Reports from several international news sources that recast the rescue of Jessica Lynch as a stunning case of "news management" by the Pentagon could put HarperCollins on the defensive about its recent acquisition of a book about the mission.
The house paid approximately $300,000 for Rescue in Nasiriya: The Untold Story of American P.O.W. Jessica Lynch's Harrowing Ordeal and the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Save Her. The Iraqi credited with saving Lynch, a lawyer named Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, provided U.S. Marines with crucial information on Lynch's location. But now new reports are questioning whether Lynch was actually in any danger and, consequently, how genuine was the drama surrounding the mission.
The story, first reported in the Toronto Star and followed up with a fuller exposé in the Guardian (U.K.) and on the BBC by correspondent John Kampfner, makes a number of claims refuting the American military's version of the events, on which the HC book presumably would be based. There was no Iraqi military presence in the hospital at the time of the raid, Kampfner reported, and the doctors went out of their way to treat Lynch kindly. The Guardian story also asserts that another Iraqi, Dr. Harith al-Houssona, had tried to deliver Lynch to an American checkpoint several days before the rescue.
These claims, which have been picked up by CNN and other U.S. news outlets, would seem to pose a problem for a book that would "weave together the story of [the rescue] with [al-Rehaief's] own dramatic story and how he risked everything to save her," as acquiring editor David Hirshey told NPR earlier this month.
But in an interview with PW shortly after the Guardian story broke, Hirshey had a different take, saying that the book is "not about Jessica Lynch" but rather is "the extraordinary story of what life was like for an upper-middle-class Iraqi under Hussein." He admitted that "we may have been premature in slapping the title on it," explaining that the direction of the book changed not after the reports started breaking, but after he had an in-depth conversation with author al-Rehaief following the book's acquisition.
If public attitude about the Lynch rescue shifts, the book, scheduled for October, may suffer if it dwells too much on that incident. If, on the other hand, it focuses mostly on general living conditions under Hussein, it may run into the same problems as Nuha al-Radi's Baghdad Diaries (Vintage, May), an account of life in Iraq over the last 10 years that has drawn middling sales.
