Larry Klayman, a longtime Beltway attorney and one-time frequent guest on Fox News, is finally getting to see his story in print, no thanks, he claims, to Rupert Murdoch. Klayman's book Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment was acquired by former HC publisher Judith Regan and originally scheduled for fall 2007 but, according to the author, the title was killed after Murdoch, CEO of News Corp. (the parent company of HarperCollins), got wind of its contents.
Klayman, a former chairman of Judicial Watch who came to prominence for various lawsuits he brought against the Clinton administration, said his book entered a period of limbo after Regan was dismissed from HarperCollins. When he saw the book listed for pre-order on various retail sites, with a new pub date of December 2008, he contacted HC about a book tour and was told the title had been dropped.
Asked about the title, a rep from HarperCollins said that Klayman's manuscript was rejected "because it was, in HarperCollins’s opinion, unacceptable.” The rep went on to say, via e-mail, that HC "had the specific right to do this under its publishing agreement with Mr. Klayman.”
Whores, which was just signed by a small Florida publisher called New Chapter, is now coming out on October 15 with an announced first printing of 50,000. Klayman thinks Murdoch was particularly nonplussed about critical comments in the book about judge Denny Chin. Chin, who has presided over a number of highly publicized cases (including Bernie Madoff's and the Google Book Settlement) was, around the time of the book's planned publication, overseeing a case involving Murdoch. This overlap, Klayman said, is one thing HarperCollins "gave me a hard time about."
Murdoch has been accused of influencing decisions made about HarperCollins books in the past—Klayman cited the 1998 minor scandal over the killing of a book by Chris Patten. In that case, HarperCollins wound up issuing a public apology after Murdoch yanked the book because it was critical of China, a country he was heavily invested in.
Whores, Klayman said, likely annoyed the media mogul for numerous reasons. In addition to the comments about Chin, Klayman is also critical of Murdoch's TV media unit, Fox News. (Klayman appeared on the network numerous times as a source—he said that, in his early career, his outlook aligned with Fox's conservative bent—and, in Whores, he cites instances in which guests and others were dealt with in a way he thought was unethical. He said he calls Fox News the "Al Jazeera of American cable" in his book.)
Klayman's biggest problem now is that HC has not released details on how many pre-orders it took on the book, or for whom. New Chapter is in touch with HC, but has not secured the information yet.
