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Aikman's confidence dates back to his observations of Kelley's reporting in Moscow. While Time magazine's bureau chief, Aikman had seen Kelley in action. He told the American Journalism Review that Kelley got "a remarkable handhold on some very difficult reporting" in Moscow even though he didn't speak Russian.

Aikman is also founder and leader of an international association of Christian journalists, called Gegrapha. He told CT that it was the nature of the group to uphold high reporting ethics, while also reaching out to those who fall short. "He should take the rap if the charges are true, but he is still a brother. When Chuck Colson was in prison, he wasn't abandoned by his friends."

Pippert echoes Aikman's comments, "For the record, Jack is my friend no matter what. He is a broken man. But I too have known Kelley as the most gentle and decent person in the business."

After talking with Kelley this week, Aikman still says that he does not regret supporting the errant reporter. "Not a bit of regret," he says, though he doesn't generally dispute the USA Today revelations. "All of Jack's Christian journalist friends are deeply grieved by what happened," but a group of them are willing to work with Kelley to set his life on the right course. Kelley also has the strong support of his wife Jacki who remains executive vice president of USA Today and says she has no plans to resign.

Aikman was not the only Christian journalist who put his reputation on the line to reach out to Kelley. The syndicated columnist Cal Thomas surprised many people when he walked into this year's National Prayer Breakfast with Kelley, who had quit USA Today a few weeks earlier.

Why would Thomas risk his sterling reputation as Washington's political moralist on a man one reporter has called "the liar of liars?" And does Thomas now regret what he did? In January, when the scandal broke into the public, Thomas observed, "The blood is in the water, and everybody is gun shy." For Thomas, that was the time to step into the roiling controversy to help a drowning friend. "For any believer, redemption is the ultimate goal."

But USA Today's expose of Kelley's misconduct also meant that Kelley had misled Thomas and other Christian journalists, just as he had the Evangelical Press Association, student journalism classes, and his own pastor.

When Thomas first called Kelley after the scandal broke, he knew that there might be more bad news coming. At the time, Thomas told CT, "I have a nagging feeling that there is more to this than we know." Although Thomas won't say what he discussed with Kelley this week, he says that reporters of great integrity convincingly made the charges against Kelley. "I do not think that the evidence is plausibly deniable," he concluded.

Thomas concluded that there were only three possibilities, a conclusion that many other Christian journalists share:

"Either all these guys are lying, which is not credible. Or that Jack was not telling the truth or that he is delusional. I don't see any other alternative."

Unbearable seven months
At the time Kelley resigned in January, he had been the subject for months of extremely intensive inquiry from his editors. Prior to that day, Jack Kelley, a deeply devout Christian, seemed to rise above his difficulties. If a young reporter needed some hard-to-get phone numbers, Kelley was the first one to open up his Rolodex. If you needed to know how to negotiate the dark alleys and corrupt lords of the earth, Kelley was your man.

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March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48