Big Scandal Brewing about ABC Consultant Ramping War w/Iran & Fake Interviews...

[KoKo]

(This was up at Buzzflash and links to Attywood. I didn't see it posted before on DU..but this sounds huge. It's a long article but apparently he reported fake interviews with Obama, Nancy Pelosi and others in a French Newspaper....plus he was apparently placing propaganda stories at ABC which it looks like he got from Nixon Center about the threat of Iran and the London Terrorist Bombing, etc.)

Link: and supposedly Laura Rozen's site War & Piece has even more updates on this:

------------
The disgraced ABC consultant and the push for war in Iran

See updates at bottom.

There's a huge new media scandal breaking this morning, and the headline so far -- that a much-used consultant to ABC News published a phony interview with Barak Obama -- may well be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The news about now ex-ABC consultant Alexis Debat (left) is just dribbling out, but I'm surprised people haven't been connecting the dots. This post will seek to connect a couple of them.

Simply put, Debat -- a former French defense official who now works at the (no, you can't make these things up) Nixon Center -- has also been a leading source in pounding the drumbeat for war in Iran, and directly linked to some bizarre stories -- reported on ABC's widely watched news shows, and nowhere else -- that either ratcheted up fears of terrorism or that could have stoked new tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Ironically, while Debat's alleged specialty is foreign affairs, it was a foray into American presidential politics that brought this budding scandal out into the open. This from today's article by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post:

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.

"I was scammed," Debat said. "I was very, very stupid. I made a huge mistake in signing that article and not checking his credentials."

But that's not the only red flag about Debat's credibility. It turns out that ABC News fired Debat as a consultant in June when it discovered that he had lied about earning a Ph.D. from the prestigious Sorbonne. According to the Post, ABC News also checked our Debat's work for the network and didn't find anything wrong. Today they say they'e checking again, and they should. Most recently, since ending his role with ABC, Debat helped raise a big international stir by pounding the drums for a U.S. attack on Iran.

The report came in the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, right after rumors swept through Washington that aides to Vice President Dick Cheney were planning to use friendly news outlets -- including several others owned by Murdoch -- to whip up popular opinion for attacking Iran.

much more at.........

http://www.attytood.com/2007/09/the_disgraced_abc_consultant_a.html

[simmonsj811]

1. k&r

:kick:

[KoKo]

2. Here's a snip and link to more of what Howie Kurtz said in his WaPo Article, re this:

ABC News checked out the stories Debat had worked on -- either as an on-air commentator, researcher or source -- and found no inaccuracies, network spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said. But in light of the Obama debacle, reported yesterday by ABC.com, a second review is underway. Debat had specialized in reports on terrorism and national security for the past six years.

"There are some very serious questions about exactly who he is and how he works," Schneider said. "We want nothing more than to get to the absolute bottom of that."

Debat, 35, whose doctoral thesis is posted on the Sorbonne's Web site, said he thought he had earned a PhD but that there was some "administrative issue" in which the degree "hadn't been registered correctly." He said he is suing the French university.

Debat's career seemed to be flourishing in the well-trafficked intersection of academia and the media. He directs the terrorism and national security program from a downtown office at the Nixon Center, set up by the former president shortly before his death. He wrote for its magazine, the National Interest, whose honorary chairman is Henry Kissinger.

The Nixon Center's executive director, Paul Saunders, said last night that Debat has resigned from the organization and the National Interest.

Debat also contributed regularly to Politique Internationale, a relationship, he said yesterday, that has probably ended. And he worked on high-profile stories for ABC, which hired him after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ross said Debat was "very, very knowledgeable" about al-Qaeda and such terror figures as Zacarias Moussaoui, and "his information was spot on. The stuff always checked out."

more........

