If this is true, Private Beauchamp has now reached the final phase of the Stephen Glass story – the stage where he’s avoiding taking the editor’s calls.Colonel Steve Boylan tells The Weekly Standard:
We are not preventing him from speaking to TNR or anyone. He has full access to the Morale Welfare and Recreation phones that all the other members of the unit are free to use. It is my understanding that he has been informed of the requests to speak to various members of the media, both traditional and non-traditional and has declined. That is his right.
We will not nor can we force a Soldier to talk to the media or his family or anyone really…
As Michael Goldfarb puts it, the army isn’t stonewalling, Private Beauchamp is. It seems silly and rather sad for The New Republic to be crawling further and further out on the limb for this guy when he’s all but sawn it off.