Good job, Glenn and 'associated tech support.'

But, does this mean you'll take tomorrow off, Glenn? If so, you'll have earned it.

It's been an interesting Sunday.

Maybe RMP, will 'spoof' what he imagines ocurring behind the scenes right about now. ;)

Otherwise, it do look case closed.

I'd also suspect Boylan because of the defensiveness of claiming that Glenn should have no concern about what Boylan is doing to find out if the email is a spoof. The recipient of an email is clearly a concerned party, and Boylan knows it.

If someone had actually sent emails in his name, his response would be to ask Glenn for as much information as possible, and to promise action. That "interesting" doesn't do it, no matter how clipped we imagine his military speak to be. He's sure acting like it's his email and now he wishes he hadn't sent it and wishes it would all go away.

Case closed, pretty much. I don't think Glenn would be that easily scammed, as attuned to language and as he is.

It was a great way to spend a lazy sunday morning, however. Playing Sherlock Holmes internet sleuth. Thanks Glenn and Col. Boylan!

You not only exposed this creep being completely rude and unprofessional in an email, but you caught him DISHONESTLY DENYING that he wrote his unprofessional prose, then being a rude uprofessional creep about his denial!

The mind boggles...

I am not talking about what is likely - only about what is possible.

Starting with the last hop:

Anyone with access to this machine:

rich.salon.com [206.80.4.124]

could have written the email and spoofed the other three addresses in the header.

The second to the last hop:

02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil [214.13.200.111]

Anyone who had access to this machine could have written the header and spoofed the other two addresses in the header.

The third to the last hop:

INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil [10.70.20.11]

Anyone who had access to this machine could have spoofed the first address in the header.

The first address:

INTZEXEVSIZN02.iraq.centcom.mil [10.70.20.16]

Anyone with access to this machine could have written the letter. The header could not have been spoofed.

And it is possible that INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil and INTZEXEVSIZN02.iraq.centcom.mil are public machines and thus it would be hard to pin down who sent the email or it could be that the addresses are dynamic and can't be associated without a lot of work to a specific machine.

Of course, maybe ALL Glenn's communication with Col. Boylan has been faked by someone. Has that been ruled out?

I know for a fact I emailed with Col. Boylan in July because he's the one who set up Gen. Petraeus' interview with Alan Colmes, based on my emails with him (as Alan generously acknowledges).

on bases in Iraq is so poor that someone could spoof, hack, or social engineer their way into their network to pass the mail through their SMTP servers, which I HIGHLY doubt, this came from our good Col. here.

The only possible scenario I can think of at the moment, that would credibly make sense and hold up his assertion of ignorance, would be someone ELSE in his office there, sending the message directly through his account without his knowledge.

In this scenario though, as is common in politics, it could've been arranged in such a way to insure that most detestible of slippery excuses, being establishment of "plausible deniability", but that's entirely hypothetical.

Still... his attitude towards what SHOULD be a VERY serious breach of security in the operations of a military unit IN A WAR ZONE, is what's sparked my speculation there.

At this point, either there's a serious breach of security in his office/network or he's let his emotions get the best of him, sent the mail, and subsequently fumbled the attempt to backpedal and/or cover his ass.

The former should inspire some serious fireworks in his command and serious attention from their network admins. The latter, well... I doubt there's anything other than politically damaging blustering, but little else besides his own, personal embarrassment.

For the record, I'm a software engineer, certified network administrator, with over a decade working in the IT field. Admittedly, mail server infrastructure isn't something I've worked with directly, outside of training scenario's, but the network side I know.

I didn't dig into the headers too deep mind you, but just looking at the IP's and domain addresses it seems pretty clear it's at least gone through the same servers from the prior, confirmed authentic, email exchange.

Glenn, if you'd like me to dig a little deeper (though I'm not sure it'd turn up much, since I promise you real military servers won't be tracked or reveal much to the usual methods, as you pointed out) I'll pick at the headers a bit more. My email should be on my user acct here.

As I remember, during World War II, fake journalism was a propaganda weapon of the Allies (and likely of the Axis too, though if we got fooled by it, nobody would write a proud history of it and I wouldn't have heard of it).

One Allied fake journalism program involved faking a radio station that broadcast what seemed to be pro-Nazi material from partisans favoring the Axis. The broadcasts purported to be from several places in France, moving east as the Allies advanced in 1944. At a time they thought it would be especially useful to spread confusion, the Allies did a broadcast as if they city they were in was being overrun by the Allies, when they actually were miles away. The hope was that the Germans had come to accept the broadcasts as genuine, and when they heard the misinformation that a city behind them was overrun, they'd start a panicky retreat.

It's less obvious what advantage there might be to the 'enemy' (whoever that is) by faking e-mails from Col. Boylan, but if he's a responsible officer he ought to be very concerned about the matter, even if he can't imagine how it might hurt him.