This story began breaking a few days ago, and once Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post began looking into it, it meant bad news for French reporter Alexis Debat, who was fired from his ABC News consultant position over its inability to confirm his PhD from the Sorbonne.
Debat was much more devious than America's poster-child for journalistic misconduct, Jayson Blair, as Kurtz reports:
Debat was prominently quoted last week by London's Sunday Times as saying the Pentagon had drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran.
Other "work" by Debat included:
Alexis Debat the terrorism consultant who put his name on a bogus interview with Barack Obama, now admits he never spoke to several other prominent people whose interviews were published in a French magazine under his byline.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan "has never spoken with Debat," said Tracy Locke, associate publisher of Penguin Press, which is bringing out Greenspan's memoir. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she never talked with Debat either. "Perhaps he cribbed it from somewhere," said her spokesman, Brendan Daly.
Debat, 35, also published interviews in Politique Internationale with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg without speaking to them, according to ABCNews.com.
The Chicago area's most prominent atheist, gadfly Rob Sherman, somehow got sucked into this mess.
From the Daily Herald:
ABC News Chief Investigative Reporter Brian Ross said he's worked with Debat as a consultant for years and was contacted this spring by someone who questioned his Sorbonne degree.
"We demanded his resignation back in June when someone told us he didn't have the Ph.D.," Ross said. "He couldn't prove it."
In the meantime, Debat provided Ross with a letter from "Rob Sherman" explaining their business relationship and providing an address -- 173 E. Taylor Road, Lombard.
A Daily Herald reporter visited Taylor Road on Thursday and could find no such address. Local postal officials said addresses on that street stop at 135 and pick up again at 213.
Sherman says he's the only prominent Rob Sherman living in the Chicago area, and produced an e-mail exchange with Debat where the Buffalo Grove resident confronts the Frenchman on a now debunked Obama interview that Sherman almost certainly didn't conduct.
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France 
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Illinois 
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