A Question about the American Education System

In the UK if you have a PhD then there’s a 99% chance that you have a thesis. There are some people who don’t – they have by PhDs by portfolio, but then they would have published an awful lot of papers. Is this is same in America or is it possible to gain a PhD without a thesis?

I ask as I’m trying to find if someone’s memory of their qualifications is entirely accurate. To take a purely random example if I were to search the library of ETSU for a thesis by Smith, then I can do search and get a lot of results. However if I do a search for Beeblebrox I get no results. Similarly I can’t find papers by Dr Beeblebrox on Pubmed. Would it be wrong in this case to conclude that no one with the surname Beeblebrox has ever had a PhD awarded by ETSU – even if the newspapers in the UK were quoting leading medical authority Dr. Beeblebrox?