Letters Home From a Ghostwriter

Source: The Olympian (WA), October 11, 2003 "Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours," reports Ledyard King. "And all the letters are the same." A newspaper in Olympia, Washington noticed the pattern after receiving identically-worded letters from two different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment. A subsequent search found the same letter, over different signatures, in 11 different newspapers, including the Charleston Daily Mail; Mountain View Telegraph of Moriarty, NM; Observer-Dispatch of Utica, NY; and the Boston Globe. When contacted, none of the soldiers whose names appear on the letters said they actually wrote it, and one said he didn't even know about the letter until his father congratulated him for getting it published.