On Thursday authorities said they found letters written by the suspect accused of possessing explosive powder in his Greenwich Village apartment that featured the word "kill" scrawled repeatedly on them, and included an SS lightning bolt symbol. The Post went as far as to call him "Nazi-loving," and quoted a source saying Greene "told his girlfriend's parents that his grandfather was a Nazi during WWII." But Greene's lawyers released a statement to the Times strenuously denying any link to Nazism. “To state that the young man is a neo-Nazi when this is a man who comes from a family devastated by the Holocaust, based upon a mere doodle, is more than unfair, it is unforgivable."
The statement continues, “We are surprised and dismayed that rather than conducting a complete investigation and then turning over the results to the district attorney, the police have chosen to leak innuendos, half-truths and slurs."
Details about Greene's supposed fascination with Nazi culture were first reported by the New York Times police bureau chief, Wendy Ruderman. But as has been the custom in this story, it was the Post who magnified and perpetuated the unconfirmed detail with the quote from an anonymous police source.
The Post continues to report that Greene attended Harvard, which according to Harvard, he did not. The paper also has not made a correction to their initial story which linked Greene and his girlfriend, Morgan Gliedman, to Occupy Wall Street, a falsehood that reverberated in reports from Reuters, the Associated Press, and CBS News, even after police confirmed that it wasn't true.
The statement from Greene's attorneys does not deny the substance of Ruderman's reports on Thursday and Friday, which noted that Greene enjoyed making and detonating explosives while he was growing up. Greene also served eight months in jail after stabbing a bouncer with an eleven-inch knife in 2005.
The statement also notes, “Aaron comes from a caring, loving family. Unfortunately, this is another example of the pain and destruction of drug addiction.” An NYPD spokesman went on record calling the couple "admitted heroin addicts," and a condition of Gliedman's bail stipulated that she must attend rehab for 60 days, 30 inpatient and 30 outpatient.
Both are due back in court on January 29.
