Above The Fold, Pg. A1? I Doubt It.

How much damage did this one liar do? And will this story be trumpeted as much as this liar's claims were?

Marine's claims fade in spotlight

Author concedes he never saw the alleged atrocities

By RON HARRIS
St. Louis Post-dispatch

WASHINGTON - For more than a year, Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed Iraqi civilians.

Last month, Massey's book, Kill! Kill! Kill!, was released in France.

News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.

He wasn't.

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated — according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and reporters from the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.