First Fake Reporters, Now Fake Spies?

In one of the more bizarre stories of the morning, buried at the bottom of the Style front, Howard Kurtz tells us a story about the Wash Times’ reportage before the WT does:

Evidently someone went to a lot of trouble to forge a Defense Intelligence Agency cable accusing NBC analyst William Arkin of being a spy for Saddam Hussein.

The WT got ahold of the cable, and started calling around but couldn’t get anyone to verify it. WT’s star national security writer Bill Gertz, who was handed the story, could not be reached for comment, but the paper’s ME, Francis Coombs, told Kurtz: “We don’t talk about stories we haven’t put in the paper. But at this point, we do not have a story scheduled to run.”

Could this be related to the State Department cable we were slipped this week accusing Bill Schneider of being a journalist? We’re pretty sure that’s gotta be faked since everyone knows it’s not true.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.