Posted on 09/15/2007 12:38:28 AM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
PARIS (AP) — The French Defence Ministry on Friday debunked the credentials of a former ABC News consultant who claimed to have worked as an adviser to the ministry, saying the man was just an intern for five months.
Alexis Debat, who was fired by the TV network last year, quit a Washington think tank on Wednesday after being accused of faking an interview with Barack Obama.
Previously, he had been identified in stories by a range of media, including The Associated Press, as a former French Defence Ministry official or analyst. The National Interest, an online publication he wrote for, identified him as a "former adviser to the French minister of Defence on Transatlantic affairs."
But the ministry said Friday that the only trace it could find of Debat in its records was a five-month internship at a ministry advisory office in 2000 and one month of military service.
Debat never served in an office directly under the defence minister and there was no sign that he worked as an official in other branches of the military, said Col. Patrick Chanliau, a Defence Ministry spokesman.
"He was never a functionary," he said. "In 2000, he did five months as an intern at the Delegation for Strategic Affairs. There you go. That's all I have."
That office is under the direct authority of the defence minister, advising on geopolitical and strategic affairs.
Ministry interns are often young students "who come here to discover a profession or to complement a course they are following," he said. "To go from that to presenting oneself as an adviser to the minister . . . There is no such thing as intern adviser to the minister."
ABC News fired Debat because he could not authenticate his academic credentials. He is now at the centre of a new dispute over apparently faked interviews with Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and others.
Debat quit the Nixon Center in Washington after Obama's representatives said an interview with the senator appearing under Debat's byline in the French magazine Politique Internationale never happened. The interview quoted the Democratic presidential candidate as saying the Iraq war was "a defeat for America."
Debat acknowledged to the AP on Thursday that he never conducted any of the interviews published under his byline.
The AP quoted Debat in stories in 2001 and 2004.
He was quoted in 2001, identified as a former French Defence Ministry analyst, a former French Defence Ministry official and as a U.S. desk officer for the Defence Ministry until 2000.
In one story, he said the United States and France had increased their intelligence-sharing.
He was the main source for another story in which he said police had found a notebook with codes that could help decipher messages within Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
He was identified as a terrorism consultant in a 2004 story about CIA Director George Tenet's resignation. He was quoted as saying Tenet had a reputation as a yes-man for President Bush.
The AP has launched a review of the stories in which he provided information.
Haa Ha.
ping
Funny how the AP’s headline says he is a former ABC consultant, but the article sure says a lot about him being a former AP consultant.
He must’ve been a graduate of Dan Rather’s School of Journalism...
I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED I TELLS YA!!!!!!!
ok, not really.
Yep. "Fake, but Accurate"....
Well, to be fair, even that limited experience would still give him much more military knowledge than the average media minion.
ABC News fired Debat because he could not authenticate his academic credentials.... He is now at the centre of a new dispute over apparently faked BUT ACCURATE interviews with Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and others.
dan rather school of journalism!!!
I’d fake it with Pelosi too.
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