John Walsh, Democrat, Confronts Questions of Plagiarism - NYTimes.com

Something I pondered as I read through various articles concerning this incident, "Questions have previously been raised about Mr. Walsh’s résumé and conduct, though they were comparatively minor."

In an interview outside his Capitol Hill office on Tuesday, after he was presented with multiple examples of identical passages from his paper and the Carnegie and Harvard essays, Mr. Walsh said he did not believe he had done anything wrong.

“I didn’t do anything intentional here,” he said, adding that he did not recall using the Carnegie and Harvard sources.

Asked directly if he had plagiarized, he responded: “I don’t believe I did, no.”

On Wednesday, a campaign aide for Mr. Walsh did not contest the apparent plagiarism but suggested that it be viewed in the context of the senator’s long career. She said Mr. Walsh had been going through a difficult period at the time he wrote the paper, noting that one of the members of his unit from Iraq had committed suicide in 2007, weeks before the assignment was due.

The aide said Mr. Walsh, who served in Iraq from November 2004 to November 2005, had “dealt with the experience of post-deployment,” but said he had not sought treatment.

Later, the senator, in an interview with The Associated Press, contradicted the aide, saying that he was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder when he used the authors’ work without credit, and that he would consider apologizing to the scholars for doing so. He said he was currently taking antidepressant medication.

John Walsh, Democrat, Confronts Questions of Plagiarism - NYTimes.com