...so I apologize if my comments are redundant to what's come before; I haven't had time to read through all the pages.

My own initial reaction was that:

1) Boylan did not write the original email;

2) His "interesting email" comment is swaggering military macho bluster which, when translated into "normal civilian discourse" would read as, "This is worth looking into, and I am somewhat alarmed; thank you for bringing this to my attention. (In other words, Boylan emulates the kind of Steve McQueen affect in which one is supposed to look at a burning skyscraper and growl, "Interesting situation.") Hence the "What I'm doing about it doesn't concern you": He's running around trying to find the spammer or plug the leak, but of course he can't be civil about it because he must push Greenwald's face in the dirt for even asking.

But now I'm not so sure, after the IP address imbroglio. But why would somebody go to all this trouble just to tell Greenwald off in this fashion? I just don't get it. (My characterization stands, however.)

That Ip Address is owned by:

Whois Record

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

OrgID: IANA

Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330

City: Marina del Rey

StateProv: CA

PostalCode: 90292-6695

Country: US

NetRange: 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255

CIDR: 10.0.0.0/8

NetName: RESERVED-10

NetHandle: NET-10-0-0-0-1

Parent:

NetType: IANA Special Use

NameServer: BLACKHOLE-1.IANA.ORG

NameServer: BLACKHOLE-2.IANA.ORG

Comment: This block is reserved for special purposes.

Comment: Please see RFC 1918 for additional information.

Comment:

RegDate:

Updated: 2002-09-12

OrgAbuseHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN

OrgAbuseName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number

OrgAbusePhone: +1-310-301-5820

OrgAbuseEmail: Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com

OrgTechHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN

OrgTechName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number

OrgTechPhone: +1-310-301-5820

OrgTechEmail: Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com

----------

You're Welcome. :)

.

i know this is probably unlikely, but here goes

Could the current email sender be someone else,

other than General Patraeus?

ignore this, if it's already been asked

mark h

Glenn, the emails you received should each have a line in the headers, looking something like this:

"Message-ID: <9116EBDE324D9C40A75FC26B023EE0258AE71C@INTZEXEVSIZN02.iraq.centcom.mil>"

I don't know whether there is any information coded in that long string; maybe others here do. And that Message-ID would be what someone could use to definitively trace down the email.

I hope salon.com has people with the expertise to help you. They may know the right channels to contact to take up this issue.

Occam's Razor: Boylan probably sent that message, and is now lying about it.

-- SMac

Well, yeah, we know. But it's kind of fun leaving him hanging dancing in the wind thinking or hoping that we have some doubt. It's called, "Give the man some rope so he can hang himself". The longer we allow him to think that we aren't sure that the same buffoon who has sent these recent replies is the same buffoon who wrote the email in question, the deeper the hole the buffoon digs.

Boylan is the perfect mark for this type of approach because he has convinced himself that he's on the winning team. He has lost sight of the fact that everyone - and I mean everyone - is and has been laughing behind his back ever since he was barely able to talk.

You write that Boylan has an "idiosyncratic grammatical style that is quite recognizable though difficult to replicate, and the e-mail I received this morning -- from start to finish -- is written in exactly that style."

I went back and read the previous emails he sent you, and I have to disagree: the punctuation and spelling aren't perfect, but the grammar and syntax are much better than in the current missive; there aren't any really major errors of that kind.

The earlier emails look to me like what a literate person who was writing fast and carelessly, without spellchecking, might produce; the current one appears to have been written by someone who simply lacks a command of English syntax. But it has no spelling errors.

This is purely subjective, but there seem to me to be very distinctly different personaliities behind the two sets of emails, as well as different levels of English skills.

The responses to your queries about the authorship of the current email are beyond strange. There's unquestionably something fishy about the whole thing.

Or more, actually. The way I see it:

Either Boylan has been impersonated or his computer has been compromised or Salon's has. If the first, then the US military is in even worse state than I thought. (Maybe it is even on purpose, though, which is even more damming.) If the second, this is even more serious - you would think it would be a matter of national security. Three is less serious, though obnoxious all the same. Glen, I dare say you should investigate all of this thoroughly. Does Salon have an IT security expert on staff?

Those who spoke about the net 10 address are correct, too, so that in itself goes nowhere. Unless, of course, you can find someone who can tell you how that branch of the military has its internal network setup, which seems very unlikely.

e. Here comes the problem - why would they do this trace for Glenn, or inform him of the results?

They wouldn't unless it was going to cost them not to. Which is why following RMP's earlier suggestion to circulate the email among the various oversight groups makes sense. It creates an incentive for them to trace and inform. Could be the threat of circulation might be enough, but then you'd wonder if you could trust the results. That's part of the reason I no longer doubt the wisdom of RMP's suggestion. Particularly, if as IndianaLiberal suggests, it's definitive the email originated within the DoD.

All of the emails you quote from this officer except the oldest originate from this machine:

INTZEXEVSIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil ([10.70.20.16])

The email from 24 Jul 2007 came from a different IP by one value, in the same subnet, therefore, and as I pointed out earlier, if DHCP is being used, it could still be the same machine, it certainly has the same name, that is what I searched thorough all your headers for to check all the IP numbers.

Received: from INTZEXEVSIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil ([10.70.20.15])

In this case, walking, talking, and sounding like a duck seem to converge. I suspect the email in question today was either:

a) genuine

or

b) someone with access to centcom machine in this officers office is out to get him.