User:Steven Andrew Miller/Scott Thomas Beauchamp

The Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy concerns the publication of a series of articles by Scott Thomas Beauchamp (b. 1983 East St. Louis, Illinois) - a private in the United States Army, serving in the Iraq War, and a member of Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

In the The New Republic, under the pen name "Scott Thomas", Beauchamp posted three entries about serving at FOB Falcon, Baghdad. These entries concerned misconduct by soliders, including Beauchamp, during the occupation of Iraq.

"Baghdad Diarist"
After the publication of an entry called "Shock Troops," The Weekly Standard and The National Review questioned the veracity of Beauchamp's claims. As the controversy continued, The Washington Post reported that Beauchamp did not provide documentation for his three published columns.

New Republic editor Franklin Foer disclosed that Beauchamp is married to Elspeth Reeve, a New Republic reporter and researcher, and that his relationship with Reeve was "part of the reason why we found him to be a credible writer." According to Foer, the magazine had planned to "re-report every detail", but their investigation was "short circuited" after the Army severed Beauchamp's communications with anyone overseas.

In a follow-up posting on The New Republic, Beauchamp objected to claims of falsification: "It's been maddening...to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join."

"Shock Troops"
In the diary entry, Beauchamp described how he ridiculed a woman whose face had been severely burned: "I love chicks that have been intimate with IEDs," Beauchamp quotes himself as saying, loudly, to his friends in the chow hall. "It really turns me on -- melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses," he recounted. "My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing...The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall."

Next, he described finding the remains of children in a mass grave uncovered while his unit constructed a combat outpost: "One private...found the top part of a human skull... As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter...No one was disgusted. Me included."

Finally, Beauchamp described another soldier "who only really enjoyed driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles because it gave him the opportunity to run things over. He took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs." Beauchamp described how the soldier killed three dogs in one day: "He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks."

New Republic investigation
In an August 2 statement, after an internal investigation, editors for The New Republic corroborated Beauchamp's claims, with one exception - that the conversation about the disfigured woman had occurred at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, not Iraq, an error for which The New Republic apologized to its readers. According to the statement, five members of Beauchamp's company had also confirmed the other aspects of Beauchamp's entry.

We...spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

The statement continued to say that the Army's investigation had impeded their own investigation, because communication with Beauchamp had been cut off, and "his fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters...If further substantive information comes to light, TNR will, of course, share it with you."

Military investigation
An Army investigation concluded the the allegations made by Beauchamp were false. Telling Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post that "His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."

A military official, who asked not to be identified because the probe is confidential, said no charges were filed against Beauchamp. Instead, the official said, the matter is being handled administratively, with Beauchamp punished by having his cellphone and laptop confiscated for an undetermined period.

A military official said Beauchamp had committed two violations, making false statements and not obtaining permission to publish the articles, which were written under the name Scott Thomas.

Kurtz also quoted Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, concerning the conflicting outcomes of the investigations by the military and The New Republic: There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there's one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests.

Dispute over alleged recantation
On August 6, 2007, the Weekly Standard's blog reported that Scott Thomas Beauchamp recanted under oath to Army investigators.

On August 7, The New Republic reported

"We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, 'I have no knowledge of that.' He added, 'If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own.' When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, 'We don't go into the details of how we conduct our investigations.'"

Michael Goldfarb and the Weekly Standard are standing by the story. The New York Times confirms that the Army has declared the Beauchamp's stories to be false.