tom mcmaster. 40-year-old american. posting under this amina since 2006.me reading his apology today, you know, he's a fiction writer, a wannabe fiction writer perhaps with a pension for middle eastern issue. what have you learned about him? by the way, what have you also learned about the photo? who is this woman? who is she? >> well, let's start with that. as the story began to unravel early last week, "the wall street journal" and other news organizations started reporting that there was this woman in london, a croatian woman whose ex-husband saw the photo on a website after amina had been quote, unquote, kidnapped. he alerted amina and she started contacting news organizations saying take my face off of websites. that's me. >> zero connection to this whole story. >> zero connection. possibly -- from what we can tell, tom mcmaster is originally from the atlanta area. he's currently studying at the university of edinburgh. over the last five years he was interested in doing this online experiment, trying to push the boundaries between truth and fiction.

. >> over the weekend, 40-year-old tom mcmaster, an american based in scotland, admitted he was the man behind the popular blog "a gay girl in damascus." >> the words of a 40-year-old married american man who claims he just wanted a western audience to care about the story in syria. >> jon: literally, literally has balls. [laughter] what the hell? this brave, gay, missing syrian freedom fighter is none of those things. and by the way, gay girl in damascus. that makes americans care nor about the story? how long has he been out of our country? try blurry photo of congressional genitals in damascus. now you have our attention. [laughter] still, it raises the question, why claim that this fake person amina was kidnapped, a stunt that put real non-maidup syrians in danger. >> he was going on vacation to istanbul and sort of as an away notice, he has her kidnapped in the blog. >> because he was going on vacation and he wanted to put it on hold for a little while. >> jon: vacation from what? are you worn out from sitting in your apartment all day pretending to be a lesbian on the internet? [l

it's actually tom mcmaster, an american male living in scotland.he's finally come clean saying he's never expected this level of attention. >>> political satire actually scooped the award on the tony awards. it played in london. it was a big winner among the plays bagging five awards. i saw that in london. it was amazing. >>> and take a look at this. okay? look very closely. can you spot the difference? hmm. what is it? oh, i'll tell you. it's missing underwear. if you look here, you can see that super man has brought his bright red trunks. he used to wear them outside of the blue suit. they've released an image of a new superman in a pair of jeans. they're hitting the reset button on the whole superhero family. they're all getting new outfits, new stories and new characters. i don't know. superman without the red underwear? it's just not super man. >> i don't know. it's kind of -- i don't know. it doesn't work for me. the boots, just doesn't work. >> you're watching "world one" live from london. >>> a big win with bigger challenges to win. it won'

his tame is tom mcmaster. he made the whole thing up.he posted something, where he did not apologize, but what he said was, look, it was a fictional character, and he played an important part in bringing to attention some of the issues that gay women face in the arab world. he doesn't apologize for it, but it's made a lot of people really mad. >> so the other bloggers, especially those in the region, what are they all saying? as we know, as the story circulated, this alleged gay woman became such an icon within all of this. >> she really did. people are really annoyed. look at what people say i say shame on you. what you have done is harmed many and put us all in danger. >> someone else called daniel nasr said this, you took away my voice and many of who i know, and there is no positive side effect of the hoax. it did not bring attention to syria. it brought attention to a white fantasy. a lot of skritices too saying this whole hoax gifs the syrian government an upper hand. they can go around saying, look, don't believe what you read, it

tom mcmaster led readers to believe that the blog belonged to a young lesbian in syria and entries claimingas abducted sparked an online campaign demanding her release. mcmaster said he was trying to draw attention to the dire situation in syria. cnn was among the many organizations reporting on the blog, and cnn has not been allowed into syria to comfort unrest. >>> fire crews are making some progress on that huge wildfire in arizona, the second largest on record in that state. they have stopped the northward advance and are now focusing on the eastern flank, building fire lines in new mexico. the so-called wall of fire has burned 706 square miles and has destroyed 33 homes and businesses. it's only about 10% contained. and take a look at this accident caught on cell phone video. a crane was lifting a fiberglass pool into the back of a home in minnesota when something obviously went very wrong. the crane came crashing down on the house destroying the garage roof and slicing off the chimney and the truck tipped up in the air and the pool came down crashing down on a backyard fence. fortunat

ask you this final question, because a lot of people think in some ways, beau cases, yours and tom mcmaster, it's been kind of a setback for lesbians. now that this has all come out, do you feel like you owe anyone an apology? >> i think i do owe the community an apology because i know that some -- we did good work on the site. i had some incredible writers that were out there. one developed a whole series on the corrective rape issue in south africa. and now the credibility on that is hurt. i mean, people are saying, well, look at your leader. what about the rest of you? and i only hope that the rest -- the readership doesn't hold that against them, because i wasn't being straight up about who i was. because everybody else on that site -- everybody on that site was real. >> everybody except you. all right. pretty stunning revelations. big graber, thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you. >>> still to come, a fox news host flirts with racial stereotyping. why dick morris is stopping his criticism of mitt romney. and a miami newspaper blows the biggest local sports story in years. our "

and it wasn't until the person who was actually writing the blog, which is a guy called tom mcmaster,g in edinburgh in scotland, until he was going on vacation to istanbul and sort of as an away notice he has her kidnapped in the blog. >> that has so many of us worried, i remember. a lot of us had been following her story. all of the sudden she gets kidnapped. i remember, we even reported, many of us did, she's missing and what's happened to her. >> that's because he was going on vacation, he wanted to put it on hold for a little while. >> from what i read he doesn't believe he harmed anyone. he thought he was helping the cause. >> a lot of people were impressed with what he wrote. he was writing -- he showed that he did have a knowledge of the gay and lesbian seen in the middle east, if you like. in fact, some of his postings were actually reposted on gay and lesbian blogs in the middle east. he says he did it as a challenge to write in that voice. and he said there was a lot of vanity involved as well. he said if he'd written these things as an american male, no one would have liste