occur to any New Republic editor to contact someone who is an expert on Bradley IFVs--say, the companies who build them, the soldiers that drive and them, etc--to see if Thomas claims of being able to attack dogs and structures in such a manner are even technically possible? Former Bradley drivers and other tracked vehicle personnel have all stated Thomas' claims verge from improbable to impossible.

But beyond merely fact-checking Thomas' series of suspicious and unlikely claims, where was an opposing viewpoint? Where is even the appearance of journalistic objectivity in this article?

To borrow a phrase from another periodical with apparently similar standards, "enquiring minds want to know."

Update: Does anyone know Richard Peters? Stationed at Camp Falcon from "15 Nov 05 - 18 Nov 06," I'd be willing to bet that if Iraq Veterans Against the War Member Peters has heard or witnessed the stories told by Thomas, then he'd probably be more than willing to share or confirm them.

A Series of Highly Incredible Events

Has the greed of the New Republic for stories depicting our nation's soldiers as depraved barbarians led to a downfall of what little credibility the rag still maintained?

Writing today at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb thinks he smells a rat in the writing of a man who claims to be a soldier currently serving in Iraq, discussing a series of brutal allegations concerning the alleged verbal abuse of a burn victim, the wearing of child's skull, and a dog-murdering Bradley IFV driver.

Let's look at few problems with each of the claims of "Scott Thomas," the pseudonym of man who authored the New Republic article.

The burn victim story.
First, it is all but impossible for a U.S. soldier not to be able to determine the uniform differences between an active-duty soldier's unifrom and a civilian contractor's apparel. Second, it is highly unlikely that a person as horribly burned as the one described would be medically fit for active duty. Third, if two soldiers began taunting a wounded IED survivor, I think it quite likely that other soldiers would quickly and violently end their display.

The child's skull story.
First, it is biologically improbable that a piece of a child's skull would fit on an adult human's head. Second, it biologically improbable that a Saddam-era mass grave in a hot desert country like Iraq would contain flesh that was still rotting. Third, it is highly unlikely that any military unit would stand for such behavior.

The dog-murdering Bradley IFV driver.
The most preposterous story of all. IFV drivers don't run willy-nilly around and over everything in their path, and have to answer to his own vehicle commander, the rest of the crew, and any infantrymen carried by the vehicle if they make erratic, dangerous, and perhaps life-threatening decisions such as those claimed here. There is also the fact that Bradley's cannot slip up on a dog and run him over as claimed, and I find it highly unlikely that this Bradley is so nimble that the driver could repeatedly hit, wound and kill dogs, or that he would be allowed to repeatedly hit stationary objects, without being removed from his position by his immediate commander, his platoon commander, his company commander, or others.

I think it is highly probable that each of these stories is false, and will be very interested to see if the New Republic can in anyway support these outlandish claims.