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/12/AR2007091202333.html

[KoKo]

6. Here's snip and link to Laura Rozen's comments about this from her own investigating:

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006592.html#more

September 11, 2007

If Debat misrepresents and makes up interviews and university degrees, is ABC going to investigate his stories, including the one that the CIA was funding the Baluchis to attack the Tehran regime? Is this recent piece which fueled so much Iran war hysteria for which he was apparently the main source phony too? What's real and what's not? Highly disturbing. I personally tried to probe Debat by email about the Baluchi piece because it conflicted with so much other evidence and reporting and was a subject of great interest to me, after he offered on a Gulf oriented list we're on to answer questions about the piece, but did not get very far, as I remember, he mentioned it was sourced to Pakistani intelligence types. But it was a piece that stood out for me as a red flag. I expressed some skepticism about ABC's spin on a related piece here and here. My understanding is that ABC has severed ties with him since but it does not appear to have acted to investigate or retract the stories. (Read the Pascal Riche piece all the way through, it is truly shocking what he seemingly got away with, a Talented Mr. Ripley story that the American and British and French media have fallen for again and again.)

more at:

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006592.html#more

[Supersedeas]

30. Kurtz doesn't have the guts to tell the entire story

[xchrom]

3. the republick party wants to control history -- and this is just a cog in a big wheel.

[blogslut]

4. Big K&R

With pointy boots!

[calimary]

19. And six-inch stilettos!

K&R!

[KoKo]

20. Not much interest in this.......

Maybe it just needs time to flesh out...:shrug:

[Supersedeas]

5. the history of this war cannot be told without also revealing the Media accomplices

[Ghost in the Machine]

7. Wasn't it ABC who said there was "no one of any significance" on the Madam's list?

Those tools? ABC? They're a propaganda machine, just like the rest of the M$M...

The first step in a mass civil uprising needs to be the taking over of the airwaves. Target the TV stations in all major cities, then the radio stations...

[cui bono]

26. And wasn't it ABC that aired that horrid Path to 9/11.

Hm... sense a trend here?

[Ghost in the Machine]

39. Oh, I sense a trend alright.. and it doesn't take 'spidey sense' either...

That's why we have to stay vigilant in our fight for freedom. It's up to us to try to educate the ones who don't know better and keep debunking the propaganda. The sheep are many, as are the wolves, & the shepherds are few.

I wish I could do more to get the word out. I send in LTTEs and speak out everywhere I go. A lot of my regular customers at my restaurant come to me now when they have questions about this war, or this criminal regime. I've educated them about PNAC *and* the BFEE, and I smile inside when I see the looks of astonishment on their faces. I never talk down to anyone when I'm trying to reach them. I use printed out facts and references. I'm trying to win them over to our side, not send them off thinking "if Dems are assholes like that, why join them?"

[Richard Steele]

8. K&R

[peacetalksforall]

9. I'm a little spooked - I just went to the net(s) to do a search on this guy

- I'm amazed at the number of paragraphs I read which, word for word, struck a chord in my memory - I read them on DU. With no memory of ever hearing his name before or noticing it - I remembered the words. We have been given a big load of stuff he wrote - write here on DU - links from blogs and abc and other mews sources. Some could say that he deserves being well paid for the volume. One could also say that some of the stuff I read referred to him in the third person. Is that his style? Someone should ask him if he is a lone journalist of if he has a staff - (at the Penatagon or in Israel?)

[KoKo]

10. Agree....that's what creeped me out about

this very strange story. It's hard to wrap my head around...but the snips rang bells that I'd read what he'd written before, here and elsewhere. I don't get how he could have been doing this and not been caught out before. Plus...what about Brian Ross that many kept saying was a great investigative reporter. Is he? or is he part of it. And who else might be doing this for other networks or the cables.

I hope we hear more about this in the next few days from more web sites. I'm surprised TPM and Media Matters aren't all over this. :shrug:

[peacetalksforall]

12. 1992 - Hurricane Andrew - Ross was the hero. Became famous.

Then he was part of one of those ABC flim-flam jobs.

I never watch ABC so haven't watched how this Debat employment has evolved.

I think someone in Miami may know some more.

Yo ho ho - Disney and the other ABC owner-corporations sure are loved at the WH.

