Tin Soldier

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"In April 2004," writes Mariah Blake, "a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. ... By late June, he claimed to have captured the plotters, and started trying to clinch a deal with television networks by offering them 'direct access' to one of the terrorists who, he said, had agreed to tell all." His story unraveled after the Afghan police "raided his headquarters and discovered eight prisoners, some of them tethered to chairs in a back room, which was littered with bloody cloth. The men later told reporters that they had been starved, beaten, doused with scalding water, and forced to languish for days in their own feces. Afghan authorities determined that none of the detainees had links to terrorism and set them free." It turns out that this isn't the first time that Idema has sold colorful and deceptive stories about terrorism to the mass media. In January 2002, CBS broadcast sensational footage, quite likely staged by Idema, which purported to show an Al Qaeda training camp in action. "Idema also served as an expert military commentator on Fox News ... And he fielded hundreds of interviews with major newspapers, television networks, and radio stations. ... He claimed to have uncovered a plot to assassinate Bill Clinton; that bin Laden was dead, and that the Taliban was poisoning the food that the United States was air-dropping to feed hungry Afghans. ... Idema’s career as a media personality reached its peak during the final breathless weeks of the run-up to the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided during that period echoed the Bush administration’s hotly contested rationale for war. ... Few in the media questioned Idema’s claims, much to the alarm of some who knew him."