Scott Beauchamp

As The Observer wrote yesterday, one of the main reasons New Republic editor Franklin Foer decided to end the magazine's effort to verify Scott Beauchamp's "Baghdad Diarist" columns and issue a retraction was Mr. Foer's belief that Mr. Beauchamp—who was stationed in Iraq until last month—was not fully cooperating with TNR's investigation, and sometimes appeared uninterested in defending himself.

In a phone interview with The Observer Friday, Mr. Beauchamp's wife, former TNR reporter-researcher Elspeth Reeve, shed a bit more light on that aspect of the controversy.

In early August, the web site of The Weekly Standard, citing a military source close to the army's internal investigation, reported that Mr. Beauchamp had signed a sworn statement recanting much of what he'd described in his TNR pieces. TNR's editors were understandably troubled by the news, and set about trying to verify it—a task made much more difficult by the fact that, from late July until September, the Army would not allow Mr. Beauchamp to speak to TNR.  read more »

The editors of The New Republic have posted a statement saying that Scott Beauchamp, the U.S. Army private whose unsigned TNR dispatches from Iraq came under scrutiny this summer, did not admit to fabricating any parts of his stories--contrary to an article posted on The Drudge Report Wednesday.

The Drudge Report posted several documents pertaining to the Army's investigation into the Beauchamp affair, including a transcript of telephone conversation from Sept. 6 in which Mr. Beauchamp refuses to confirm that his stories were true when asked by TNR editor Franklin Foer and executive editor Peter Scoblic.

That transcript--which, along with Drudge's article and the other documents, were removed from The Drudge Report after a few hours--sparked an uproar among TNR's conservative critics, who said the editors of the magazine should have informed their readers of the conversation.  read more »

Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, said in an interview that the documents Matt Drudge posted this afternoon—and removed several hours later without explanation—could have only come from the Army.

Mr. Foer said he called TNR’s contact there, Major Kirk Luedeke, as soon as the documents appeared on Drudge’s Web site. According to Mr. Foer, Major Luedeke told him that the Army was “investigating the source of the leak,” though they did not explicitly take responsibility for it.

"It’s maddening to see the Army selectively leak to the Drudge Report things that we’ve been trying to obtain from them through Freedom of Information Act requests,” Mr. Foer said. “This fits a pattern in this case where the army has leaked a lot of stuff to right wing blogs.”

Mr. Foer said TNR had been trying since July to get access to some of the documents Mr. Drudge posted, but that the Army had not cooperated.

Among these was the Army’s final report on its investigation into Mr. Beauchamp’s TNR pieces. The report concludes that portions of those pieces had been “completely fabricated."

UPDATE: In an e-mail to the Media Mob, Major Luedeke of the 4th Brigade Public Affairs office said, “All I can tell you is that the leak did not originate with this office, and that the Army is looking into who is responsible. That process is being handled at levels above this brigade, however."

E-mails to Mr. Drudge have not been returned.