Kelley's contribution to the debate was widely cited by American pro-Israel groups. HonestReporting.com called Kelley one of "a few brave reporters." Hawkish Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer mentioned Kelley's ambulance sighting in a piece that week called "Realities of War," and Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., followed up the next month by writing a protest to the International Red Cross.

Whether that story turns out to be true or not, Kelley told a lot of people what they expected to hear. Don't we all expect those colorful foreigners of the Mideast to talk like Indiana Jones characters, calling their enemies "sons of whores," like Avi Shapiro, or uttering lines like "I will make my body a bomb that will blast the flesh of Zionists, the sons of pigs and monkeys," like the 11-year-old Ahmed in the (thus far undisputed) Kelley piece, "The Secret World of Suicide Bombers"? Who, feeling guilty about the deaths of civilians, wouldn't be soothed to read that Ahmed's small frame and boyish smile are "deceiving," because his vulnerability "mask[s] a determination to kill at any cost"? Or that school kids bombed in Afghanistan might not be so innocent after all, perhaps dreaming of blowing up a Chicago landmark?

Not long after 9/11, responding to a woman expressing qualms about hazards to "innocent bystanders" in Afghanistan, one Usenet poster replied by pasting the Sears Tower story into the newsgroup. The title of his post: "Know thine enemy." Someone called it blather.

"Blather?" the original poster replied. "Jack Kelley has balls of steel. Talk about courage! An American journalist going to visit a suicide bomber school and interviewing thousands of crazed fanatics screaming their hatred for the U.S.A. right to his face."

After struggling to cope with Stephen Glass' staggering spree of fabrication, then-New Republic editor Charles Lane said: "One of the parts of the answer that I've settled on is that so many of his stories revolve around stereotypes ... They fit into the preexisting grooves that are already etched into everybody's heads, things we think or are predisposed to believe are true.

"So he's got stories about young conservatives who turn out to be total hypocrites about morality; he's got stories about department store Santa Clauses who turn out to be pedophiles; and he's got a big story about a pseudo-scientific exploration about why African-Americans are too lazy to drive taxicabs but immigrants will."

As it turned out, Jack Kelley's forgeries fit snugly into the preexisting grooves of people all over the world looking for coverage of evil Jews, or cute Muslim boys who turn out to be devils.

Kelley was recently listed on the faculty of the World Journalism Institute, which trains Christians to be journalists. Its purpose: "The need to be faithful to the Christian example of accurately reporting (e.g., being reliable eyewitnesses) the work of God in today's world." And he's said of his work: "I feel God's pleasure when I write and report. It isn't because of the glory, but because God has called me to proclaim truth, and to worship him and serve through other people."

The inflammatory truth he's proclaimed, of the world where Avi Shapiro and the Sears Tower kid live, may not be truth as we understand it. But Kelley found an eager multitude of believers ready to receive his truth and eager to award its messenger that rarest badge of honor: "Unbiased."

Recent Stories