Suspect

Scroll down a few posts until you see the words "Is this fake?" I reproduce (as others have) a viral video purporting to show an interview with a former guard at Abu Ghraib. The guard confesses to atrocities worse than those documented by the infamous photographs.

The readership was divided in its assessment, with the majority voting "fake." If the majority is correct, as I suspect it is, who is the hoaxer and what are his motives? Correspondent Gavin Gatenby suggests one possibility.

Some of you may be familiar with a fellow by the name of Jesse Macbeth. To be frank, I had forgotten having written about this guy before. After a blogger passes the 3000th post, he finds himself re-reading earlier work with a genuine sense of discovery.

In brief: Macbeth made a name for himself by claiming to be an Army Ranger guilty of numerous atrocities. In interviews, he strongly associated himself with Iraq Veterans Against the War, even though that group wants nothing to do with him. He has also laid claim to various decorations (such as a Purple Heart) which he apparently never earned.

In the interview which sparked our present discussion, the lighting hides the features of the subject. Nevertheless, the shape of the head strongly suggests that Macbeth is the man.

So what has Jesse been up to lately? According to Wikipedia, he was booked last November in a domestic violence case, and offered a guilty plea just last month to the charge of making false statements to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The latter charge appears to stem from an application for VA benefits.

Last year, progressives paid him some attention. The right paid him much more, painting Macbeth as both a serial liar and a rising progressive superstar. If the reader will forgive a bit of self-quotation:

Michelle Malkin referred to MacBeth as "the latest cause celebre of the anti-war Left..." even though the name remained unfamiliar to nearly every actual member of the anti-war movement until the right-wingers started screaming about the man's perfidy. What inroads had he, in fact, made? His name appeared in a largely-ignored DU thread (even there, he was treated with some suspicion), and a Socialist website paid attention to his claims. MacBeth had associated himself with Iraq Veterans Against the War, and even used their logo in a video...

I would note that MacBeth first surfaced in 2004, in a completely separate incident in Arizona which served the purposes of right-wing propagandists:

In early March, a young veteran of the war in Iraq, Jesse MacBeth, 20 years old, was banned from Coffee Plantation, where he had he was enjoying a drink that he had bought. His crime? He was dressed in his informal military uniform, which had insignia on it, and he was told by the owner that he could not sit at the table dressed in it, that it was offensive.

MacBeth launched a very public "protest" of the store, whose manager denied that he had ever asked the man to leave. Obviously, the entire incident was staged to create the impression that America-hating "liberals" in a college town spit on American soldiers. (An unfounded rumor with a similar theme targeted Starbucks.)

Macbeth first got into trouble with the law in 2004, on a charge related to the use of a credit card. In my judgment, his legal troubles made him susceptible to manipulation.

Many lie, but few lie with no reason. Why would a guy like Macbeth, who appears to be a rather common sort with common motives, attempt to make himself an anti-war superstar?

By way of answer to that question, I would like to discuss an obscure bit of history.

Older readers may recall that, at the height of the Watergate scandal, Jack Anderson published a bizarre column about a man I will call Gordon N. According to Anderson, Gordon was asked by Nixon aide Charles Colson to destroy copies of incriminating Oval Office tapes in the CIA's possession.

Although various books cite this Anderson column, few researchers have bothered to retrieve the actual newsclip, which went on to tell an even stranger tale. GN had also offered Colson a plan designed to extricate Nixon from Watergate.

GN offered to hire a Nixon impersonator who would call an E. Howard Hunt impersonator and offer a bribe in exchange for silence. A recording of this call would be leaked to the media. Friendly pundits and other media assets would do everything they could to make sure that the entire Watergate controversy revolved around this single piece of fake evidence.

As soon as the nation's interest in the tape reached its highest point, the fake would be revealed. Nixon would then be able to claim that a hostile media had ginned up evidence in an to attempt to hound him from office.

Colson never acted upon this plan. Still, the principle seems sound enough. A similar stunt may explain the questioned Texas Air National Guard documents made available to Dan Rather.

False evidence of a real crime can make the crime itself seem false -- just as a viral video may be a dagger of the mind.