The New Republic's Soldier's Tale

DERELICT Beauchamp 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 RadarOnline.com 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.