In response to concerns expressed about Human Rights Watch's Marc Garlasco's obsessive Nazi medal collecting, he claims that it didn't occur to him that anyone might question his "hobby." "Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things."

Yet here's a post of his under his pseudonym Flak88 from September 2007:

Need advice

So I am trying to figure out what to do. My book [on Nazi war medals] is clsoe [sic] to done, but I am not sure if I should put my name on it. If folks at work found out I might very well lose my job. That is the reality, so don't dwell on it - ok? But this is a small group of people - should I worry? And shouldn't I stand up for myself? And if I use a psyeudonym [sic] isn't that worse, like I am trying to hide something?

I wonder whether this untruth is Garlasco's alone, or whether, as seems likely, HRW officials vetted his response, and were either too incompetent to discover his prevarication, or too dishonest to care. I also wonder what kind of person is so obsessed with German World War II medals that he publishes what amounts to a vanity press book on the subject, knowing it could cost him his job and reputation.

UPDATE: Another interesting Garlasco quote, from the same thread: "I will talk quietly to some at work that I trust - a small group indeed." Assuming he followed through, some at HRW knew about all this two years ago, though HRW bigwig Iain Levine says he only found out about it last week.

FURTHER UPDATE: While HRW's official response is that Garlasco collects World War II memorabilia from both sides, no evidence has surfaced of his significant interest in non-German memorabilia, and it turns out he refers to his fellow collectors as those in the "Nazi collecting field." And more from blogger Aussie Dave.

UPDATE re "Flak88": Several readers have emailed me to note that "88" is neo-nazi code for "Heil Hitler." I've mentioned this before, but Flack88 is also the name of a feared 88mm German anti-aircraft weapon. I'm quite sure that Garlasco chose his pseudonym based on this weapon, but I agree that choosing a name with 88 in it means that either (a) despite traveling in Nazi memorabilia collector circles, which includes a certain number of Nazi admirers, Garlasco somehow was oblivious to the fact that 88 is neo-Nazi code, or (b) Garlasco displayed at best an indifference to the possibility that people not well-versed in German weaponry would surmise that he's a Nazi sypathizer.