Website Finds Facts Behind Addiction Memoir Are Shaky

Yet Frey's graphically drawn 2003 memoir of downfall and rehabilitation, "A Million Little Pieces," became last year's top-selling nonfiction book after Oprah Winfrey picked it for her viewers' book club.

Frey's memoir sold nearly 2 million copies, the movie rights were purchased by Warner Bros. and the book established the author as an inspirational figure for recovering addicts.

But there might be less to Frey than meets the eye, according to the Smoking Gun website, which reported Sunday that it had been unable to substantiate significant portions of Frey's book, including arrests and court actions for which public records should be available.

The website's investigation, which began in November, sparked an Internet fracas involving Frey, who first broke the news Saturday night by posting a Smoking Gun e-mail to him on his bigjimindustries.com website.

"This is the latest investigation into my past, and the latest attempt to discredit me," Frey wrote. "In an effort to be consistent with my policy of openness and transparency, I thought I should share it with the people who come to this website and support me and my work. So let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won't dignify this with any sort of further response."

Frey has said in past interviews that he initially pitched a version of his story as a novel, but found no takers.

The Smoking Gun article, written by founding editor Bill Bastone, a former Village Voice reporter, quoted Frey, 36, as acknowledging over three interviews that he embellished many elements of his personal travails, including much of the three-month jail term he claimed to have served after drunkenly striking an Ohio police officer with his car in October 1992.

Bastone said Monday that the incident was much tamer than portrayed by Frey, who described a scene in which he was charged with assault and other felonies in Granville, Ohio, after he hit a policeman with his slow-moving car and cursed at officers as he forced them to remove him from his car.

Instead, Bastone wrote, Frey was detained after parking in a no-parking zone with one of his wheels rolled up onto the curb. An officer who spotted the infraction -- and who was interviewed by a Smoking Gun reporter -- said he arrested Frey without incident after suspecting he was drunk.