I agree with your assessment, which you have stated beautifully. I also agree with sending a revised letter. Greenwald has sent out a further comment:

If someone wants to argue that I should have contacted the WH for comment before writing this, that's a reasonable criticism. I'll concede that it would have been better to do so (though obviously, the WH's denial is hardly dispositive, and there was obviously SOMETHING going on here with James and this Tuesday meeting - not even the WH says it was a wholesale fabrication - and it's certainly possible that the distancing was in response to the uproar).

But the claim that James' email wasn't sufficiently confirmed is nonsense. The source that gave it to me - Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program - is not only extremely credible and reliable in general, but is specifically so when it comes to Dr. James. they've been working on him for years, know more about him than anyone, and have all kinds of connections to him, his school and his colleagues. They assured me 100% - in response to my asking - that they had confirmation that the email was valid and legitimate. Nothing provides 100% certainty, but I'm more than comfortable with the basis I had for everything I wrote. I certainly didn't expect - and still don't believe - that someone like him just decided to publicly send around an email to a large audience making all sorts of claims about his new appointment that were just completely invented.

Might he have engaged in some exaggeration and puffery to make it seem more important than it really was? Sure, that's possible. But I sincerely doubt he just made it up out of whole cloth, and also doubt that the HLS program got that fooled." Among the comments on Greenwald's piece are several notations of James' APA status and awards, as well as currently being president of Div 19, and several references to article by Eee and myself. Greenwald's article has revived some public interest in the psychologists who have allegedly tortured.