Trudeau Worried About Kelley Way Back in '91

Posted Thursday, April 22, 2004 12:00 am

By: E&P Staff Garry Trudeau, creator of "Doonesbury," worried about disgraced USA Today reporter Jack Kelley before almost anyone. Today's report in the paper about its probe of the Kelley scandal reveals that Trudeau spent a day with Kelley in the Kuwaiti desert in June 1991. Kelley would write about finding a diary with the bodies of two Iraqi soldiers.

The only problem was, it didn't happen that way.

If Kelley did find a diary it was not with the soldiers. Trudeau felt Kelley had "planted" the diaries on the body, figuratively, and wrote him a "gentle" e-mail telling him he was puzzled by the liberties he had taken. Kelley responded with an e-mail, "denying nothing, indeed claiming to feel bad about his actions," Trudeau told USA Today. Kelley told Trudeau that he had "confessed to his editor and resolved never to do anything like that again."

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Trudeau Worried About Kelley Way Back in '91

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