Inside the Bowe Bergdahl book proposal: Soldier's platoon mates speak out
By Michael Isikoff August 13, 2014 2:46 AM Yahoo News
While the U.S. Army weighs whether to bring charges against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was freed earlier this year after spending nearly five years as a Taliban captive in Afghanistan, six of his former platoon mates are shopping proposals for a book and movie that would render their own harsh verdicts.
A draft of their book proposal, a copy of which was obtained by Yahoo News, depicts Bergdahl as a "premeditated" deserter who "put all of our lives in danger" — and possibly aided the Taliban — when he disappeared from his observation post in eastern Afghanistan in the early morning hours of June 30, 2009.
But the political furor over Bergdahl's release from Taliban captivity — the result of a U.S.-Taliban deal to swap five Guantanamo terrorism suspects in exchange for Bergdahl's freedom — is complicating the book's prospects. Agents for the soldiers say that some publishers have balked, in at least one case out of fear that the project would bolster conservative criticism of the Obama administration.
"I'm not sure we can publish this book without the Right using it to their ends," Sarah Durand, a senior editor at Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, wrote in an email to one of the soldiers' agents.
"[T]he Conservatives are all over Bergdahl and using it against Obama," Durand wrote, "and my concern is that this book will have to become a kind of 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth'" — a reference to the group behind a controversial book that raised questions about John Kerry's Vietnam War record in the midst of his 2004 presidential campaign. (Durand did not respond to requests for comment. "We do not comment about our editorial process," said Paul Olsewski, vice president and director of publicity at Atria.)
Another complication is that Bergdahl's former platoon mates are all potential key witnesses in the Army's investigation into his 2009 disappearance. Two of the would-be authors, who were recently questioned as part of the Army probe, insisted in interviews that they aren't advancing a political agenda but want to set the record straight, as they see it, about Bergdahl's conduct and President Obama's praise for him at a Rose Garden ceremony in May.
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So you can have your right to freedom of speech; but we just won't publish you?
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