An e-mail harshly critical of the grave story:
Rich,
I’ve just gotten around to reading the TNR story. Here’s what I can add to the ever-growing debunking. At the time, I was in Doug Feith’s office. Please don’t release my name, as I am still working Iraq issues for the USG.
I’ll focus on the one about building a camp on a mass grave as it is particularly absurd. It’s not just a story of one soldier, but a story of an entire military unit. And it’s utterly fabricated.
After the initial invasion, massive resources were put into finding and identifying mass graves. We actively searched these things out – even putting satellites and ground maneuver units to work to help find them. It was a HUGE effort. Few remember, and few American reporters ever cared, but uncovering Saddam’s atrocities was important business in Iraq. And it was big news for the Iraqis. We made sure to publicize all of the mass graves and to preserve them. It was not only a humanitarian and PR issue, but a legal one (we were preserving evidence for the court cases that would inevitably come). Without question, the military would have had standing orders to report something like this. Not to be too crude, but this would have been a major find.
So, it’s not just a story of one soldier dancing around with human remains. Rather, it’s a story of an entire military unit and its command structure defying orders and forgetting one of the main reasons why they were there. And it’s a lie.