Roland Haas, the Newnan man who accidentally shot and killed himself Saturday, described himself as a former CIA assassin. He wrote a book about it. He detailed his execution of an Afghanistan heroin dealer and the man's two bodyguards, and cited his own torture in an Iranian jail. People hailed it as a gritty, realistic account of Cold War spying.
His eulogy is not so easily scripted.
In the aftermath of Haas's demise, the depiction of this metro Atlanta man's life is either one of continuing spy games or an elaborate ruse.
"He was definitely a patriot," his wife, Marilyn Haas, said.
The official version coming from Washington, however, is much different than hers.
"This individual was never a CIA employee," said Paula Weiss, CIA spokeswoman.
Specifically, the national intelligence agency said Haas wasn't a contractor, freelancer or hired in any capacity.
Haas, 58, died after driving a short distance from his apartment, stopping his car on a busy street and exiting it with the engine running. Investigators believe he had a 9mm semi-automatic handgun tucked in his waist and it accidentally discharged. Haas was struck in the leg, rupturing his femoral artery.
"We don't have anything to show that he did it intentionally," said Maj. James Yarbrough, Coweta County Sheriff's spokesman.
Haas's motives for writing his 2007 book, "Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA assassin," are far more unclear. He claimed he was only 19 and a Purdue University student on an NROTC scholarship in 1971 when the CIA recruited him as a deep cover operative.
At a Fayetteville bookstore appearance, Haas explained matter of fact how he supposedly killed the three men in Afghanistan and the effect it had on him.
"Three people were deleted, they were removed," he said. "Those three acts irrevocably changed who I was. ... The day I undertook that first mission successfully, I ceased being the person I had been."
Of his time spent incarcerated in an Iran jail, he said: "The good thing is, you only feel about the first three or four hits and then you pretty much pass out."
While some readers were entertained by Haas's stories, others immediately questioned the source and accuracy of his information. Plagiarism was even suggested. In an Amazon.com review of the book, a man named Geoff Deane accused Haas of using an account of a drug user and a shootout from a website article he wrote, replete with an error Deane had committed.
"[It] sounded very familiar when I read it," Deane wrote.
Haas's book was published by Dulles, Va.-based Potomac Books, which lists several titles involving intelligence themes. Claire Noble, publicity manager, described Haas as "a patriot who made his country better," and said Potomac had no reason to take issue with the book.
"His story passed muster with our outside reviewers and inside editorial board," Noble told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Haas had a verifiable intelligence background -- with the U.S. Army Reserve Command. He was a civilian employee at Fort McPherson in metro Atlanta, serving as deputy chief of staff for intelligence since 1995, according to Maj. Corey Schultz, Army Reserve spokesman. Records showed Haas came to his post from Wildflecken, Germany. Haas's duties included planning and coordinating Army Reserve resourcing, training and support within the broader Army and Department of Defense intelligence community. In this role, he had no reason to carry a gun. He was more of a computer geek.
Spy Talk, a Washington Post blog, reported that a handful of former CIA officers were so turned off by Haas's book, they protested his employment to his Army Reserve supervisors. "As one of an increasing number of former intelligence officers who believes that Roland Haas' book ... is a hoax, I find your willingness to tolerate Mr. Haas in his scam very disturbing," wrote John F. Sullivan, a retired CIA polygrapher.
Haas, the father of two, recently had been in poor health. He had quadruple bypass heart surgery in November and a kidney removed five weeks ago, Marilyn Haas said. Yet she said it had nothing to do with his death.
"It was an accident," she said. "Nobody is going to ever know exactly how or why."
Marilyn Haas still doesn't question her husband's assertions he was a CIA operative, though she admitted that family members had no knowledge of it until the book was released.
"The family did not know, believe me," she said. "We knew when everyone else did, when the book came out. He did a lot of this stuff before we even met."
As for the CIA distancing itself from her husband, Marilyn Haas had a ready explanation: "Of course, they said that."
Staff writers Kristi E. Swartz and Dan Raley contributed to this article.
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