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Fall 2007 Bulletin
Truth of ‘Baghdad Diarist’ Stories Challenged
The New Republic has said it stands behind most of the claims made by its “Baghdad Diarist,” an American soldier in Iraq writing under a pseudonym, despite a proven mistake, military denials, and criticism from conservative bloggers.
Scott Thomas Beauchamp, writing under the name Scott Thomas, wrote three controversial columns for The New Republic which were published by the bi-weekly print magazine between the February 5 and July 23, 2007 issues. The first, “War Bonds,” described the author’s interaction with a local boy who wanted to move to California and liked to be called James Bond. Beauchamp reported that Shia militia or police cut off the boy’s tongue for talking with Americans too much.
In “Dead of Night” Beauchamp described finding a pack of dogs eating the brain out of a decaying corpse and blocking the street. The story reported that the dead man had been tortured and killed by a police officer to make a point. As the soldiers drove away, leaving the corpse in the street, they joked about the dead man being an organ donor.
The final story, “Shock Troops,” began with the description of a woman disfigured by an “improvised explosive device,” or IED. While the woman sat near the soldiers in the “chow hall” they ridiculed her until she ran out of the building. The story also described soldiers stumbling upon a mass grave and one “infamous ... joker” who wore a skull “like a crown.” It ended with the description of a “private who really enjoyed driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles” and made a game of running down dogs in the street.
The Weekly Standard, in a July 18 post on its Web site, challenged bloggers to research the claims of The New Republic’s “Baghdad Diarist.” By July 30, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol seemed convinced The New Republic columns were fabricated. “Its slander of American soldiers appears to be fiction presented as fact, behind a convenient screen of anonymity,” he wrote.
Kristol reported that “within a day” of the July 18 post on The Weekly Standard’s Web site “dozens of active duty soldiers and veterans had come forward to point out errors, implausibility, and indeed the well-nigh-impossibility” in Beauchamp’s stories. Kristol and Weekly Standard Online Editor Michael Goldfarb argued that it would be impossible for any soldier to maneuver a Bradley vehicle the way Beauchamp described, and that soldiers who had been at the base where the disfigured woman was alleged to be had never seen her.
On July 26 Beauchamp revealed his identity in a statement posted to The New Republic’s Web site. In addition to his real name, Beauchamp revealed that he is a private in the U.S. Army and the spouse of a New Republic staffer, Elspeth Reeve. “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,” the statement said.
After questions about the veracity of the claims surfaced, The New Republic launched an investigation of its own into the reports. According to a statement posted on August 2 to the magazine’s Web site, the report contained only one mistake. The camp where the soldiers had ridiculed the disfigured woman was Camp Buehring in Kuwait, not Forward Operating Base Falcon in Iraq.
“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.),” the online statement said.
“We care a lot about our journalistic reputation and integrity, and when people raise questions, I think we have to do everything in our power to make sure we get it right,” said New Republic editor Franklin Foer, in an interview with The New York Observer.
Foer also told The New York Times that the investigation had been hampered by the Army. After Beauchamp revealed his true identity, the Army took away Beauchamp’s phone and laptop computer and launched its own investigation into his claims. According to an August 8 story in the Times, the Army concluded all of Beauchamp’s stories were false.
“We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message to the Times. “The allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.”
Citing an anonymous source, The Weekly Standard reported August 7 that Beauchamp signed a sworn statement admitting that he fabricated the columns.
According to an October 24 report in The New York Observer, Matt Drudge briefly posted a document on the Web site www.drudgereport.com that purported to be a transcript of a September 6 telephone conversation in which Beauchamp refused to confirm or retract his columns. That conversation between Beauchamp and Foer took place in the presence of an Army official, The Washington Post reported October 25. Foer told the Post Beauchamp later confirmed his story in a private telephone conversation.
Foer told the Observer that the transcript must have come from the Army. He said The New Republic had made Freedom of Information Act requests for that transcript and other documents, but the Army denied the requests.
The scandal has led some commentators to call for reduced use of anonymous sources. Victor Davis Hanson noted in an August 16 story in the National Review that both Beauchamp and the soldiers who The New Republic said confirmed the stories refused to be named. Hanson argued that when sources refuse to be named it should raise questions about their credibility with editors.
“Anonymity on rare occasions may have a place in protecting whistleblowers or honest journalistic sources fearful of retaliation. But lately it is being misused in a variety of different contexts to destroy people and institutions – and as a way for authors of all sorts to avoid responsibility for what they write,” Hanson wrote.
In a September 7 editorial, The Providence (R.I.) Journal recounted the incident and called truth “the first casualty of war.” Like the National Review, editors called for reduced use of anonymous sources. “His anonymity should have raised eyebrows – and it did, though not among his editors, who spent much time stonewalling.”
The Providence Journal argued that the scandal undermined Beauchamp’s claim that war dehumanizes soldiers. “War is hell. That is a well-known fact. The New Republic’s ‘Baghdad Diarist’ had no need to fabricate facts if his goal was to prove what most people already know,” the editorial said.
- Michael Schoepf,
Silha Research Assistant
University of Minnesota | College of Liberal Arts | School of Journalism and Mass Communication
