Add Dr. Thomas Lowry’s name to the pantheon of historian shame that includes plagiarist Stephen Ambrose and Vietnam combat-phony Joseph Ellis. Lowry is accused by the National Archives of admitting that he used a fountain pen to vandalize a document written by President Lincoln.
Lowry, whose forgery went undiscovered for fourteen years and even inspired Washington tour guides to repeat it to unknowing tourists, signed a confession to his vandalism, according to the National Archives which has banned his person from their halls henceforth. He is now denying all in the pages of the WaPo. How convenient.
I bring this up partly because Vietnam combat-phonies like Ellis really anger me. They damaged all of us genuine combat veterans for most of our post-war adult lives by “confessing” to dishonorable things. Tarring us with their liar’s brush. Fortunately for the “profession,” Lowry, is only an independent Civil War historian. His doctorate is medical. He’s a psychiatrist. Go figure that out if you can.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Dr, Lowry says his confession was coerced. Check out the Norfolk Four before you dismiss this entirely. I once asked him to compare two historic signatures for me and his response was professional, cautious, and similar to that of an FBI-trained criminologist and a Viet Nam veteran police detective. Maybe he was a fraud and maybe he was a likely suspect who knuckled under because he was 78 years old and tired of being badgered.
Lowry could admit to something he didn’t do because he was tired of being badgered? Man has a strange set of ethical values who could do that.
And that goes for the young sailors, as well, of whose innocence not all are yet convinced. But their alleged crime was violent and I can see how that could provoke the police into coercion.
Not so the NARA with Lowry. They offered him nothing to confess, except disgrace and banishment, and had no legal way to hold him while interrogating him, since the time had run out on the crime.
It certainly wasn’t NARA’s finest hour, missing the forgery in the first place. But I don’t see any true comparison here with a rape and murder investigation.
Strange story that. Indeed, how does one coerce a 78 yrs old man – aside of torture?
He’s lying. Trying to save his livelihood. Fat chance now.