BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield with a brief update on "Rathergate." Having been a high-profile fall guy in CBS News' dubious reporting on the President's National Guard service, former anchor Dan Rather filed a $70-million lawsuit Wednesday. He claims to have been unfairly maligned by his former network, which he claims was pressured by the White House to make an example of him. The controversial report, which aired three years ago this month, hinged on an apparently forged memo presented by CBS News as a smoking gun.

Now another major network has been embarrassed by a fraudulent document, this one the extravagantly padded resume of an ABC News consultant. The man is Alexis Debat. Among other fabrications, he claimed to be a Ph.D. - and isn't - and to have interviewed Barack Obama - but didn't.

Laura Rozen of Mother Jones Magazine has helped expose Debat, and she says that getting discovered didn't cause Debat to 'fess up.
LAURA ROZEN:
He says that in the case of Barack Obama, he met a guy named Rob Sherman from the Chicago area, that he paid Rob Sherman 500 dollars to conduct the interview with Barack Obama for him, that Rob Sherman sent him the interview and Debat translated it into French and sent that into Politique Internationale.

I called Rob Sherman in Chicago, who has an AM radio show there, and he does not know Debat. He has indeed interviewed Barack Obama. And I and others have been unable to locate the Rob Sherman that Debat provided us the telephone number and address for.
BOB GARFIELD:
Rue 89¸ the French publication, discovered that his credential, his Ph.D., which he puts on his business card and puts in all of his emails and so forth, was conferred by an institution - which one was it?
LAURA ROZEN:
Well, he'd told different things to different people, but he had put in writing to a scholar at a think tank in town that he had a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne. When the story initially broke, he claimed that it was an administrative mistake on his part, that he had done all the work and just not realized that he hadn't got the actual stamp. But, in fact, he would have to have known that he was nowhere near completing his Ph.D. from the Sorbonne.

This reporter for ABC had been hearing there was this annotated CV in town, obtained the CV and gave it to her boss at ABC, and that is what led to someone walking into Brian Ross' office at ABC, shutting the door and saying, we have a Debat problem.
BOB GARFIELD:
Now, there is one story that is particularly sensitive, and that concerns Pakistani militants who were involved in cross-border skirmishes with Iran. What was the essence of that story that ABC reported and to what extent was Debat in the middle of it?
LAURA ROZEN:
In the spring, ABC reported, largely based on Debat's reporting from Pakistan, that the U.S. has been encouraging and advising this Iranian ethnic minority group, called the Jundullah, to attack the Tehran regime.

Another producer who went for another network to talk to the actual leader of the group that Debat claimed was getting U.S. support - the leader is a guy named Rigi - and Rigi claims that he has gotten no such support, and, in fact, he tried to lodge a complaint against ABC when he heard about this report.

And, in fact, today I obtained a letter that the Iranian foreign affairs ministry sent to the United Nations after this ABC report saying it's proof that the U.S. is trying to destabilize the Iranian regime.
BOB GARFIELD:
I want to get back to Debat's resume, how all of these various organizations, from the Nixon Center to ABC News to even the Pentagon, for whom he was working on a consulting basis, could be so taken in. It turns out that they all say the same thing - they were all impressed with his resume, and it never occurred to them [LAUGHS] that anyone with so many affiliations could be a fraud.
LAURA ROZEN:
I think it was those other affiliations more than his actual paper CV itself that gave people confidence that he was who he says he was. In fact, you know, someone in his world emailed me today that, you know, in our world you just don't misrepresent your credentials because one assumes you're going to get caught.

I will also say that it's possible that Debat faked some things and told the truth on others. And what happens when your credibility gets hurt like this is that it is very hard to know what's real and what's not.
BOB GARFIELD:
Now, you've actually talked to this guy. What does he have to say?
LAURA ROZEN:
I haven't talked to him by phone since this whole thing broke. We've had a couple of encounters in the past in this small world. He's been pretty adamant in his written communications to this policy community that we operate in that the only thing he did wrong was getting this alleged Rob Sherman to do the Barak interview and by misunderstanding what his CV is. In other words, he still wants there to be plausible deniability.
BOB GARFIELD:
Getting less plausible all the time, I'd say. Laura, thank you so much for joining us.
LAURA ROZEN:
Thank you so much.
BOB GARFIELD:
Laura Rozen is the national security correspondent for Mother Jones Magazine.