How the NeoCons 'Managed' Saddam Hussein

Part One of Four

- And Why the Facts Matter

“I'm not a journalist and the facts don't matter.” - Rayelan Allen, RMN owner and editor

“All politics is personal,” or “the personal is political.” Early feminist sayings

In November of 2002 we had been lied to about Weapons of Mass Destruction, the reason given for invading Iraq, resistance to the war was waning. Standing in the way, though this was not publicly known at the time, was Saddam Hussein, who was very willing to leave Iraq forever – if he was paid.

Paying him off would have been far cheaper than the cost of the war. But it would not have accomplished the real goals.

The real drive for war was oil and the dollar. The details were carried out by a group of people who had no conscience, willing to lie themselves into power and lie, cheat and steal to keep it. Together, they have changed our world, bringing us to the precipice of destruction. These are the acts of individuals who behave in exactly the same way in their personal lives. I know.

The build up to war, constructed by the Bush White House, took place as events in my own life played out in shocking ways but which proved to be highly informative in a horrible way.

The strategies used by those I was forced to deal with personally were the same as those used by the NeoCons who were driving us to war. At the time, I was fighting to protect my daughter, Morgan, from the consequences of her life-long bad behavior and judgment. Later, I realized this was not possible.

She is a psychopath acting on the mistaken belief she can get away with anything. Harming others, or even killing them, was perfectly acceptable to her.

Our internal values determine all parts of our lives and for all parts we are responsible and accountable.

How many people died because of the War in Iraq and the lies told to us? At least a million and a half, though the total is probably higher.

How many people misdirected their life efforts through patriotic fervor incited by people who had intentionally used the symbols and language of honor to defraud us? The number is unbearably high.

How many of us have struggled to understand how this could have happened?

Hold the impact of the war and how this was accomplished in mind as we consider what happened from the time this story began in 1997 until the invasion of Iraq began in the spring of 2003.

The Personal

I first became active in politics during the Goldwater campaign. My goal was to achieve social justice and individual empowerment. While pursing these goals I joined the Libertarian Party in 1974. I managed campaigns, ran for office, did fundraising and organized. I left when it was clear the Kochs had destroyed any potential for effective action in 1988.

I studied the problem of organizations while remaining active. In 1997 I was a Regent for the National Federation of Republican Women and coping with the continuing crises generated by my husband, Craig Franklin. Not filing his taxes, when he owed nothing, was typical of Craig's irresponsible behavior. I wrote this article about what we called, “The Tax Crisis,” in 2008. You're Not Paranoid – The IRS is out to get you.

After I solved the problem Craig decided to leave me and take all the money with him.

Beginning in 1997 Morgan, who had committed the incredibly ugly act of working with Craig to defraud me of millions of dollars during our divorce, had, in October of 1998, started a sexual relationship with an old boy friend of mine, John Fund, then on the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. She wanted a rich husband and decided he would do.

Always ambitious, she had emerged from her childhood, which had traumatized her entire family, functionally illiterate – and her previous prospect for marital bounty, Eugene Volokh, had flown the coop the month before.

She was actually traveling with my estranged husband, on a tour of New York, London, and Paris, when she and John started their affair. Would she have hesitated if she had known how promiscuous John had become, enabled by the power accrued as a NeoCon operative? Probably not. But she might have played things differently.

John Fund was placed at the WSJ in 1984 by connections who maintained close ties with the people who were already working to put Bush in office by stealing the election in 2000. Positioned as a journalist he is actually a political operative, his first experiences in this coming through the Koch Brothers' attempt to take over the Libertarian Party.

Taking up with your mother's former boy friend, someone you have referred to as 'Uncle John' since you were a child, is scandalous behavior, there is no other word for it. This type of behavior is normal for Morgan.

I had no idea this was going on because I was thousands of miles away caring for my oldest son, Arthur, who had attempted suicide by shooting himself through the brain on March 22, 1998. It would be another year before he would be able to even go to the bathroom himself. My entire focus was on his care.

Morgan and I were not talking because her deviousness and lies had included attempting to persuade me she needed a heart transplant in an attempt to get me to turn off her brother's life support. She called me to ask for his heart. This happened, I later realized, soon after she had been paid $10,000 to do this by my estranged husband, Craig Franklin.

