Democratic Senator John Walsh cites PTSD in Apparent Thesis Plagiarism

A Montana senator who is running for re-election suggested Wednesday that medication he took for post-traumatic stress disorder after service in Iraq may have been responsible for apparently plagiarized passages in his thesis.
Montana Sen. John Walsh's thesis, which was written to earn a master's degree from the U.S. Army War College, contains unattributed passages taken word-for-word from previously published papers.
The Democrat also said he was dealing with the stress of a fellow veteran's recent suicide.
Walsh said he made an unintentional mistake and did not intend to plagiarize.
"I don't want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor," Walsh told The Associated Press. "My head was not in a place very conducive to a classroom and an academic environment."
A spokesperson for Walsh's campaign said the apparent plagiarism was "unintentional."