Does kidnapped U.S. lesbian blogger in Syria actually exist... or did she steal London woman's ID?

[Christer Forslund]

Who Financed Tom MacMaster?

Moon of Alabama Posted by b on June 13, 2011 at 03:11 AM

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2011/06/who...aster.html


The Gay Girl In Damaskus blog, which made the Syrian government look bad, was a hoax.

[On] Sunday, the truth spilled out: The gay girl in Damascus confessed to being a 40-year-old American man from Georgia.

The Electronic Intifada was the first to find the man and the Washington Post story builds on that report. But while the reporter at the Washington Post seem to have interviewed Tom MacMaster, the man who confessed of being the sockpuppeteer, they left out an important question. Here is how they describe him:

MacMaster, a Middle East peace activist who is working on his master's degree at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, ...
...
... he said Friday, reached in Istanbul, where he is vacationing with his wife, a graduate student working on a PhD in international relations.
...
... Stone Mountain, Ga. Local real estate records show that MacMaster has owned the house since 2000 and that he and his wife lived there until they left for Scotland in September 2010.
Sam MacMaster said his brother was offered a full scholarship from Emory University, which he chose for the school's expertise on the Austro-Goths. Once there, however, MacMaster quickly switched his specialization to Arabic studies. Later, he traveled to Syria and Jordan to perfect his language skills.
...
Tom MacMaster's interest in Syria also seems to have been deepened by his 2007 marriage to Britta Froelicher, a woman he met in Georgia through an online dating site. MacMaster said in the interview from Turkey that he and Froelicher traveled to Syria in 2008. In the same interview, Froelicher said she is working on a PhD at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, focusing on Syrian economic development.

A forty year old man who is still working on his master degree, married to a wife who is also yet to finish her academic degree. They both travel multiple times to Turkey, Syria and Jordan. He owns a house.
The question the WaPo reporter, and other media accounts on the story, do not answer is: Who is financing the MacMasters?
It is not normal for someone being forty to still work on a master degree. It is not normal for a pair who still are going to school to travel multiple times to Jordan, Syria and Turkey. It is not normal to become rich enough tio buy a house by being a Middle East peace activist. Unless of course one gets paid to be exactly that.
Someone must have financed the time it took MacMaster to write all the "exchanges" he had with that fictitious gay girl. Who was it?