One of the reasons psychopaths get away with so much is our inability to believe the ugliness of their real motives. This is also true in politics.

When John started his liaison with Morgan he expected a job as speechwriter for the Bush administration, still two years in the future. They were already discussing war with Iraq. John would assist, pushing the agenda in the media.

After years of dealing with Morgan I knew not to believe her if she did not offer proof but I had no reason to distrust John. So, in September, 1999, for practically the only time in her life, Morgan told the truth, with proof.

Puzzled at the persistent rumors about a relationship between her and John, I called to ask him. John and I had been chatting regularly for over twenty years. Asked about the relationship he expressed shock. He denied it, saying he had fed her cat for her once or twice. I believed him. He was completely persuasive, giving the impression of absolute openness.

It was the WeaselSearch Tape, recorded by Morgan in September of 1999, which changed my mind.

This is a man who helped lie us into war. His personal ethics match the ones he uses professionally.

One afternoon that September Morgan called me to beg for help. She was broke and about to be evicted from her apartment in Jersey City. John, she said, had forced her to abort his baby the previous March and then dumped her. A heated discussion ensued as I relayed to her my recent conversation with John.

Hearing a call coming in, Morgan put me on hold. It was John. She recorded her conversation with him. You can listen to it on the tape above. A few minutes later I had heard the whole of it.

I was stunned and confronted him on the phone soon afterward. He hung up on me. His cover blown he moved to the next strategy, distancing.

As a result of a fax I sent to the WSJ moments later, the job as a speechwriter for the Bush White House, already being promised, vanished. The fax, I was told, was copied at least five times on its way to his office.

The illusion of family values needed to be retained.

Instead of a job in the White House, which John had earned through his work as an operative for the NeoCons, then coming to power, he was told to write a book about how liberals steal elections. This would provide cover for the electronic hacking about to begin.

Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, would be published September 24, 2004.

The relationship between John and Morgan seemed to stabilize for a while. Fund spent nearly half his time at the apartment I rented in NY at the Rivergate. I was rarely there. John told me he intended to marry Morgan, who he said really loved. I wished them well, glad they had come to some resolution.

But then, in December of 2000 Morgan realized he was sneaking into my empty room to call other women, including Federal judge Diane Sykes, late at night. He left emails where Morgan could find them.

I received copies of these from Morgan via email. This one, Fund sent on July 22 this same year, was typical.

Morgan's relationship with John continued, headed for rockier and rockier ground as the number of 'other women' Morgan discovered increased.

Despite this, they moved in together in Jersey City in July of 2001, just days after Morgan had vented to John Connolly of Vanity Fair. From those interviews Connolly wrote an article titled, “Sex, Lies and the Tape.” Over my objections Morgan had given him a copy of the tape she had made in 1999.

The article was published September 4, 2001, along with the tape.

Connolly had arranged for the article to be published in Talk Magazine - but Fund intimidated Tina Brown into canceling the story by having his attorney, John J. Walsh, call and make threats. Walsh later billed for services, producing this letter. Morgan also found a Work Memo later.

Instead, the article was published only online on a site called WeaselSearch, from which it got its name. When the site folded it was hosted on American Politics Journal, where it is today.

What Fund did to stop publication is standard operating procedure for NeoCons. He used this later against me.

But because the article refuted the lies John had continued to tell, a scandal erupted anyway.

Understandably, this event did not contribute to bliss in John and Morgan's relationship but the reasons were far more complex than just one little article.

Morgan called me, outraged. She had refurbished John's apartment at his request and he was refusing to pay her back. When she moved in the utilities had been turned off because of his non-payment and the plumbing did not work. I made her produce the receipts since I still did not trust her. She kept track of payment for cleaning supplies and repairs, which were complete before she told me John was battering her in the later part of September.

The violence, she later said, had begun one evening after an event at the ALEC Conference in New York in early August.

I had hoped the relationship would work out. To say it didn't vastly understates the case.

I did not believe her until I heard it happening over the phone, which happened in late September. When I heard John's demonic glee as he pounded her I felt obligated to take action. As I have said, Morgan lies. Another friend of her's, Eric Buchanan, confirmed he had also heard this taking place on another occasion. Both of us advised Morgan to leave him. She refused.

