Liberal ABC News Reporters Faked Interviews with Democrats Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Others for Over Five Years

ABC Reopens Investigation, Again Wary of a Reporter
By BILL CARTER
ABC News said yesterday that it would begin a second investigation into more than five years of news reports that relied on information from a consultant, Alexis Debat, who has been revealed to be the author of faked interviews.
The interviews, published in a French journal, were said to have been done with prominent political figures, including former President Bill Clinton and Senator Barack Obama.
“We going at this again with a vengeance,” said Brian Ross, the ABC correspondent who was involved in most of the reports that used information provided by Mr. Debat, whom ABC hired in November 2001.
ABC fired Mr. Debat in June after discovering that his claims of having earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne were false. The network then investigated the reports Mr. Debat had participated in and found “they absolutely checked out,” Mr. Ross said.
Now, however, ABC is taking a further look into information Mr. Debat provided. Mr. Ross said ABC had dispatched an investigator to Pakistan to go over details of reports in which Mr. Debat provided information. At the same time, The Associated Press reported last night that it also was investigating three news reports that relied on Mr. Debat for information.
The renewed scrutiny has been driven by revelations about Mr. Debat after a French news Web site, Rue 89, reported this week that an interview supposedly with Senator Obama was entirely made up. Mr. Debat, who could not be reached last night, sent an e-mail message to ABC yesterday saying the allegations against him “are slanderous.”
He told The Washington Post Wednesday that an intermediary had spoken with Mr. Obama. But representatives for Mr. Obama denied that he spoke with anyone connected to Mr. Debat.
Subsequently, other figures whose interviews appeared under Mr. Debat’s byline in the French magazine Politique Internationale have come forward to say they never spoke to him. These included Mr. Clinton; Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman; Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft; and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Since his departure from ABC News in June, Mr. Debat has continued to work as a senior fellow for national security and terrorism at the Nixon Center in Washington. He was quoted as a knowledgeable source in an article in The Times of London this month, saying that American military forces were planning attacks that would demolish “the entire Iranian military.” He has also been quoted by many newspapers and news services.
Guillemette Faure, a reporter for Rue 89, said doubts had been raised about an ABC report, with Mr. Debat as a source, during the buildup to the Iraq war. The report said that Uday Hussein, a son of Saddam Hussein, had ordered two French ballet students at gunpoint to have sex in public.
Mr. Ross said in a telephone interview yesterday that ABC News had spoken with a representative of the ballet group involved in the incident and was satisfied that it had happened and that Mr. Debat’s information about terrorist activities in Europe and Pakistan had always been supported by other sources.
Mr. Ross said that French officials had alerted ABC in late May that Mr. Debat’s academic credentials might not be valid and that ABC fired him promptly after verifying the information.
But Pascal Riche, the editor of Rue 89, said yesterday that ABC did not hear questions about Mr. Debat’s credibility first from French officials in May. He said “whistle-blowers inside ABC” had long expressed doubts about Mr. Debat. Mr. Riche said Rue 89 would have further reporting on Mr. Debat soon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/business/media/14abc.html?ei=5090&en=be5a9a7a14d54c02&ex=1347422400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Liberal ABC told Ex-ABC consultant said to fake interviews with Democrats Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and others

Ex-ABC consultant said to fake interview
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer Thu Sep 13, 7:53 PM ET
A former ABC News consultant fired last year because he couldn’t authenticate academic credentials is at the center of a new dispute over apparently faked interviews with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates and others.
The consultant, Alexis Debat, quit the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank, on Wednesday after Obama’s representatives claimed an interview with the senator appearing under Debat’s byline in the French magazine Politique Internationale never took place. The interview quoted the Democratic presidential candidate as saying the Iraq war was “a defeat for America.”
Pelosi, Gates, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg all said they never gave interviews that appeared in the magazine under Debat’s byline, ABC News’ Web site, the Blotter, reported on Thursday.
Debat acknowledged to The Associated Press on Thursday that he never conducted any of the interviews published under his byline. He said he hired another reporter, Rob Sherman, to conduct the Obama interview. He said he translated the remarks and sent them in to the French journal, which published it under Debat’s byline.
No one immediately responded to a message left at what Debat said was Sherman’s phone number.
In the other cases, Debat said he drafted questions for the political figures for Politique Internationale. The magazine sent back “answers” that he translated, wrote an introduction for and sent back with his byline, he said.
“They do some weird things over there,” he said.
Politique Internationale editor and political scientist Patrick Wajsman founded the magazine nearly 30 years ago. He called Debat “a grand liar” and said he had hired a lawyer to pursue “all possible measures” against him.
“We are the first victims. I am falling from the moon,” he told The AP. “We were betrayed.”
He noted that Debat worked for the journal for four years, starting after he was already working for ABC and the Nixon Center. “How could we possibly doubt someone who worked for ABC, who worked for the Nixon Center? How could we possibly doubt someone from several thousand kilometers away?” he asked.
When a user clicks on articles under Debat’s byline on the Politique Internationale Web site, a blank screen appears.
The Blotter quoted a U.N. official as saying Wajsman was told in 2005 that the interview with Annan was faked. A second “interview” with Annan posted earlier this year instead included portions of a speech he had made at Princeton University passed off as an interview, the Web site said.
Debat had been a consultant at ABC News since shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, reporting on terrorism issues, said Brian Ross, chief of ABC News’ investigative unit.
In May, ABC was contacted by the French embassy and told to check on Debat’s credentials. Debat had claimed to have a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, but ABC could not verify this. He was fired and ABC began looking back at Debat’s work to see if anything was false. They found no evidence of incorrect material, said Ross, adding that most of the information Debat provided was verified by others.
Debat said his Ph.D had been held up on technicalities and that he had completed all the required work. He said he believed someone in the French government was out to get him because they didn’t like his work on ABC.
Debat has been extensively quoted by other media, including the AP, which included his remarks in three stories.
He was identified as a terrorism consultant in a 2004 story about CIA Director George Tenet’s resignation and quoted as saying Tenet had a reputation as a yes-man for President Bush.
And he was quoted twice in 2001, identified as a former French Defense Ministry analyst. In one story, he said the United States and France has increased their intelligence-sharing. He was the main source for the second story, in which he said police had found a notebook with codes that could help decipher messages within Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
The AP has started investigating whether the information provided by Debat was accurate. A duty officer at the Defense Ministry could not immediately confirm Thursday night whether Debat had worked for the ministry.
Since the revelations about the fabricated interviews, ABC News also is going back again to check over Debat’s work, sending people to Pakistan and Europe, Ross said.
“We’re working hard to make sure that everything he was involved in that we reported stands up,” Ross said, “and if it doesn’t, we’ll report it immediately.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_en_tv/fake_interviews_3