From Rove and Libbys' lips to ABC.

But, I'm willing to bet that FOX is called first.

Unless... unless - ABC is the fist link in the chain from the barons TO the WH?

Speculation is fun with these people.

And then - next week - there will be another new book with the entire answer laid out.

I think this guy, Debat, falling is going to be a big one.

But, more complicated than Craig so it won't be followed by the masses, even it's followed a little by the press.

[Truth2Tell]

13. Been obvious (to me) for some time that Ross is part of it. n/t

[KoKo]

15. Don't watch ABC...but didn't Ross break the Foley Thing that helped us with 06 Midterms?

and didn't he at least get rid of one of the Big Bush Bots with the DC Madam II's revelations?

So..is Ross an "equal opportunist?"

[Truth2Tell]

24. He may well be an equal opportunity sensationalist

But for the last six months or so "the Blotter," his ABC News Web site, has been all terrorist hype all the time. Constant drumbeat - with echos of all the usual on-line right wing disinfo themes.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/

edit: spelling

[KittyWampus]

11. WTF?

[AzDar]

14. Goddamn.

:kick:

[KoKo]

16. Hopefully we will see this story break Big Time...after Bush's Lates Marketing Campaign

takes a break. But, then...since they are "going for broke with pedal to metal" we might never see it surface againg for all it's ambiguities...and oddness.

[UpInArms]

17. thanks for the post Koko!

if not for you, I would have missed this entirely!

:thumbsup:

[KoKo]

18. It's such a strange story...it's still hard to know what to make of it...

and I wonder why so few sites besides "Buzzflash" with it's links are talking about it.

Let's hope it's that "delay" factor where the stories are screened and vetted before they break into mainstream and that our liberal sites will do a great job with this after the Breaking Sites threw it out there. :shrug:

[me b zola]

21. k&r

[KoKo]

22. ...

[slipslidingaway]

23. Not sure what to make of this story, but here are a few other

topics/stories where he has been involved...FWIW.

:shrug:

Speaking on the riots in France, summer 2005

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/july-dec05/france_11-07.html


American Passports Found on Bodies of Al Qaeda Fighters in Somalia
January 05, 2007 2:46 PM

Alexis Debat Reports:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/american_passpo.html


Wednesday, February 08, 2006
More on Hamas victory and democracy promotion

http://globalparadigms.blogspot.com/2006_02_08_archive.html

"Alexis Debat, a French terrorism expert and I gave short presentations and Nikolas Gvosdev, the editor of The National Interest and Senior Fellow for Strategic Studies at the Nixon Center moderated the discussion that followed which was off-the-record."

[L. Coyote]

25. Like I've been writing, there is`a lot of Iraq smoke screen to detract from real issues

like the War on Iraq, hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, trillions of dollars in debts to pay over decades to come, lies, torture, more lies, ....

Is this part of a propaganda operation to move the focus off the "actuality" into the imagined realm. Probably! And, is the "big scandal" just more of the same?

[autorank]

27. KoKo, you're hot!

btw, did I ever tell you about my PhD from the Sorbonne;) and Legion of Honor;)

Maybe I should put it on my sig line. I do so admire the French, they should give me
those honorary.

:evilgrin:

Great story. Fox whoring around with a fake academic who is also a fake newzie...doesn't
get much better than that.

[tocqueville]

28. The Talented Mr Debat

Debat is a well-known "expert" in Washington with an impressive resume: He serves as a fellow at the Nixon Center, a conservative think tank; he collaborates with The National Interest; a quarterly journal of international affairs; he has been consultant to ABC News for years. He belongs to the "expert market" of Washington DC. He appears credible, and the media often quotes him on matters pertaining to terrorism and Islam. . . .

Alexis Debat is a strange character, with a resume that changes depending on who he is talking to. Once he claimed to our colleague Guillemette Faure, a reporter for Le Figaro, that he got his PhD in political science from Edenvale University, in Great Britain, a university which proved to be a a fraud.