During this time Carol Divine Molin, a Republican Woman, called me to express concern for Morgan as a battered woman. She told me she counseled women who had been battered.

Then it came out that her motive was reigniting her brief fling with Fund by assisting him with Morgan. The fling had taken place some time earlier, after Fund spoke to a group to which Molin belonged. Liking what she saw, evidently, she took him home with her. Fund's parting words were, by report, “You got to swallow.”

We learned Molin had complained to the management at the Wall Street Journal about how she had been treated the year before.

The beatings continued. Morgan filed police reports in New Jersey.

Morgan became aware John was still lying about their relationship, saying he barely knew her, while she was living with him. At one point she used her cell phone so I could hear him telling these lies to Lloyd Grove from the Washington Post.

Listening to him lie was stunning. Again, I begged her to leave.

After she found even more emails, from a growing list of other women, she agreed. The emails included these between him and Michele Davis, on January 13^th and 18^th, and this Email, revealing the sexual relationship he had begun with law professor Gail Heriot, also on the 13^th of January.

Christine Hall Reis, a new bride, offered the services of herself and her friend, Julie Currie, from Kroll Opposition Research to John on January 21, 2002. Christine had sent an unusual photo of herself to John, which he printed and left on the floor, where Morgan found it.

Morgan moved out of the apartment in Jersey City and into an apartment I rented for her in New York around January 24 - 26, 2002. I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was not over. The craziness escalated.

John found out where Morgan was living and moved in with her. He left a litter of papers there, some of which Morgan scanned and sent me to prove this was happening. This letter from Fidelity Investments is dated January 25, 2002. Morgan picked it up off the floor in her Manhattan apartment after John left it there. Another incident of battery soon took place just moments before I arrived at the apartment. When I walked in I saw Morgan bloodied and bruised.

The New York police report was filed.

John had been told by his two closest friends, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, who occupied adjacent spaces on his speed dial, he needed to provide evidence Morgan had lied. Which she might well have done. But there were witnesses. Buchanan and I had heard beatings take place and were ignored by authorities. Neither of us were ever called though the authorities knew we were witnesses.

Fund received help from some of the other women in his life. A few of these were victims themselves, unaware of what was really happening and are not named. Others, like Gail Heriot, whose relationship with Fund began in a hotel room in December of 2001 or January of 2002, assisted in building the website Fund used to insert lies into public view and wrote letters for him, libeling both Morgan and myself.

Desperate, we sought help from people who were politically at odds with the NeoCons. One of these individuals was Sidney Blumenthal.

It was at this time Blumenthal put a keylogger on Morgan's computer to steal information about Fund. He had refused to help, trying to persuade her it was enough to expose him politically. So Morgan returned the keylogger favor, against my advice.

While she can't write a literate sentence Morgan was a wiz with computers. It was this act which would expose to us the strategy adopted by the Bush White House to ensure the War in Iraq was not stopped in November of 2002.

An attempt to kill Morgan took place in May, 2002. I heard this over the phone as the key turned in the door of her apartment. Morgan threw herself against it and engaged the dead bolt. I believed her. She is not that good an actress.

Then, she went into hiding with a couple in Georgia.

As the campaign to sell the fiction of Weapons of Mass Destruction was hammered into accepted fact Morgan was following Sidney via his emails and reading early chapters of his book, Clinton's War. Occasionally she would forward me a copy.

By November war appeared to be inevitable. Then, Morgan called me and asked if U-Day was something like E-Bay. The keylogger had turned up something with more surprises than Blumenthal's book.

Saddam, in communication with Blumenthal, wanted to cut a deal to be paid to leave so war would not be necessary. I had the origin of the email checked out and the expert said it had come from the Emirates and Baghdad was a likely source.

The appointed agents for insuring Saddam would stay put were the Clintons and their old friend, Sidney Blumenthal. This activism on their parts is likely the real source of the largess which flowed into the Clinton coffers, not Hillary's public speaking abilities or investment savvy.

The previous January Fund had forced Morgan to sign a 'confession' saying no abuse had taken place. The documents were dated January 24, 2002, just before she moved out.

Evidently, Fund promised to pay her what he owned her if she signed and, stupidly, she did. Since an accounting of what Fund owed matched what was asked if you add in the outdated checks Morgan found while cleaning, which Fund had given her, it is likely Rove and Cheney decided this was not enough 'proof' to be persuasive.

