Fact and fiction in the war on terror

Writing a bestseller in times of terror doesn't need a lot of intelligence, writes Michael Connors.

Looking for an exciting and lucrative career? You may have seen the recent recruitment advertisements for Australia's premier intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

They invite applications from people who can think outside the box. Such banal management-guru speak nicely glosses over the kind of thing you might be required to do if you are recruited, including having people think inside a box - namely a 5-by-5 room for interrogation. These are the boxes that generate most of the intelligence on terrorism.

And it is this intelligence that is increasingly cited in the many authoritative books on terrorism. It seems it is now respectable to include in a list of references things such as Terrorist 489: Intelligence Debriefing, CIA, Our Part of Cuba. If intelligence or counter-intelligence is not your thing, what about writing a book on the War on Terror?

It used to be globalisation that sold books. Now it's terror. Readers can't get enough of thinly researched - but polemically driven - books exposing the inner sanctums of terror networks. The great thing about writing books on current affairs is that opinion trumps fact. In the lazy world of prejudicial common sense that the war on terror has ushered in, you can build a writing career as long as you toe the right line, genuflect in the direction of Big Daddy (authority in all its rotundity), and repeat sanctimonious tripe about the need to repel barbarians at the gate.

If you take the right approach, you might have a bestseller in the making. Judging from the dozen or so books I have looked through, any person who can implausibly claim to have interviewed an informant has a chance of writing a bestseller. The more masked informants, the better the book will sell. When you do research have a mask on hand, just in case you get a photo opportunity. If you manage to score a few interviews, the blurb for your prospective book may read "Using unused sources, this book offers new news on a problem that is new".

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Fact-and-fiction-in-the-war-on-terror/2005/04/06/1112489556111.html