SINGAPORE — I know, I know… I said I was tak­ing a break while I get mar­ried, and all, but I’m in Sin­ga­pore wait­ing for a refuel, and I saw that Huff­Post has [finally taken down that clown of a jour­nal­ist, W. Thomas Smith Jr](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/01/in-the-tank-did-national_n_74954.html). Smith alighted in Lebanon back in Sep­tem­ber for a few weeks and [his accounts](http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGRkZDFmMGFiODFjZTI0ODQzNTg4NjVkMjUyOTZhNDM=) of my adopted home [are risible](http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzUzMDFmZmU5ZGZhNDZhMzIwNmY3OWU2NTMyM2IwNTc=).

I was a source for this story — I called him a “fabulist” — because I always intended to blog on Smith, tear­ing down his crap, but to be hon­est, I was going through a rough blog patch and couldn’t seem to work up the proper dudgeon.

Still, in one of his more fan­tas­tic posts, not men­tioned in the Huff­Post arti­cle, he claimed the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps [tried to assas­si­nate an anti-Hezbollah Shi’ite politi­cian with an “acid-weapon.”](http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTE1NjEwMmQ2MDY0NTkzNzhlNGM3MzFkZDMyZDVlZjA=)

I inter­viewed Sayed once. Had cof­fee and sweets with him in his office. Con­ducted a recon­nais­sance mis­sion with one of his armed men and two of mine in one of Sayed’s cars. I rode with him dur­ing a sec­ond recon in another of his cars. And yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (here in Lebanon) attempted to kill Sayed and his fam­ily by sab­o­tag­ing his vehi­cle (the first one I rode in). They planted a delayed acid-weapon on his car’s under­car­riage, which ate through the chas­sis and caused the vehi­cle to basi­cally break in half while he was driving.

As a buddy of mine remarked after that one, “I wanna cover this guy’s Lebanon. It sounds so much more inter­est­ing.“
Indeed. Too bad his sto­ries are ridicu­lous falsehoods.

**UPDATE:** So, [some are reporting](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/12/they-knew-his-w.html) that I noti­fied Kathryn-Jean Lopez of Smith’s sto­ries six weeks ago. This is true, how­ever, I sent the email to tank@​nationalreview.​com. Did she get it? Did any­one? Hell if I know since I never received a response. Here’s the text of the email I sent on Oct. 6:

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3)

Message-Id: <6​9​9​4​FFC1​-​C8​8​D-​4​EDB-​9​C9​6​-​4​7​6​3​0​C6​C3​C3​1​@​mac.​com>

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

boundary=Apple-Mail-2 – 701486348

To: tank@​nationalreview.​com

Sub­ject: Accu­racy alert

From: Christo­pher Allbritton

Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:39:27 +0300

–Apple-Mail-2 – 701486348

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Content-Type: text/plain;

charset=WINDOWS-1252;

delsp=yes;

format=flowed

Sirs—
Your posts by W. Thomas Smith Jr. are hilar­i­ous! Great fic­tion reading.

Such as this one:

“The gen­eral briefed me regard­ing the bat­tle­field at Nahr al-Bared, near his camp, and what I would see today *as the first Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist to visit the site of Lebanon’s defeat of Al Qaeda-affiliate Fatah al Islam.*”

Ah, no.

You do know that almost every Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist liv­ing in Beirut has been up to Nahr el-Bared sev­eral times dur­ing and after the fight­ing? I myself filed sto­ries for the [*Wash­ing­ton Times*](http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070904/FOREIGN/109040025/1003) and the [*Newark Star-Ledger*](http://www.long-war.com/Allbrittons_Clips/Clips/Entries/2007/9/3_As_Lebanon_war_re-ignites%252C_a_risky_lie_protects_a_friend.html), the day after the fight­ing stopped — and I was in a hell of a lot more dan­ger than your man is in today. (*Star-Ledger* seems to have archived the story, so that link goes to my per­sonal site, but that’s the story that ran there. *WaTimes* is still available.)

You know, for a pub­li­ca­tion that went after the *New Repub­lic* so hard for its soldier-in-Iraq stuff, your guy here is hor­ri­bly, hor­ri­bly inac­cu­rate and sen­sa­tion­al­ist. I’m an Amer­i­can and I never have body­guards and never needed one. He is mak­ing Beirut seem much more dan­ger­ous than it is. He also is — as are you, since I assume he’s expens­ing it —  get­ting fleeced by some Lebanese con artists. He doesn’t need weapons and he’s mak­ing a big prob­lem by car­ry­ing them and pub­licly writ­ing about his “recon mis­sions” in the Dahiyah. That’s not what jour­nal­ists do; it’s what spies do, and by his actions, he’s mak­ing every­one sus­pi­cious of west­ern jour­nal­ists. That is the height of irresponsibility.

Sec­ondly, he’s a liar. Hezbol­lah never invaded east Beirut on the 29^th. And they don’t have 200 “heav­ily armed” mili­ti­a­men down­town. I passed by today. There are about 40 guys down there with no weapons at all. They sit around, smok­ing shisha in jeans and t-shirts.

Per­haps your man in Beirut should not rely solely on March 14 guys and get a wider per­spec­tive. And stop lying and mak­ing care­less errors. It’s your cred­i­bil­ity on the line, after all.

Sin­cerely,
Christo­pher Allbritton

So, that’s out there now for the record.