Eric and I knew the statement was hogwash and would have so testified.

The real campaign to destroy our credibility began in 2003, after Fund's friends realized they had more than one political operation to protect. They needed to protect John, a pivotal political operative, and the truth about Saddam.

So evidence was sought and obtained through trade with those holding it.

Craig, my former husband, was Senior Vice President of Green Hills Software, Inc. He and the company's president, Dan O'Dowd, had made a deal in 1997 to defraud their partners. Dan would have a fake stock option agreement made to deny me a marital share during our divorce and Craig would lead a walk out to keep Glenn Hightower, Dan's partner, from exercising his buy out option when Dan exercised it and made him an offer.

Morgan had supplied a recording of Craig gloating about this and in late 1999 I had filed a law suit. Morgan gave a deposition on February 22, 2001. The suit settled and the deposition was never certified, making it illegal to copy.

Green Hills Software, LLC. exchanged a copy of this deposition for defense contracts. Today, Green Hills Software, Inc. is a billion dollar company heavily into drone technology and supplying the Military Industrial Complex.

The campaign to destroy our credibility began in early 2003.

On January 23, 2003 Fund filed an answer to Morgan's law suit in New York.

On April 1, 2003 Melinda's webmaster received a threatening letter. 

On April 3, 2003, Dan O'Dowd decided the desperate need for servicemembers was to provide a measly $5,000 for a child's college education. He amount pledged, $100.000, with matching funds up to $250.000. The non-profit was incorporated on the 9^th and announced publicly on April 10^th. The is an embarrassingly minor contribution for a corporation which made billions from contracts flowing from the military.

On April 7, 2003 Craig Franklin handed an enveloped copy of Morgan's Deposition to Anne
Fisher, his then girl friend, telling her it contained Morgan's deposition. It was addressed to John Fund.  It was a Green Hills envelope with the postage paid by the company in advance.

On April 8, 2003 RuthlessPeople was down. 

On May 11, 2003, Mother's Day morning, I wrote an email responding to questions received early that morning from Eric Alterman for an article which would be published on the 15^th.

On May 15, 2003 Eric Alterman's hit piece, "Who Framed John Fund?" was published in The 
Nation.

On May 16, 2003 Gene Gaudette, Editor of American Politics Journal, received a Letter via email from Gail Heriot, one of Funds many girl friends libeling us.

On June 21, 2003 JohnFund.com, a hit site, appeared online. The site came down sometime after May 19^th this year. It can be viewed through the WayBackMachine.

On July 22, 2003 Wendy MacElroy, who calls herself a feminist but focuses her attack pieces on women, traded a hit piece on Morgan for a gig at Fox News. Wendy, who has known Melinda since the 1970s, failed to call her or Morgan. The article is titled, False Rape Charges Hurt Real Victims.

During this time Melinda received notice from the IRS claiming she owed money. The IRS refused to tell her why since her returns were produced by a CPA and documented all expenses.

Carried out this way, the NeoCon campaign was masked and did not appear to have any relationship with the War in Iraq. It was all 'personal.'

But all parts of our lives reflect our values, which is why trying to separate the two in this was is wrong.

Clearly, everyone else had agendas which had nothing to do with the simple, provable fact John Fund committed domestic violence. This is a crime and should be prosecuted even if the victim has lied previously and is a jerk. 

 

In 2004 I wrote GREED – The NeoConning of America, a lightly fictionalized autobiography framed around my daughter, not myself. I am now reissuing a non-fiction version, which includes “the Bunker in Georgia” Story. That story about Saddam began in Chapter 16 - A Signal from the Bunker, in subsection The Bunker in Georgia.

Saddam also knew too much.

No one read the book, though the reviews were very good.

I wonder what would have happened if I had understood the ruthless lack of conscience these people carry behind smiling, and lying, faces in both their personal and professional lives. What choices would I have made, personal and political?

The next years were given over to stark survival and caring for my son. Since Morgan had drained me of money this was much more difficult. I fought back because I had to, using the only tool I could afford, the truth.

