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French books allege 911 conspiracy { July 3 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-lv-media3jul03.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dlivinghttp://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-lv-media3jul03.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dliving
REGARDING MEDIA
French 9/11 Theory Finds Voice in the U.S.
Despite alleged internal clashes, firm will publish a claim that tragedy resulted from failed oil talks. It was a big hit in France.
By TIM RUTTEN
TIMES STAFF WRITER
July 3 2002
One of the minor mysteries of Western culture is how a country that makes a fetish of reason, as France does, can produce quite so much pernicious nonsense masquerading as literary or journalistic analysis.
Jacques Derrida and the deconstructionists are Exhibit A.
There is, however, nothing mysterious about American publishers' recognition that commerce and controversy often are entwined, which is why so many of these Francophonic fantasies ultimately find an English voice. The latest such translation involves the events of Sept. 11 and has sparked an unusual internal argument over Nation Books' decision to publish "Forbidden Truth" by two Parisians, Jean-Charles Brisard, a "financial investigator," and Guillaume Dasquie, a journalist who specializes in intelligence issues. Their book is one of two post- 9/11 fables that have become bestsellers in France. The other is Thierry Meyssan's "L'Effroyable Imposture" (The Horrifying Fraud), which alleges that the Pentagon was struck by a missile and the twin towers by remote-controlled airliners, all at the behest of right-wing conspirators inside the U.S. government. Brisard and Dasquie's book was just three weeks in the writing and was published in France under the title "Bin Laden: La Verite Interdite" (Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth).
Brisard, 32, and Dasquie, 35, allege not only an intricate Saudi conspiracy to support Osama Bin Laden's terror network, but also that "the Bush Administration stalled the search for Bin Laden as a bargaining chip to cut a deal with the Taliban to run an [oil] pipeline through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean." The breakdown of those purported talks, the authors suggest, precipitated the attacks of 9/11. "Oil, not terrorism, is why we are in Afghanistan," according to a synopsis accompanying an uncorrected galley made available to the press.
Nation Books, which intends to publish "Forbidden Truth" in September, is a sister organization of Nation magazine, whose Washington editor, David Corn--also a regular commentator on National Public Radio--has critiqued and dismissed Brisard and Dasquie's book in two different articles. Though he declined to discuss Nation Books' "internal discussions," sources familiar with them said Corn was "dismayed and agitated" when he learned the publisher had purchased the manuscript. According to those sources, Corn wrote a memorandum "dissecting the book and vigorously objecting to its publication" as contravening the liberal magazine's principles.
"The problem with these contrived conspiracy theories," said Corn, "is that they obscure the facts about genuine governmental malfeasance. How do you deal, for example, with the CIA's actual misdeeds when a significant part of the population has been led to think the agency killed John Kennedy? Promoting that sort of thing is just plain exploitative."
Nation Books recently has enjoyed unexpected financial success with a volume of essays by Gore Vidal and former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's explication of the Al Gore-George Bush electoral standoff in Florida. Carl Bromley, who recently took over the press, argues that--Corn's criticism notwithstanding--"Forbidden Truth" is not exploitation. "I look to publish what is interesting and stimulating," he said. "The Nation magazine is a big tent; the press is an even bigger tent which I hope reflects the lively state of culture and discussion on the left and center left. I am looking forward to any controversy that results from publishing this book because my role as an editor is to make a dent in the public discourse."
Or, as Alicia Robles who is handling publicity for "Forbidden Truth," put it: "We are expecting big things from this book."
Work in Progress
John Rhodehamel is the Norris Foundation curator of American history at the Huntington Library. His most recent book is "The American Revolution: Writings From the War of Independence," which he edited for the Library of America.
"I've been working for the past six years on editing the diaries of Gideon Wells, who was secretary of the Navy under Abraham Lincoln. I hope it will be out in the fall of 2003. It is without question the most important diary kept by a member of the Lincoln Administration because it provides us the best--and, in some cases, the only--inside information on many of the most important events of that period. It also is the only diary by a Cabinet member that covers the whole Civil War. There is unequaled material, for example, on the genesis of the Emancipation Proclamation and on some of the near-rebellions that took place inside Lincoln's Cabinet early in the war. There is also some very good firsthand information on Lincoln's assassination. Wells was in the room when Lincoln died seven hours after he was shot and provides a description of that period.
"What's particularly valuable about Wells is that he wrote his diary entries at the end of every day. He was a former newspaper man and I think newspaper people have an enviable talent for composing quickly and freshly. After Wells retired he went back and changed his diary. Some of the alterations were stylistic, others were undertaken to make himself look better. Many were deceptions intended to denigrate Wells' great enemy, William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state. Another of his enemies was Ulysses S. Grant, whom Wells liked when he was a general but opposed when he became president. So, Wells went back and rewrote the favorable passages he had composed about Grant during the war.
"What I'm doing is a kind of reverse literary engineering, restoring Gideon Wells' actual contemporaneous diary based on the original manuscript, which is in the Library of Congress."
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Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
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