By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 13, 2004; Page C01

Former USA Today correspondent Jack Kelley acknowledged through his attorney yesterday that his confession to deceiving his newspaper during an investigation of his reporting came only after being presented with evidence of what he had done. The newspaper, meanwhile, now says that Kelley was forced to quit.

Kelley told The Washington Post in an interview published Sunday that he arranged for a Russian translator, named Luda, to impersonate a Serbian translator, named Danielja, in a phone call to USA Today to verify an interview with a Yugoslav human rights activist that Danielja had witnessed. He said he realized his mistake and apologized to the paper's top executives two weeks later.

But Lynne Bernabei, Kelley's attorney, said USA Today told her last November that private investigators hired by the Gannett newspaper had discovered the hoax by listening to a recording of Luda's call and then calling the woman back. "They confronted us," Bernabei said. "It was after that that Jack disclosed he had done that."

Kelley said yesterday that he did not remember the sequence of events but that "I needed to admit that I did something wrong."

The disclosure came as USA Today published a lengthy article on the seven-month investigation into the accuracy of Kelley's reporting that led to his resignation last week and has caused bitter feelings in the Tysons Corner newsroom.

USA Today says Kelley "was forced to resign last week after he repeatedly misled editors during an internal investigation into stories he wrote." Editor Karen Jurgensen had previously said that Kelley "elected to resign," but today's statement said he was told he would be fired if he did not quit.

Said Executive Editor Brian Gallagher, in his first public comment: "Given Jack's actions, obviously it's hard to have confidence in his work."

The probe began with a June 26 anonymous letter, apparently from a fellow staffer, to Gallagher, calling Kelley "a golden boy" and "star reporter" who "is paid far more than the rest of us." Likening Kelley to Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who admitted to fabrication and plagiarism, the letter said Kelley used quotes that are "obviously fake" because they do not "sound like the way people talk," and questioned his ability to "arrive in virtually any foreign land, not speak a word of the language, and within an hour or two come up with pithy quotes."

The anonymous missive was quoted in a letter that Bernabei sent to Gannett Chairman Douglas McCorkindale last November. Bernabei accused the unnamed critic of making "false and malicious charges" and said USA Today had "branded" Kelley "a journalistic criminal." She wrote that Gallagher and the reporter investigating the matter "have treated Mr. Kelley as if he is 'guilty until proven innocent.' " She also wrote that Kelley would sue the newspaper unless it allowed him to return to reporting, issued a public apology and compensated him for legal fees.

But Bernabei said yesterday that Kelley now has no interest in pursuing litigation. "It's astonishing," she said, "that they chose to launch this huge investigation based on this anonymous letter."

Kelley has called the probe a "witch hunt," but Jurgensen said Saturday that he was "treated fairly and professionally throughout the investigation." The paper declined further comment yesterday.

Although USA Today has examined several Kelley stories, the focus remains on his 1999 front-page report that human rights activist Natasa Kandic, who was not named in the article, had obtained "a Yugoslav army three-ring notebook" that "contains a direct order to a lieutenant to 'cleanse' " a village in Kosovo.

Several sources familiar with the USA Today inquiry say the newspaper is convinced that Kelley did little to find the translator Danielja, who he contended could confirm the interview with Kandic. This conclusion, the sources said, was based in part on a review of Kelley's phone records that found only one call to the former Yugoslavia during the period of the investigation. Kandic told Kelley and Gallagher at the National Endowment for Democracy in October that she did not remember meeting the reporter.

Kelley said yesterday that he had flown to Belgrade at his own expense over the Thanksgiving holiday to try to find Danielja. He also said he had spent $2,500 on private investigators who tracked her from Houston to Seattle but that he was never able to speak with her.

As for the phone calls, Kelley said he repeatedly called the former Yugoslavia from other desks and from outside the office "because I didn't trust those investigating me anymore."

In its news story, USA Today said Kelley "offered different accounts of how he came to see the army documents. One account involved a single translator; another involved two translators who helped him interview a human rights investigator in Belgrade. Kelley said in his e-mail he 'always maintained that there were two translators.' "

Barbara Davis, a former U.N. mission chief in Yugoslavia, said in an interview from Belgrade yesterday that "I did the best I could to help him find the translator." She said the document Kelley wrote about in the 1999 story was cited in a report by the group Human Rights Watch and "the fact that it existed in the form that Jack described is very probable."

Davis wrote in a memo to USA Today that Kelley's story "is consistent with facts available prior to its publication and with developments after its publication."

On another Kelley story examined by the newspaper -- a 2001 piece recounting Israeli settlers opening fire on a Palestinian taxi while shouting such comments as "Muslim filth" -- USA Today said its reporter Mark Memmott "could not find anyone with first-hand knowledge of the attack."

In arguing that USA Today made unrealistic demands in an attempt to catch Kelley in a falsehood, Bernabei's letter to Gannett cited his coverage of the conflict in Chechnya. Executive Editor Gallagher "asked Mr. Kelley exactly where he had been standing on a battlefield in Chechnya in January 1995, the distance between him and the front line, and the exact location of the Russian military convoys," and "Mr. Kelley understandably could not recall the precise details."