Stay tuned for Part Two - What Happens When You Know Too Much

Crane and the Kochs - the Fascist State Eats Its Own

What does Anna Nicole Smith (Left) have in common with Kathryn Washburn Niskanen(Right)? You might ask.

On March 1^st the Koch Brothers filed a law suit against Widow Niskanen in an attempt to force her to sell her inherited interest in Cato Institute to them. The holding of one quarter of the shares of Cato, held until his death by her late husband, was left as one third to his widow, one third to Cato, and a third to the Institute For Justice, according to TPM Muckraker.

But there is far more story here than meets the eye, part of which is the lingering image of Anna Nicole Smith, the gorgeous, blond, nubile woman who married creaky, aged billionaire Howard Marshall, II, and so laid claim to an unimaginably valuable slug of stock in Koch Industries, the only shares in the very privately held company not owned by family members. The stock amounted to 16% of Koch Industries. The case went to the Supreme Court, firing the imaginations of Americans, enticed by the provocative form and story of Anna Nicole. But Americans did not understand what was really at issue.

Today, with the parallel revelations of manipulation funded by the Kochs in covert manipulations of the initiative process across the country and intrusions into local self-determination, this may began to dawn.

In 2006 I was contacted by Hart Williams, who had begun to investigate the Kochs and the denizens of Cato. Today, you can benefit from his detailed and accurate insights at HartWilliams.com. We know more than we did, but not enough.

Despite diligent research, the corporate books for Koch Industries still hold secrets thought to reveal cost plus contracts, unusual treatment by courts and government agencies that normally are charged with protecting the public, and other information lending insights to their relations with the Bush administration. Today, given the present, very political trajectory of the Brothers Koch, these events are well worth revisiting.

The bottom line of the Koch's profits include a string of offenses against public decency and safety of monumental proportions which were 'forgiven' by the Bushes, then in power.

In late 2000 it seemed some of these corporate policies might be catching up with Koch; they were hit with a 97-count indictment related to a cover up of discharge of more than 15 times the legal limit of benzene, a carcinogen, from a refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. Koch faced penalties of $350, 000,000.00, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Four Koch employees were also charged individually, facing up to 35 years in prison according to the same source. The lawsuits were settled three months into the Bush Administration. Koch plead guilty to one count of concealment, agreed to pay 20,000,000. All criminal charges were dropped by the Justice Department.

According to Greg Palast, published on BBC.com, in May of 2001, Koch Industries was then the third largest industry donor to the Bush Campaign.

In another case, Koch was sued by the government in 1995 and 1997 over a reported 300 oil spills at pipelines owned and operated by the company. Those lawsuits sought from $71 million to $214 million in penalties for the spills, which dumped an estimated three million gallons of oil into lakes and streams in six states.

On January 13, 2000, the Justice Department settled that case for $35 million in fines, according again to the Center for Public Integrity.

Brad Goldstein
Corporate Communications Director
(561) 640-8822
brad_goldstein@oxbow.com

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/27/60II/main252545.shtml

But the back story is even deeper. Politico writes, “The group (Cato) had four shareholders until last year: Charles Koch; David Koch; Edward H. Crane III, Cato’s president; and William A. Niskanen,” what is left out is the curious exclusion of the founding shareholder left unnamed.

Murray Rothbard, the voice of the Austrian Economics in the last half of the 20^th Century, is the shareholder who goes unmentioned. Murray was a founding member of the board for Cato until kicked off in 1981 for the hideous crime of disagreeing with Ed Crane.

The bi-Monthly Newsletter for The Libertarian Forum for January – April of 1981 ran on its front page an article headlined as, “Purged from Cato! It Usually Ends With Ed Crane.” Sounding entirely like Murray the article begins, “On Black Friday, March 27^th, 1981, at 9:00 A. M. in San Francisco, the “libertarian” power elite of the Cato Institute, consisting of President Edward H. Crane, III and Other Shareholder Charles G. Koch, revealed its true nature and its cloven hoof. Crane, aided and abetted by Koch, ordered me to leave Cato's regular quarterly board meeting, even though I am a shareholder and a founding board member of the Cato Institute. The Crane/Koch action was not only iniquitous and high-handed but also illegal, as my attorneys informed them before and during the meeting. They didn't care. What's more, as will be explained shortly, in order to accomplish this foul deed to their own satisfaction, Crane/Koch literally appropriated and confiscated the shares which I have naively left in the Cato Witchita office for “safekeeping”, an act clearly in violation of our agreement as well as contrary to every tenet of libertarian principle.”