Another time, he said that he received his PhD from the University of Sorbonne. But that's not true either. "He manufactured his doctorate. I had the document which he manufactured in my hands," says André Kaspi, a professor of North American history at the Sorbonne. Debat does not deny a "conflict" with the Sorbonne, but refuses to elaborate.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/052857.php

see here too

If Debat misrepresents and makes up interviews and university degrees, is ABC going to investigate his stories, including the one that the CIA was funding the Baluchis to attack the Tehran regime? Is this recent piece which fueled so much Iran war hysteria for which he was apparently the main source phony too? What's real and what's not? Highly disturbing. I personally tried to probe Debat by email about the Baluchi piece because it conflicted with so much other evidence and reporting and was a subject of great interest to me, after he offered on a Gulf oriented list we're on to answer questions about the piece, but did not get very far, as I remember, he mentioned it was sourced to Pakistani intelligence types. But it was a piece that stood out for me as a red flag. I expressed some skepticism about ABC's spin on a related piece here and here. My understanding is that ABC has severed ties with him since but it does not appear to have acted to investigate or retract the stories. (Read the Pascal Riche piece all the way through, it is truly shocking what he seemingly got away with, a Talented Mr. Ripley story that the American and British and French media have fallen for again and again.)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006592.html

I checked some French sites and they present the same story :

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/depeches/0,14-0,39-32356939@7-58,0.html

[KoKo]

32. ...a "Talented Mr. Ripley," sure sounds like it from the addtional reports.

There have been a good number of CEO's, Reporters and assorted others who have gained power who've been found not to have the credentials they said. Doesn't anyone check this stuff anymore? Or, is it convenient not to. Sounds like in Mr. Debat's case he was doing such "important reporting" it wasn't necessary to do thorough background checks. :sarcasm:

[redqueen]

33. Odd that ABC hasn't retracted anything... n/t

[stevedeshazer]

29. His bio page at the Homeland Security Policy Institute has been scrubbed

http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/fellows/Debat_bio.htm

From Google cache: http://72.14.253.104/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.gwumc.edu%2Fhspi%2Ffellows%2FDebat_bio.htm

Very interesting.

[nuxvomica]

31. ABC already has a black eye for that bs 9/11 movie

Now it looks like that wasn't an isolated incident.

[ananda]

34. SARS.. definitely contagious.

Smirking American Rahrah Syndrome!

[coco77]

35. How low can they go...

these people are desperate,there are so many people on the Bush payroll.

[Imagevision]

36. How can this be? - How could bush get us this far is a more intriguing question...

they do still have control over the msm, they merely allow guys like Olberman, and Mathews to go unleashed to give the element of balanced reporting, opinions etc. ABC story will probably go unreported like 2004 Ohio voting fraud even though they actually had video to back up that story.

[bhumikag]

37. wait and see

why would anyone work for Nixon Center is beyond me!!

about drumming up support for iran war..i think fox news is also in this(just my observation!!)..o'reilly has been talking about this for long and he even tried to push around ron paul on this

in weeks to come i think fox and it's "sister" networks in europe and australia will start writing more on iran and it's "terrorism" link(much more than what they are doing now)

some publications like this one are already predicting another 9/11 that would happen because of iran..apparently war mongering madness is a communicable disease


bhumika
politics desk,the newsroom

[lala_rawraw]

38. um, under this admin...

the cia runs propaganda ops... the rest is all military based. agency is not running assets in Iran, the DOD is and those assets are not just in Iran either, as we all well know.

[cui bono]

40. Clinton, Pelosi, Greenspan, Bloomberg, Gates, Annan Also Say Interviews 'Fakes'

Clinton, Pelosi, Greenspan, Bloomberg, Gates, Annan Also Say Interviews 'Fakes'

September 13, 2007 11:37 AM

Brian Ross Reports:

Pelosigreenspa_mn 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.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/pelosi-greenspa.html

[FatDave]

41. Almost seems like his sole purpose was the spread of disinformation

And he showed up around 2001. Curiouser and curiouser.

[KoKo]

42. ...