Ex-ABC Terror Consultant Faked Interviews

Admits He Made Up Interviews With Barack Obama, Bill Gates And Others

(CBS/AP)  In the National Interest, an online publication he wrote for, identified him as a "former adviser to the French minister of Defense on trans-Atlantic affairs."

France's Defense Ministry said Friday that the only trace it could find of Debat in its records was a five-month internship at a ministry advisory office in 2000 and one month of military service.

Debat never served in an office directly under the defense minister and there was no sign that he worked as an official in other defense branches, said Col. Patrick Chanliau, a defense ministry press official.

"He was never a functionary," he said of Debat. "In 2000, he did five months as an intern at the Delegation for Strategic Affairs. There you go. That's all I have."

That office is under the direct authority of the defense minister, advising on geopolitical and strategic affairs.

Ministry interns are often young students "who come here to discover a profession or to complement a course they are following," he said. "To go from that to presenting oneself as an adviser to the minister ... There is no such thing as intern adviser to the minister."

Since the revelations about the fabricated interviews, ABC News is going back again to check over Debat's work, sending people to Pakistan and Europe, Ross said.

"We're working hard to make sure that everything he was involved in that we reported stands up," Ross said, "and if it doesn't, we'll report it immediately."

The Associated Press' Television Writer David Bauder and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.