Controversial Baghdad Diarist Revealed

July 27, 2007 — -- The controversial "Baghdad Diarist" revealed himself to the world today … not that his identity was particularly difficult to prove.

Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private in Alpha Company, disclosed today that he is Scott Thomas, the soldier-blogger whose accounts of military life in Iraq horrified many with their depictions of fellow soldiers mocking a disfigured woman, running over dogs in Bradley Fighting Vehicles and playing with children's skulls at a mass grave.

Beauchamp decided to go public once his column stirred up controversy among conservative commentators and military bloggers who questioned the veracity of his stories.

Tuesday, an editor for the Weekly Standard and a former soldier who runs the BlackFive military blog both told ABCNEWS.com that they had discussed Beauchamp's stories with several members of his unit, none of whom could verify them. In addition, a military spokesman disputed several of Beauchamp's accounts.

This morning, Beauchamp issued a statement saying that he's "willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

"It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq … my character, my experiences and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name," Beauchamp said in the statement.

The magazine's editors said they have decided to go back and re-report every detail of Beauchamp's stories, despite the fact that they claim the stories were fully fact-checked before publication. "Thus far, we've found nothing to disprove the facts in the article; we will release the full results of our search when it is completed."

Franklin Foer, the editor of the New Republic, told ABCNEWS.com Tuesday: "We showed the stories to people who'd been embedded in Iraq to make sure that it all smelled good. We talked to one of the members of his unit to confirm the woman, a female contractor. We talked to a medic who'd served in Iraq to make sure that a woman could be in an FOB [forward operating base]. We spent a lot of time with him on the phone asking hard questions."

Asked about the revelation, Matthew Currier Burden, a former soldier who runs BlackFive, expressed his disappointment that Beauchamp was indeed in the military. But he remains skeptical of Beauchamp's accounts.

"Yep, unfortunately, he's a soldier," Burden wrote in an e-mail. "We had on Blackfive agreed that he was a soldier in A co., 1/18 infantry. I still think he's making stuff up."

Burden had expressed his doubts about Beauchamp's stories earlier in the week. "All the stories are too outrageous," he said. "Soldiers making fun of an IED [improvised explosive device] victim could be true, aiming at a dog and running over it in a Bradley could be true although it's near impossible. You've got to prove a negative, which is hard to do."

Burden spoke with several soldiers from the unit's base, FOB Falcon, and none of them had heard such stories, but he admitted that the disturbing accounts are possible.

"Nobody wants it to be true. There are some bad apples out there. … I'm cautious about saying it's complete bullsh--," he said.

Maj. Kirk Luedeke, the public affairs spokesman for FOB Falcon, disputed the accounts in a letter to the Weekly Standard. He said unequivocally that there was no mass grave discovered in the base's area of operations. "None. Zero. Zip."

Beauchamp also appears to be the author of a blog, Sir Real Scott Thomas, which depicts a sergeant instructing soldiers to shoot young Iraqi men:

"Well, better safe then sorry. Cap his a-- Leclaire."

"You sure sarge?"

"Well, im either right or wrong. And if I'm wrong im still right because i could have been right even though i was wrong."

It's not clear whether Beauchamp or members of his unit who participated in the incidents could face disciplinary actions.

In an e-mail, a military spokesman in Iraq said, "The issue is under investigation."