The Army Responds
From Bill Roggio:
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 command’s 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.
Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/post_8.asp
I’m hoping the Army reconsiders and throws the UCMJ manual at the little turd. Concocting this type of absurd fiction is bad enough. Presenting it as fact in a national publication is vulgar and reprehensible. He falsely accused his fellow Soldiers of behavior bordering on atrocity and fed this shit into the ravenous mouths of the bellicose anti-war media.
In spite of being free to speak, Beauchamp is now tight-lipped about the whole affair. This can be interpreted in one of two ways; he knows the jig is up, or he’s biding his time until ETS or Chapter, which ever comes first, so he can opine the whole thing was a big bad Army cover up. By then just maybe, TNR or any other prospective ‘publisher’ will have grown tired of his bullshit and wiser about the consequences.
Ah, yes. And here it is:
Guy:
I have heard of Stephen Glass but not Fairbanks, until now. Beauchamp has an insider at TNR in the form of his wife, Elspeth Reeve, who probably lent further ‘creative license’ to the stories aside from influencing their publication. Together, they make quite a pair.
TNR has been honing this style since at least this time last year. Just google fairbanksing and see.
One of their assistant editors, while writing for The Examiner, editorily twisted around a New York Times story in a very Beauchampian way. Google up “fairbanksing Big Shame in a Small World”.
Howard Kurtz exposed the same author/editor in “Mr. Wrong” last year.
“brothercyst” had an experience with the same author at Yale. See “A Reporter Who Lies”.
Since TNR is not releasing who has worked on the Baghdad Diarist stories we can not tell for certain if Eve Fairbanks worked on anything related, but her work and this work bear some similarities. Perhps just a common style at TNR?