Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the Army private whose dispatches from Iraq the New Republic was forced to repudiate last month, was regarded as a "malingerer" and unreliable by some of his fellow soldiers and had gone AWOL prior to writing about the cruel and macabre behavior he claimed to have witnessed in a war zone, according to previously unreleased Army documents.

The documents, including sworn statements from 19 of Beauchamp's fellow soldiers taken in the course of an internal Army investigation into his claims, were obtained by Radar under the Freedom of Information Act. (Scroll to the bottom of this item for a .pdf file of the statements.) While some Army documents related to the case have been previously made public—including a memorandum outlining the results of the investigation and a transcript of a phone call between Beauchamp and New Republic editor Franklin Foer—the statements themselves have not.

In a column called "Shock Troops," published under a pen name by the New Republic in July of last year, Beauchamp wrote that he and fellow soldiers had mercilessly mocked a disfigured woman in the dining hall of his base in Iraq, that soldiers played with "children's bones" found at one of "Saddam's dumping grounds" while building a combat outpost, and that he had seen drivers of Bradley Fighting Vehicles deliberately trying to run over stray dogs in the streets while on patrol. Conservatives were up in arms at what they regarded as a slander, and after Beauchamp copped to being the writer, the Army launched an investigation that found that "Private Beauchamp takes small bits of truth and twists and exaggerates them into fictional accounts that he puts forth as the whole truth" in an effort to become "the next Hemingway." Aside from admitting that the incident with the disfigured woman actually occurred in Kuwait, rather than at his base in Iraq, Beauchamp has declined to elaborate on or offer support for his claims.

The statements of Beauchamp's comrades tend to support the Army's conclusion: While many reported finding animal bones in the course of building a combat outpost, and two claimed that a child's skullcap was found, no one corroborated his account of a soldier wearing it around beneath his helmet. "We observed a human skull and a femur," wrote one captain. "[They] were buried north of the Eastern building. I do not recall who buried it, but remember being told it was done." A private told investigators: "I saw a group of soldiers find a human cranium and were trying to figure out what it was. I told them it was human, I took it, and I buried it! [T]hey were looking at it for a minute or two. After I buried it, we continued to work."

Similarly, none of the soldiers interviewed reported trying to kill dogs while driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles. "When driving in sector my goal is to make it back to base after every mission," one private wrote. "I don't, and haven't had any intentions of running things over or destroying anything which includes dogs. Maintenance on the Bradley is bad enough and repairing the damage from running things over out in sector is not worth it." A specialist did not deny that dogs may have been run over, but said he'd never done it on purpose: "While at times, driving condition variables, to include weather, time of day or combat conditions, may have relegated the need to drive at an increased risk of striking objects or stray dogs, at no time did I do this intentionally."

Of course, it's entirely possible that the soldiers making the statements lied to protect themselves from disciplinary action for bad behavior: If what Beauchamp wrote were true, they'd be in a position either backing him up and ratting themselves out, or saying what the Army wanted them to say and making a liar of Beauchamp.

But the statements make clear that at least some of Beauchamp's fellow soldiers didn't trust him even before the New Republic incident came to light. "He is not a reliable soldier," wrote one soldier whose rank was redacted by Army censors. "He has personally lied to me twice in both incidents one when he was AWOL. And the other while he was malingering." One first lieutenant wrote, "I do not consider him reliable due to the fact that he went AWOL during his first R and R period." And one specialist, sixth class, told investigators that he'd known about Beauchamp's freelancing but was alarmed by the "Shock Troops" allegations: "He went AWOL before so he does not like the Army, obviously.... I was aware he was writing to a magazine in the past about some of his time. Nothing was anti-Army or degrading the Army. [Then] he showed me a blog from some editor. I did not read his stories but the blog shocked me.... I did verbally counsel him. I stated things like you chose a side, raised your hand and are now defending our nation. It was something to that effect. You cannot write this anymore. He agreed to stop writing."

Not all of Beauchamp's fellow soldiers found him untrustworthy. "Before this situation arose I found Pfc. Beauchamp to be a decently reliable soldier," wrote one. "I have known Pfc. Beauchamp as a close friend since the unit was deployed to Kuwait in September 2006 and I see him as a generally reliable, straightforward person," wrote another.

The Army documents include two statements from Beauchamp that contradict two of the investigative report's findings. While Maj. John Cross, who led the investigation, wrote that Beauchamp "admitted that he was not an eyewitness to the targeting of dogs and only saw animal bones during the construction of Combat Outpost Ellis," Beauchamp's statements say only that hadn't seen a dog hit "since I have been driving in the past two months" and that, while building the outpost "there were...bones, and some people either thought or were told that they were animal bones," Neither statement is an acknowledgment that Beauchamp never saw a dog run over or never saw human bones.