Steven Den Beste wonders if Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, arrested on March 25 in New York City, might have been the author of Where's Raed, last updated on March 24.

I'm skeptical - "Raed" is a common name and the connection seems farfetched to me. But to be literal, there's no hard evidence to disprove Steven's theory. I wouldn't want my endorsement of Salam's credility to be interpreted as saying that a few email headers with IP addresses in the Middle East prove Salam was posting from over there. There was a lot more talking to people and gut work involved.

More technical details

Salam sent his email messages by connecting to nme.com's Web-based email via a Web proxy server. Web proxies that end-run the government's weak filtering system were standard procedure in Iraq, as Salam and others have noted.

The originating IP address on any email would be the addresss of the computer running the proxy, not the computer at which Salam was typing. Here's one I got from him just as the war began. I've changed the final digits in the IP address to "71" to cover Salam's tracks in case he's not a hoax.

Received: from [62.145.94.71] by mail.nme.com with HTTP; Thu, 20 Mar 2003 03:58:24 0 (GMT)

The 62.145.94.* address would be on the Uruklink subnet that serves Iraq. Brian McWilliams and I both poked at the address and found it was accessible from the US, and not very well protected against intruders - we could even get a login prompt. For that reason we didn't publish the IP address, to prevent script kiddies from attacking it.

With the right information and configuration, it would have been easy for me to use the computer as a Web proxy to connect back to, say, hotmail.com. Any email I sent (I now realize should have sent one as a demo, but to me the possibility was technically proven at that point) would look like it came from Iraq to someone who knew a little, but not a lot, about email headers. I haven't seen the log files of Salam's posts to blogspot.com, but those could just as easily be proxied.

Other email messages Brian and I collected, some from other people, also showed Uruklink addresses. But those could be proxies, too. Uruklink's network, which insiders tell me was connected via a satellite link to Beirut, was knocked out during the war and will probably not be the same if and when it comes back.

Steven brings up the famous Kaycee Nicole hoax. Contrary to folklore that the hoax was outed by a collective Web hunt, the crack in Kaycee's story came when a professional crime writer picked up the phone and called the newspaper in her alleged hometown, where the managing editor had neither record nor recollection of anyone matching the name or story. [A pal from Metafilter emailed me just now. No, I'm not dismissing the role of online discussions in outing the hoax. But I am stressing that offline evidence was essential to the case.]

In the same vein, I asked Salam by email for a phone number in the +964 region where I could call him to verify his location. He avoided the question rather than saying no. To me, that would normally be a sign of evasiveness. Less so given his alleged circumstances, but again - no definitive proof of his location.

There's still no irrefutable technical proof that Salam was posting from Baghdad. In the end, I only had my gut to rely on after reading his posts and talking to people who had been in touch with him. It really doesn't feel like previous hoaxes is the best I can say. But until and unless Salam pops up in person - something he's claimed he doesn't want to do - it's an open argument.

For a reporter based over there, it would be pretty easy to suss out the details he posted about himself. As with Kaycee, the phone book is a better place than the Web to start this kind of hunt. Then there's the ethical issue: Whether or not to publish the results if you find him. My Associated Press guide to libel says it's iffy. I would consider it wrong without his ok, unless he turned out to be a hoax.

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