Letters to the Editor
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Boylan sent the first email and is lying about it.
Everyone knows it.
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Life imitating art
I'm currently re-reading "Catch-22" and I couldn't help thinking that our Col. Boylan reminds me of the characters in the novel. Pretty soon he's going to be signing his e-mails alternately "Washington Irving" and "Irving Washington" (and then "John Milton" and "Milton John" when that grows monotonous) wearing a fake moustache and sunglasses like Major Major Major Major....
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OK, glenn --
Isn't this moving into "obsession" territory now? This guy's has a very odd relationship to reality. I think that's now established. But, he's just a middle manager at best, and a flak to boot, not any sort of actual policy-maker or implementer. Can we move on, now? This blog is a lot more interesting when you take on the big boys.
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PETRAEUS AND BOYLAN
NOW THAT PETRAEUS HAS BEEN DISCREDITED, HE SENDS HIS LACKEY
TO FACE THE BARRAGE
WHAT GOOBERS.
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It's a little early for black helicopters.
"(1) Col. Boylan is denying authorship of the original email to me but is acknowledging having sent the subsequent emails, even though the tracing information on all of those emails -- including the "fake" one -- strongly suggest they came from the same computer;"
It's fairly trivial to fake this stuff, especially if you know what version of Exchange (or other mailserver, but Exchange in this case) the military in Iraq is running. Getting that information would be trivial. Just send a message to Boylan himself and you get the mail headers that you need to spoof.
Even if it's not the case that someone hacked the military mail server, or spoofed it, there's every possibility that Boylan could have left his computer unlocked (bad security practice, but common enough) and walked away. At that point, anyone with a grudge against Glen or Boylan who had access to the room could have sent the message. I'm not saying the Boylan didn't send the message. I am saying that you can't prove it by this.
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Lets cut to the Chase
He sent it. I know your being careful, but he sent it. Lets call a spade a spade.
He's a coward for not owning up to it. And he's a troll. Jesus, is this what we pay military people for? to chase down bloggers and spin their "image"?
I cannot be more disgusted with this episode on so many fronts. Democrats, republicans, military, FEMA, the MSM, on and on......there is no-one or no institution that i havent lost complete faith in over the last decade.
This man acts like a high school troller and with a lack of respect- for his position if nothing else- thats simply apalling.
If i acted with even a quarter of these people incompetence with my patients i would long have been fired already.
Something needs to change.
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Small correction...
If he replies to a message you send him, even an auto-reply to say he's on vacation, you get the headers you need.
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Egypt Steve
Isn't this moving into "obsession" territory now?
I wrote about this for the first time on Sunday. Today is Tuesday. That's 48 hours. I think we have different definitions of "obssession."
If there were a nuclear war and a blogger wrote about that, there would always be someone in comments -- or several people -- to come and say: "I don't like this topic. Write about X or Y instead. Move on."
The good thing about blogging is that one writes about whatever one finds most interesting and where one thinks the biggest impact can be made.
I explained why I think the story is significant. I intend to see it through. The titles indicate what I'm writing about. If you're not interested in this topic, there isn't anything preventing you from skipping it (it will most likely have the word "Boylan" in it).
Can we move on, now? This blog is a lot more interesting when you take on the big boys.
Yeah - sorry for writing about someone as petty and small as the Public Affairs Officer and official Spokesman for the Supreme Commanding General in the Iraq War.
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How about a dark-gray helicopter?
Pardon me for showing my ignorance, but if someone spliced and diced the email header in the way you suggest, wouldn’t there be other routing information included? The only way the entire email header could have been fabricated would be if someone hacked the Salon mailserver, or someone fabricated the entire message out of whole cloth on a local Salon pc. Is that what you were suggesting?
Sorry again if this is a really stupid question.
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...an extremely serious matter....
Again, the army would consider "fake" emails written over the name of a senior officer originating from their system or being spoofed by another system to be an extremely serious matter and would follow it aggressively. If you can "fake" an email to Glen Greenwald, you can "fake" an email to anyone and this has serious security implications. They (and therefore we) seem to be living in a fantasy land. Too bad there are real bullets involved.
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If Col. Boylan didn't write this...
...someone with access to his .mil network did. This is a serious violation of policy. The fact that Boylan seems relatively unconcerned that someone is supposedly impersonating him -- someone with access to his network -- is proof to me that he is lying.
If a "fake" email came from someone in my company, there'd be an inquiry, and we're a pretty laid back workplace -- not the military in Iraq!
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Shorter Glenn Greenwald
"You say you need more rope, Mr. Boylan? Yes, sir, right away, sir."
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Eqypt Steve
Why move on from an example of exactly the type of BS, intimidation and government politicization that Glenn has been talking about for so long?
Here, Glenn has as much or more of the facts than anyone else. That's usually a great position to be in as a writer and reporter.
As noted, there are two explanations, both of which are newsworthy, and both involve suspicious, likely illegal, conduct.
Finally, why move on when the situation continues to evolve? Boylan appears to be spinning a tighter web of lies around himself and his conduct. This is when it gets interesting. Isn't it right about now that Congress starts passing resolutions condemning the traitor impersonating Boylan.