Debat and the neocons: The whole truthiness and nothing but the truthiness

Previously, I have argued that the controversial former ABC News journalist and "terror expert" Alexis Debat was no neocon. This assessment derived from his long-held allegiance to the CIA (which is despised by most neocons) and from his stated disagreements with Bush foreign policy. But Will Bunch has found an important tie between Debat and the neoconservative drive to "remake reality."

Those (allegedly) fake interviews conducted by Debat appeared in a French-language journal called Politique Internationale. The Iranian journalist Amir Taheri has a strong connection to this periodical -- indeed, from 2001 to 2006, he was listed as the editor.

In recent years, Taheri's work has been prominently promoted by Benador Associates, a New York based public-relations firm that specializes in Middle Eastern affairs with a roster of experts, according to its own Web site, that reads like a Who's Who of the neo-conservative movement, including Richard Perle and James Woolsey.

Taheri's articles appear frequently in Murdoch-owned publications like the New York Post, the Times of London (which front-paged colleague Debat's accusations of the pending U.S. bombing of Iran), and the Weekly Standard.

Taheri came to our notice before when he concocted a yarn about Jews in Iran being forced to wear identifying insignia, as in the days of Nazi Germany. Despite his known penchant for fake stories, Taheri was asked to brief Bush on Middle Eastern matters last year.

As noted above, Taheri works with Benador. This high-powered PR firm --"When you want war, call Benador!" -- is the brainchild of

Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers...

Benador has powerful media connections. I wonder if the firm helped Debat attain his ABC gig?

And while you mull over that possibility, consider this question: What led Debat to think that he could get away with publishing fake interviews with famous people? Neither Stephen Glass nor Jayson Blair dared to go so far. It's almost as though Debat wanted to get caught.

Then again, Debat's editor Taheri displayed a similar boldness when he printed that fable about Jews in Iran. Perhaps foreign-born news-fakers simply have a greater sense of bravado than do their wimpish Americano counterparts.

Alas, phony "scholarship" is rather common in France and other European nations. One of my former ladyfriends was a professional translator, and her colleagues loved to share stories about the citation of non-existent sources in French and German academic works. Back when my French was better, I once double-checked the source notes in an historical work originally published in that language, and found that the author had a tendency to refer to page 500-something of a book with fewer than 400 pages.

Most French academics and historians try to sidestep those pesky double-checkers by publishing without footnotes, bibliographies or indices. Their attitude seems to be: "How dare you question me? I am a scholar!" Debat affected a similar stance: "How dare you question me? I am a terror expert!" Reality is what you want it to be; c'est la victoire de la truthinesse.

Oh dear. I'm slamming the French, aren't I? Hope I don't sound like a neocon...