Times' Kristof: I Plagiarized Whom?
Oct. 27 2008, Published 7:07 a.m. ET
BRING IT Kristof
New York Times Op-Ed crusader (sub. req.) Nicholas Kristof had to take a break today from his busy schedule of rescuing Indonesian sex workers and such to defend himself against plagiarism accusations from a little-known writer.
Gary Brecher claims he has received "dozens" of e-mails from readers alerting him to Kristof's "brazen theft" of his March 6 column about the Iraq war in the Exile, a Moscow-based alternative paper.
"So far, Iran has been the big winner in this war, and they haven't fired a shot or lost a man," wrote Brecher. "Makes me wonder if Cheney isn't actually a mole parachuted into Wyoming a while back by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard."
Two weeks later, Kristof wrote his own column, headlined, "Iran's Operative in the White House." "You have to wonder: Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?" he asked.
Brecher, whose "widely read" column is called the War Nerd, is demanding an apology from Kristof and a statement from the Times acknowledging an act of plagiarism.
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He's not going to get either, though. "I've never seen his column nor seen his site," Kristof, who is traveling in China, tells RadarOnline.com via e-mail. (FishbowlNY, which reported Brecher's claim earlier, says it couldn't get a comment from Kristof.) "The idea was all my own, and I've never heard of Brecher. It was my own idea, plain and simple."
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