Perhaps. But it's only Debat himself saying he hired the other reporter. Absent corroboration, Debat's explanation--of which he seems to have ample supply--should be considered in light of the magazine's charge that Debat is "a grand liar."
Did it????
ABC News Chief Investigative Reporter Brian Ross said he's worked with Debat as a consultant for years and was contacted this spring by someone who questioned his Sorbonne degree.
"We demanded his resignation back in June when someone told us he didn't have the Ph.D.," Ross said. "He couldn't prove it."
In the meantime, Debat provided Ross with a letter from "Rob Sherman" explaining their business relationship and providing an address -- 173 E. Taylor Road, Lombard.
A Daily Herald reporter visited Taylor Road on Thursday and could find no such address. Local postal officials said addresses on that street stop at 135 and pick up again at 213.
Calls made to the phone number on the letter provided by Debat were not returned.
Debat responded to a Daily Herald inquiry by e-mail and said he met a Rob Sherman in Washington, D.C., in 2003, and that he claimed to be a semi-retired freelance journalist. He also sent a copy of an e-mail he said he received from Sherman claiming the Obama interview was conducted June 4 in downstate Galesburg.
However, Obama spoke that morning in Chicago, then flew to Washington that afternoon for a 7 p.m. forum, spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
Neither a Rob Sherman nor an Alexis Debat has interviewed Obama this year, LaBolt said.
Debat told other media that he got the answers from the alleged Sherman interview in March.
Washington Post Media Critic Howard Kurtz also has been working on stories about Debat's credibility. He said he, too, had not been able to locate the Rob Sherman with whom the French writer supposedly dealt. But he did learn a quite a bit as a result of his own interviews.
"It's not the famous atheist," he said, a fact Debat confirmed.
"Debat told us it was not that Rob Sherman," Kurtz said.
After Sherman wrote an e-mail to Debat asking for an explanation, he, too, received as response exonerating him.
Not that it's stopping journalists from placing phone calls to the Buffalo Grove man who rarely shies away from the spotlight. And he answers every call.
"I've got a national reputation to maintain," Sherman said.
So how did a man who until this week was a senior fellow on counterterrorism at Washington think tank the Nixon Center randomly come up with the name Rob Sherman from suburban Chicago?
"It does seem like an amazing coincidence," Kurtz said. "Until I find out if there was another Rob Sherman, I can't answer that."
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=37695