The greatest betrayal of abbey. Ellen's life began with a newspaper assignment. I was reading a story about detox diets. And i need to quote an expert and someone suggested this guy. Abby is a journalist and the author of duped a book about this fateful interview and the bizarre life altering aftermath and so i quoted him Actually it was in the new york times called a fact check. I said are you still in florida and he said no. I'm in the navy now i rejoined. I'm opening up a hospital for kids with cancer in iraq and afghanistan. And i said that's awesome. I want to write about that. Keep me posted and so he sort of did so. We'd never met in person until all why a later that when he finally was coming to new york city where i was living because he had to give a big talk at the un clearly and so he came to do is talk of the un and we went to dinner six months later abbey and this man who she calls the commander were engaged. They moved in together in dc. Well he worked at the pentagon. Abby went to grad school for international relations. But the more time she spent with the commander the more abby sense to something just wasn't quite right. What i made you suspicious. Me told me he had met his first. The first ex wife who's really his second ex wife but his first when he rescued her when she was held hostage in iran. And i said the age didn't add up. I said when we in iran he said oh it was a secret mission. You wouldn't have heard about it really well. And then i thought okay the someone has to do these jobs like better better. Decoy this nerdy asthmatic. Doctor you know like like why not and then. He told me that he worked at guantanamo as the medical director which he did that was part of the problem is that he kind of mixed fiction and fact together and one of his patients was a very wanted terrorist named osama bin laden. And i said that is impossible. And he said the president doesn't know and then i got like all you know. Carrie mathison a homeland. Like god. who's the jihadist. And who's not and who knows what it was. I was gasoline making myself crazy. Suddenly abby found herself using her reporting skills to investigate her own fiance she talked to professors about whether the commanders impressive stories could even be possible. Never like yeah. That's the possible. The final straw was when we went out to dinner with my parents. And we had brussel sprouts and he raved about the brussels sprouts and when we got out he said that meal was awful and i said why did you lie. And he said. I wanted to make them feel better. And that's when. I said you know what i'm out. There's no need to lie about something like okay. So so he was treating been logging and the president to know about it but it was. The brussels sprouts praised that gave him away in the end. I knew they weren't good but more than that. He admitted that he had lied. He said i wanted to make them feel good. And i thought you lie so beautifully which has flowed out of him. If you could lie about that you could lie about anything when you finally did confront him. How did he react to that. Well i left him. I said i'm out. So i never talk to him again. And i didn't find out until a year and a half later that he in fact had been stealing identities and when he was a drug addict. And i got a call from ncis and they said you know there's a doctor who's been writing prescriptions for vicodin and he's been using a bunch of people's names and identities and you're one of the people. Do you know this guy. Do you ever prescription. And i said well. No 'cause i prefer valium and so of course but anyway so he went to jail to make a statement against him. I just started researching all this stuff about this guy. Heaven the guy you're about to marry steal your identity is obviously different than casey's going through but it actually has a lot more in common with her situation than you might think abbas wrestled with the kind of psychological trauma that really defines any breach of trust. And she understands the obsession. That's now leading. Casey to work twenty hour weekends on her case. So you're in this kind of like luminol space of you may be probably sort of know them. But you don't know and you're not sure if you're ever gonna find out right. Can you kind of describe where you are with all this well. I kind of actually have this idea that i might want to sort of help other victims by maybe writing a book about the experience. I guess what i'm trying to do. Is you know sort of gather information about how other people handled it and how they move forward with their lives. But i don't necessarily want focus too much on our case. Because i feel like it's not mentally healthy evian. You've seen more people get duped and cope with getting duped than the next by by a long shot. So i'm curious to hear sort of your take on. What's the most interesting thing to me is. When i was reading the book was a how many people i spoke to. Who had been duped and most people didn't wanna talk about it or use their real name because everybody felt completely humiliated. So when you talk about writing a book to help people and what i tried to do anyway is at least make people feel less stupid. And if you're gonna feel stupid that's okay because everybody's stupid then