Darthmouth Student Lied, Soldiers died?

Perhaps a slight stretch, but it does have a certain ring to it. An article in the Boston Globe carries the story about the fabrication.

The ALA also weighs in on the matter.

How does this kid know the book is on a "rotating watch list of books" and how would that same kid know about the workings of said list, assuming it exists? Given his known track record of lying, I believe we can maintain a healthy degree of skepticism regarding its existence.

Heretical Librarian did the research and made some other observations, from which I quote part of his findings below:

The ALA article also mentions that the student "requested the book by phone from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst". This raises another question: why didn't the student simply order Quotations via UMass-Dartmouth's ILL service, as the first report of this story indicated? The student could also have used the Virtual Catalogs feature to order Quotations from another Massachusetts library. So why would he try to file an ILL request with UMass-Amherst, whose service appears to be limited to Amherst students, faculty, and staff only? If he simply called Amherst's library to ask about the availability of their copy of the book, would they not have advised him to order the item through his own institution or the Virtual Catalogs? Finally, the claim that the alleged request with Amherst was filed by phone would also make the existence of a record trail less likely, and thus harder to conclusively disprove the story.

Today's other bit of information comes courtesy of Wizbang. This item from the Boston Herald features a comment from the FBI: Complicating matters has been the student, who so far has refused to talk. Boston FBI spokeswoman Gail A. Marcinkiewicz said she has been unable to find evidence that FBI agents visited the student. “We don’t have interest in what people read,” she added.

Given the mounting evidence,I don't think this student should be given a pass. He's not a five year old lying to Mommy about how many cookies he took out of the cookie jar. He knew he was lying. He knew his lie would spread quickly. And if he truly 'didn't know' about the consequences of his lie, then it's all the more reason to put charages against him, before some other person tries the 'didn't know' excuse to leak something more serious.