Email of Retired US Army Colonel Hacked, Sparks Syria Conspiracy

Emails suggested US was involved in chemical attack

In the byte-and-pixel hall of mirrors that is the Internet, rumors are easy to start and impossible to stop. The latest: that the U.S. Army may have played a key role in the massacre of some 1,400 Syrians, including more than 400 children, in that chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus Aug. 21.

The Army confirmed Thursday morning that the email account of a recently-retired Army intelligence colonel was hacked. Army officials believe the hacker(s) involved wrote the emails that have triggered reports of U.S. involvement. "But if you read the emails, you can tell they weren't written by an O-6 [colonel] working in G-2 {intelligence]," one says. "They look like they were written by a third-grader." The Army's Criminal Investigation Command began looking into the case Wednesday.