The controversy that erupted Tuesday over Ron Suskind's new book-length account of the Bush/Cheney administration's conduct of the war on terrorism raises some interesting questions about the way publishers treat a literary genre that has become increasingly vital to our political journalism.
The flap, at least so far, stems from the book's allegation that the White House ordered then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to fabricate a letter from an Iraqi intelligence official in which he not only admitted a Baghdad-Al Qaeda connection but bragged that Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, had been trained in Iraq. Nothing of the sort is true, of course, but Vice President Dick Cheney and his inner circle long have insisted such a link existed and that it justified the Iraqi war in which more than 4,000 Americans have died.
Suskind, formerly the Wall Street Journal's senior national affairs writer, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for a series on inner-city education. His new book, "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism," is the third extended nonfiction narrative he has reported and written on Washington under George W. Bush. To keep the record clear, I favorably reviewed the second of those volumes, "The One Percent Doctrine," and a laudatory quote from that review appears on the dust jacket of this new book, which I'll review for The Times later this week.
The latter fact has provided a front-row perspective on how Suskind's publisher, HarperCollins, has chosen to market this book, a work of journalism that involves questions crucial to the public interest.
It's customary for publishers of a newsworthy book to provide copies to reviewers with the understanding that reviews are "embargoed," that is, nothing will appear prior to the official publication day. In the cases of books containing extremely controversial or sensitive information, some publishers demand that the reviewer and his or her editor sign confidentiality agreements. Under its current book editor, David L. Ulin, The Times declines to enter such agreements because, should another publication break the embargo, our book staff would be precluded from sharing newsworthy information with Times reporters, which would impinge on our readers' right to know.
