Debat Debate

Looks like it may not just be ABC News with egg on its face over the Alexis Debat story.

Earlier this week, a French magazine revealed that Mr. Debat’s recent interview with Barack Obama, that appeared in the respected French political journal Politique Internationale, was fabricated. Then today, ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that Mr. Debat—who from 2002 until this June was employed by Ross' news organization as a consultant on terrorism issues—had also published fake interviews in Politique Internationale with Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Alan Greenspan, and Kofi Annan.

But Media Mob has found that over the past several years, Mr. Debat has been quoted as a terrorism expert by a range of major media outlets, including Time, U.S. News and World Report, National Journal, the Associated Press, The Boston Herald, Newsday, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. Along the way, he has also penned opinion pieces for The Financial Times and The International Herald Tribune, and made guest appearances on PBS’s The News Hour with Jim Lehrer—most recently, in June 2006, opposite The New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning study of al Qaeda and 9/11, The Looming Tower.

As for ABC, Debat’s one-time employer, they haven’t yet explained how they got bamboozled into working with Debat for so long. But we’re guessing people are gonna be asking…