EFTA01802869.pdf

From: Ed < Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2013 11:59 PM To: Epstein, Jeff Subject: USA TODAY---Michael Wolff column on my book Annals of Unsolved Crime http://usat.ly/XMlj6w The mother's milk of media is crime. As news or as entertainment, =rime, preferably with a corpse, not only gets ratings but, in the way =t is pursued and resolved, reflects our sense of order and authority. Once upon a time, resolution and guilt were guaranteed. But in =ost-modern media, highly rated crimes, the ones that haunt both the =ews and the coolest dramas, are not resolved. Coverups don't bring =erpetrators down, they hold them up. In 1966, Edward Jay Epstein, a Cornell graduate student, published a =ook called Inquest. The book was a critique of the yet mostly admired =arren Commission report and, arguably, launched not only the industry =f doubt that continues to surround the Kennedy assassination but the =onspiracy culture that shadows most politics and provides grist for so =uch media. This week, in the 50th anniversary year of the JFK assassination, =pstein publishes a grand package of shadow and suspicion, The Annals =f Unsolved Crime. Such open cases — most left open because some =owerful person or entity did not want them closed — are the ones =hat certainly make the most compelling media. In fact, the book makes = good case that much of history is the product of greater and smaller =onspiracies. In Epstein's world, modern fiction, from the convenient murders in =etflix's House of Cards to virtually every cable series with a =efarious hero corrupting, plundering and murdering with a fair amount =f impunity, is just a minor adaptation of reality. Epstein himself is a grand figure of modern journalism, an =nvestigative journalist who has continued to socialize with and stay =n terms with the rich and powerful he investigates. It is their =ecrets, or at least the secrets of their lawyers and bankers, that he =ften reveals. His 15 books, including his investigations of the =iamond trade, Hollywood business practices, CIA moles and television =ews, are all about disabusing the notion that what we accept as true =ears much relationship to what is real. Show Epstein a juicy crime and he will show you how it has been =ubverted by unseen powers for their own agenda, by the inevitable =ncompetence of investigative authorities and by the media because it =ikes a simple story line. Oh yes, and add on top of that the =bfuscations of amoral governments, the tradecraft of ubiquitous =ecurity and intelligence services, and the brutal efficiency of =rganized crime rings. Most recently, smelling a rat, the ever-freelance Epstein took it upon =imself to reinterpret the pursuit and investigation of former =nternational Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, arrested in =ew York for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel maid. His methodical =econstruction of everybody's footsteps not only uncovered videotape =urveillance implicating the French government in an effort to bring =own Strauss-Kahn, but rewrote the entire narrative of the ultimate =ncounter with the hotel maid in New York. Epstein doesn't so much solve crimes as make them more complicated. It =s not a question with Epstein of guilt or innocence, but of cause and =ffect. In this, Epstein diverges from most conspiracists who come =fter him. He has no politics nor agenda. He is not so much angry about =he general miscarriages of justice, but pleased to be able to see =hrough them. His new book is a mix of current headlines, from Strauss-Kahn to Amanda =nox to the 2006 assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in London by =adioactive isotopes, and historical holdovers, from the Lincoln =ssassination to the Lindbergh kidnapping and Jack the Ripper. His =oint being: It has always been thus. Power, media and incompetence =eliably combine to create convenient resolutions and substantially =ntrue stories. For Epstein, who was once novelist Vladimir Nabokov's assistant, there =s really no aha! moment; there is only a peeling back of the onion, something else revealed, some other avenue to go down — a kind of =ver-advancing new season of narrative. EFTA_R1_00145748 EFTA01802869 Many of Epstein's investigations have been ongoing for several decades. =hey don't seem to fade in his mind and, curiously, sometime come back =nto the public mind. His investigation of the 1982 death of Roberto Calvi, sometimes called =God's Banker," for his close involvement with Vatican finances, found =anging from Blackfriars Bridge in London, is required reading for =nyone who wants insight into the pope's sudden resignation three =ecades later. And then there is the Kennedy assassination, ever-present for Epstein. =is is the only version which, sensibly, and not at all neatly, because =othing is neat, accepts the version of a lone gunman and, as well, =xplains the conspiracy, several in fact simultaneously in progress, =hat very likely took advantage of Oswald's efforts. You might fairly say that Epstein's life-long work is not so much about =he looking-glass world of conspiracy theories, a world from which many =ournalists with weaker constitutions often never emerge, but about =odern story telling. Nothing is straightforward. Everything is distorted. There are no =ingle answers. Nothing is as true as you think it is — and vice =ersa. If you just make those assumptions, in the world according to Epstein, =verything starts to seem so much more reasonable, and you just might =ave a shot at writing high-end cable dramas. Best regards Ed Epstein <?xml version=.0" encoding=TF-8"?> <IDOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version=.0"> <dict> <key>date-last-viewed</key> <Integer>O</integer> <key>date-received</key> <Integer>1362355159</integer> <key>flags</key> <integer>859O195713</integer> <key>gmail-label-ids</key> <array> <integer>22</integer> <integer>2</integer> </array> <key>remote-id</key> <string>279844</string> </dict> </plist> 2 EFTA_R1_00145749 EFTA01802870