The real traitor confessed he forged evidence on military orders.

Evidence

Esterhazy was dishonorably discharged because of embezzlement. He at once hurried to a British journalist and told him that he—and not Dreyfus—was the author of the “bordereau,” which he had forged in Dreyfus’ handwriting on orders from Colonel Sandherr, his superior and former chief of the counterespionage division. A few days later Colonel Henry, another member of the same department, confessed forgeries of several other pieces of the secret Dreyfus dossier and committed suicide. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 275

Categorization

• XREF: The forged dossier deployed to frame a scapegoat connects forward to Arendt’s later treatment of propaganda and fabrication of evidence as tools of totalitarian rule.