Murray was the spokesman for free market economics. Additionally, he had challenged the hold of Ayn Rand on the minds of Libertarians. Simultaneously, his voice was muted and replaced by Milton Friedman, who has never been a proponent of free market economics but is, rather, an adherent of the Chicago School of Economics. The difference between the two is significant. Friedman was entirely open to government intervention. As a proponent of the free market Rothbard opposed the use of legislation in human action and was a stalwart voice for individual rights, speaking out for unity between right and left. Retrospectively, this and not a 'personal conflict' was the source of Murray's ejection from Cato.

Koch Industries might have been free market during the life time of its founder, Fred C. Koch, the father of Charles and David, but, today, it is a solidly entrenched member of the Military Industrial Complex, or Greedville, as I call the constellation of banking, oil, war contracting, pharmaceutical, and other interests.

The Kochs, arguably, masterminded the conversion of the term, 'free market' into something very different, a justification of governmental subsidies which continue to fatten their bottom line, the antitheses of the direction intended by the original libertarian movement. In this, they had the eager assistance of Ed Crane, who is remembered in song, and with bitterness, by many.

“ Ed Crane is Cato's president, he keeps his standards high

He says he runs a trim, taut ship – just like Captain Bly.

The similarity is really nothing but a joke.

For there'll be no mutiny on the bounty of Billionaire Charles Koch.”

Lyrics by an obscure songster named A C Franklin, 1979

But the libertarian movement, suppressed by the actions of the Kochs and Cato, remained small. Today the mainstream believes the positions of Cato and Koch are Libertarian when nothing could be further from the truth.

It cost the Kochs to start Cato but the conversion of ideas, from freedom to those which supported the tenets of fascism, has paid off – for them. Solidifying their control of Cato was, and remains, all about the money.

The predatory strategies of the Koch Brothers were not popular, even in their own family. The Koch family came into enormous conflict on how the fortunes would be handled that reflect some of the questionable strategies that founded those fortunes, continuing to actively divide those involved.

Koch Brother, Bill, interviewed on 60 minutes August 21, 2001, said, "It was – was my family company. I was out of it," he says. "But that’s what appalled me so much... I did not want my family, my legacy, my father’s legacy to be based upon organized crime."

Of the four brothers who inherited control of Rock Island Oil & Refining Co., at the death of their father, Fred Koch, in 1967, Charles and David managed to get a lock on control, renaming the megacorporation Koch Industries. The other two brothers, Fred, Jr. and William, retreated, having lost what seems to be an attempt to change the direction of the corporation.

The guy inside Koch who orchestrates their PR and political strategy is named.....you will not believe this but I could not make it up......Rich Fink. Their money, how they get in and what they will do to lower their costs and hang onto that money are some of the things they want to keep private.

Koch Industries was hit by the largest judgment for personal liability in history over the incineration of Danielle Smalley and a friend on Aug. 24, 1996. The cause was a defective high-pressure gas pipeline that exploded, taking the lives of the two teenagers. Both were 17. The amount named by the jury was 296 million dollars. Punitive damage awards exist to make it possible to hit those with money and power who act with blatant disregard of others. This, although Koch Industries admitted in court it had not properly maintained the lines and had failed to tell the public, according to the site of the attorney representing the Smalleys, Jim Arnold and Associates. Conveniently enough for Koch Industries, the Texas court forced a reduction in the award that meant that Danielle's father had to sign a nondisclosure agreement on the amount awarded.

The Smalley case was only one of three hundred spills caused over six states in the 90s for which Koch Industries was fined according to Planet Ark.

Guess who was governor in Texas at the time? George W. Bush.

In 1992 a wedding took place at Camp David between Doro Bush and Robert Koch. When you notice the names and wonder about the relationship there you find, despite the visibility of the families, you cannot discover if Robert Koch is related to the Koch's who founded Koch Industries unless you really dig.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Howard_Marshall_II

http://www.smalleyfnd.org/danielle/accident.html

That is a small part of the real story. You can't get it all in an article and someday I will get around to writing the book.