Posted on 09/13/2007 5:21:53 AM PDT by abb
A former consultant to ABC's investigative unit admitted yesterday that he put his name on a purported interview with Barack Obama that he never conducted.
Alexis Debat, a former French defense official who now works at the Nixon Center, published the interview in the French magazine Politique Internationale. He said he had hired a freelance journalist to conduct the interview, in which the Democratic presidential candidate supposedly said that Iraq was "already a defeat for America" that has "wasted thousands of lives." Debat said he had been unable to locate the intermediary, and the Obama campaign says no such interview took place.
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"I was scammed," Debat said. "I was very, very stupid. I made a huge mistake in signing that article and not checking his credentials."
ABC demanded Debat's resignation in June after discovering that he did not have a PhD from the Sorbonne, as he claims on his r?sum?.
"I was angry with him because it called into question, of course, everything he had done," said Brian Ross, ABC's chief investigative reporter, who worked closely with Debat.
snip
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
apologies to everyone for the messed up post. the whole story is at the link.
ping
” Debat said he had been unable to locate the intermediary, and the Obama campaign says no such interview took place. “
Obama’s found a way to pander to the moonbats with deniability....
Pretty darned slick......
No PhD from Sorbonne, but he does however have a Master’s from the Dan Rather School of Journalism.............Fake but accurate.............
ABC credibility = zero.
This is hilarious. He commits fraud and claims he is the one who was the victim. ABC didn't check him out, he didn't check his sources out, did anyone check anything out?
"I was angry with him because it called into question, of course, everything he had done," said Brian Ross, ABC's chief investigative reporter, who worked closely with Debat.
This also calls into question everything that ABC has done.
( But of course, their fraudulence comes from who and 'what' they are. And is as natural for them as the yolk is to an egg.)
The NY Slimes, or the Compost or ABCNNBCBS should immediately put this creative liar, er reporter on retainer.
Then have him lie about GW, the Iraq War and Republicans.
a p.s. of sorts. . .meantime, the New York Times deserves handily; an avalance of cancelations from it’s subscribers - those who consider themselves on the ‘higher side’ of the media debate, for sure. Their not only printing the ‘Moveon’ attack against General Petraeus; but the fact that ‘Moveon.’ was able to get their page at a huge discount. The whole scenario, totally disgusting and disgraceful.
forged but accurate!!!
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/pelosi-greenspa.html
Clinton, Pelosi, Greenspan, Bloomberg, Gates, Annan Also Say Interviews ‘Fakes’
September 13, 2007 11:37 AM
Brian Ross Reports:
Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have added their names to the list of people who say they were the subjects of fake interviews published in a French foreign affairs journal under the name of Alexis Debat, a former ABC News consultant.
“This guy is just sick,” said Patrick Wajsman, the editor of the magazine, Politique Internationale, a prestigious publication that has been in business for 29 years. Wajsman said he was removing all articles with Debat’s byline from the magazine’s Web site.
Yesterday, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said a supposed interview with Debat, published in the June 2007 edition of Politique Internationale, never occurred and was a fabrication.
The allegation was first reported by another French magazine, Rue 89.
Today, spokespeople for Clinton, Pelosi, Bloomberg, Gates, Greenspan and Annan told the Blotter on ABCNews.com that interviews of them under Debat’s name in the magazine also never took place.
In fact, Stephane Dujarric, the deputy communications director for the U.N. secretary-general, said he called the fabricated interview to the attention of the editor of the magazine, Patrick Wajsman, in June 2005.
“I told him that if he went ahead with it, we would denounce the interview as a fake,” the U.N. official said. “This was not some obscure guy. This was the sitting secretary-general of the U.N., and the magazine was told it was a fake,” he said.
Despite that, Debat continued for the next two years to be cited as the author of interviews with a range of prominent U.S. public officials in Politique Internationale.
The U.N. official said a second supposed interview of Annan by Debat, posted earlier this year by Politique Internationale, was actually portions of a speech the secretary-general had given at Princeton University.
The magazine editor, Wajsman, told ABCNews.com he thought the problem with the Annan interview, one of the first he submitted, was “maybe a technical one” or a misunderstanding.
Wajsman said he had referred the matter to his lawyer for possible action against Debat.
“I was a victim of this man. I had no reason to suspect someone like him could lie,” Wajsman said.
Asked why he continued to use Debat after the warning from the U.N., Wajsman said, “Everybody can be trusted once. He seemed to be well-connected in Washington, working for ABC and the Nixon center.”
Debat was a consultant on terrorism for ABC News for five years until this June, when ABC News officials demanded his resignation after he failed to satisfy questions raised about his academic credentials.
ABC News says it is reviewing all stories in which Debat has played a role.
“We investigated and could not establish his academic credentials,” said ABC News senior vice president Jeffrey Schneider. Schneider said ABC News began a review of all of his work as a consultant but that so far, “our initial review has found that the information he provided ABC News checked out and was backed up by other sources.”
Debat, who resigned yesterday as a senior fellow on counterterrorism issues at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank, told ABCNews.com his only mistake was to allow his name to be put on interviews done by others.
Debat admitted he did not conduct interviews with Clinton, Pelosi, Bloomberg, Gates, Greenspan or Annan.
“The magazine asked me to send questions. They got the answers, and then I edited and translated them and put my name on it,” Debat said.
The magazine editor, Wajsman, said, “That is an outright lie.”
Debat said he had “no memory” of being contacted by U.N. officials about the Annan interview.
Debat told ABCNews.com yesterday the interview of Sen. Obama was not a fake but conducted for him by a freelance journalist named Rob Sherman in Chicago.
Debat says he believes he was “scammed” by Sherman, who he says he paid $500 to conduct an interview with the senator.
Repeated calls to a number for Sherman provided by Debat have gone unanswered.
Incredible.
So was he suffering from a severe case pf BDS.
Make that, “Dingbat,” instead.
“I was scammed,” Debat said. “I was very, very stupid. I made a huge mistake in signing that article and not checking his credentials.”
ABC demanded Debat’s resignation in June after discovering that he did not have a PhD from the Sorbonne, as he claims on his resume.
The reality is obvious. He didn’t pay anyone for that work. He wasn’t scammed. But he scammed ABC with his lie over his education.
He simply can’t be trusted and is, in my opinion, a complete fraud.
It says loads about the intelligence of Brian Ross that he could have worked so much with him for so long.
Brian, ABC, and all other’s involved will hopefully get what they deserve—a fade to black.
Darn, I was hoping to find out how “Illuminated Reflections on the Potomac Style Section” would mean the death of the dinofishwraps. Oh wait, I know already... snoooze...
So no one caught this since 2005 - why? Because no one cares about these fake interviews! They’re all a finger puppet show!
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