Just about every fool caught in some computer-related indiscretion falls back on the old "identity theft" excuse. It's the internet equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."

He's always in way over his head.

Army officer is attacked outside Yongsan Garrison

By Franklin Fisher, Stars and Stripes

Pacific edition, Tuesday, December 17, 2002

SEOUL — A U.S. Army officer was attacked at knifepoint by three Korean males Sunday night outside Yongsan Garrison in Seoul and sustained a minor stab wound.

U.S. military authorities declined to release the officer’s name, but Stars and Stripes has learned he is Army Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, chief spokesman for 8th U.S. Army...

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=11582&archive=true

He seems to get involved in some pretty bizarre incidents and other imbroglios with respect to his job as a political officer and propagandist for the U.S. Army:

http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/07/telegraph-swj-best-fiction-awa-1/

I feel sorry for America. I'm shocked and awed. Fake or not, the whole thing is rather sad, embarrassing. I still think the e-mail was sent by the same guy who has been corresponding with Glenn all along.

... still! As Everett told Delmar, "I'm not sure that's Pete." With all respect, I'm not sure that's Steve.

-- Dan Lee

Poor ol' Everette was a guy who liked to think of himself as purdy danged smart. Easy to do when your best pals are guys like Delmar. The same could be said of the blithering idiot who is trying to lie about having sent a really foolishly worded email to Glenn Greenwald...who really is purdy danged smart.

Pete didn't turn into a frog. That's for sure. Gen. Petraeus' spokesman has always been a toad. That is also for sure. His record croaks for itself.

Jan R makes the great point

Unless the Army has committed the ultimate sin of running an open relay, those emails came from someone in CENTCOM Iraq. If not Col. Boylan, then some other soldier is posing as Col. Boylan - something one would think he'd be less sanguine about.

Could this be coming from a soldier who wants to "help out" Boylan by really telling off his critics? Or will Boylan construct this "identity thief person" to give himself an out?

Reminds me of Rodger Stone's accusation that the owner of his apartment building, who is also a Spitzer contributor, arranged for Spitzer operatives to break into Stone's New York City apartment, use his phone and impersonate his voice, in order to set him up to look like he made the call.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/024810.php

Can you imagine an official staging a fake communication from someone in order to get out the message? Remember this from er yesterday?

FEMA official involved in fake press conference resigns.

On Tuesday, while “wildfires raged” in California, FEMA staged a live press conference at which agency staffers posed as journalists and asked softball questions. One of those staffers, Director of External Affairs John “Pat” Philbin, has now resigned. He has instead landed an “amazing opportunity” to head public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. October 27, 2007 5:04 pm http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/27/fema-official-involved-in-fake-press-conference-resigns/

Hello,

I've been a Unix systems administrator for some nine years now in various capacities--including postmaster/abuse admin at a medium-sized Internet Provider some years ago. In that capacity I spent many hours reading headers to verify if a forgery is at work, or if someone really is the source of the email in question (usually for tracking and fighting spam.)

Your reading of the headers does seem valid. The level of sophistication required for this to be a forgery would make it a downright frightening possibility if the supposed impostor was able to gain access to an IP like 10.70.20.16 and then use that IP to gain access to internal military mail servers. Put it this way: There's almost zero odds that this isn't at least coming from within the military.

It's perhaps beyond the scope of this blog's discussion thread, but an address starting with a ten like 10.xxx.yyy.zzz is private to a particular network. There is no public routing of these addresses. So if a machine using the IP 10.70.20.16 were able to contact 214.13.200.111, it must be on the same network as 214.13.200.111. And we can verify that 214.13.200.111 is indeed owned by the DoD.

So it seems you've touched a nerve, Glenn. Good work! Colonel Boylan has become a troll on Unclaimed Territory. Keep it up!

Mike

First time commenter vermont_2020:

Maybe my mad Google skillz aren't up to to, but I can't find the material from the Brattleboro Reformer on identity theft that you're citing. Not via Google, and not via the Reformer's own search function.

Got a link? Readers? Anyone else have better luck?

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=BRFB&p_theme=brfb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&s_dispstring=allfields(Boylan%20rental)%20AND%20date(all)&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=(%22Boylan%20rental%22)&xcal_numdocs=20&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no

The only post I could find on this was at http://scammo.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

"...Guilford resident Fred Humphrey was suspicious when he received an inquiry on the vacation rental Web site Home Away from someone claiming to be Lt. Col. Steve Boylan. The e-mails were "worded in rather stilted language" and were missing words, Humphrey, a retired professor, said. "It didn't seem like someone who had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel would write like that."

Heh.

You probably ought to authenticate first, and then publish. Either he set you up or took easy advantage of your setting yourself up. It's hard for me to criticize the anti-war forces, because there's nobody out here more disgusted with the Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal, and the oil slicked black water where they bottom feed. That said, the email you first published was written by a troglodyde. If it was written by a general in public information, the military is in deep trouble. His logic is tortured, grammar incorrect, and manners nonexistent. Who's his superior, anyway? Oh ... yea ... still! As Everett told Delmar, "I'm not sure that's Pete." With all respect, I'm not sure that's Steve.