The Telegraph(UK)
28 Aug 2008
Yuri Nosenko, who died on August 23 aged 80, was a KGB intelligence officer who defected to the West at the height of the Cold War; after initial doubts about his authenticity, the CIA came to consider him one of its most valuable, if troublesome, defectors.
Codenamed "Foxtrot" by the CIA, Nosenko was a KGB Second Chief Directorate (SCD) officer when he approached the CIA in Geneva in June 1962. He was in Switzerland as a member of the Soviet Union's disarmament delegation.
Nosenko offered to provide the Americans with information, saying that he hoped to defect some time in the future, and that he wished to acquire medication for his asthmatic daughter, Oksana; but his principal objective was to replace funds which he had misappropriated from the local rezidentura which he had then blown in a local nightclub.
Nosenko – the son of one of Stalin's ministers – was persuaded to continue working in the KGB, but in the meantime he made some significant disclosures. He revealed that the SCD had compromised a British official who had been caught in a honeytrap in Moscow while employed at the British embassy, and MI5 soon identified the suspect as an Admiralty clerk, John Vassall.
He also named the Canadian ambassador, John Watkins, as having been compromised in the same way, as well as a CIA officer, Edward Ellis Smith. All three allegations proved accurate. Nosenko added that he had heard that MI5 had been penetrated by the KGB at a high level.
After these initial contacts, Nosenko returned to Moscow, but he unexpectedly defected in Geneva during a second visit, in February 1964, having claimed to have reviewed the KGB file on President Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
The CIA's Counterintelligence Staff, however, spotted a number of significant contradictions in Nosenko's debriefings, including details of his career and even his rank, and became convinced that he was a "dispatched defector".
The issues at stake were considerable, because if Nosenko were a plant his insistence that the KGB had played no part in the assassination of President Kennedy could be considered equally bogus.
Another KGB defector, Anatoly Golitsyn, who had defected in 1961, had warned that the organisation would very likely seek to discredit him by sending to the West others armed with ingeniously-constructed cover stories to mislead Western intelligence agencies. Some professionals came to believe that Nosenko was one of these.
Accordingly, from April 1964 Nosenko was detained at a safe house in Maryland for nearly 18 months, on the authority of the US attorney-general, before being transferred to a cell-block specially constructed at the CIA's training facility at Camp Peary, in Virginia. He remained there, under continuous and hostile interrogation, until October 1967.
A year later a report sponsored by the CIA's Office of Security concluded that Nosenko was a genuine defector, and he was given an apology for his treatment, $137,062 in compensation and a contract as a consultant.
The controversy over Nosenko's bona fides was to continue for years, and had the effect of splitting the American counter-intelligence community. The central issue was the concept of the "dispatched defector": the idea that a professional intelligence agency would risk sending a well-informed staff officer directly and deliberately into the hands of an adversary.
On the one hand, the Counterintelligence Staff, led by James Angleton, found it impossible to reconcile the many inconsistencies in the defector's story; they pointed out that Nosenko's family was part of Moscow's elite and that he was therefore an improbable traitor. Furthermore, Nosenko's claim that he had had access to Oswald's file, a claim made just as the Warren Commission was investigating the background of the assassination, seemed a little too convenient – especially as Nosenko's essential message was that the KGB had been innocent of any plot.
The case against Nosenko was made in Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games (2007), a book by Pete Bagley, a CIA officer stationed in Switzerland in the early 1960s who initially handled Nosenko's case.
The opposing view suggested that Nosenko was a hard-drinking womaniser who had found himself in financial difficulty in Geneva and, in turning to the CIA for help, had exaggerated his own status.
Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko was born on October 30 1927 at Nikolaev, in the Ukraine, the son of Ivan Nosenko, who was minister for shipbuilding in the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1956, the year of his death; he was buried with honours in the Kremlin wall. Yuri was a student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and joined the KGB in 1953.
Once he had been brought over to the United States, Nosenko proved difficult to handle, often becoming involved in bar brawls and embarrassing episodes with women. He never complained, however, about the harsh treatment he had received, once remarking: "While I regret my three years of incarceration, I have no bitterness and now understand how it could happen."
Nosenko's case epitomised the "wilderness of mirrors" in the counter-intelligence community, and his illegal incarceration became one of the notorious "family jewels", the list of the CIA's breaches of its 1947 charter which led to the Pike and Church congressional investigations conducted in 1974.
Until two years ago he continued to visit the CIA headquarters to give presentations. By contrast, those who had opposed his rehabilitation were shunned and their arguments dismissed as manifestations of the paranoia often associated with lengthy, labyrinthine counter-intelligence investigations.
A month ago the CIA delivered to his house in the United States a ceremonial flag and a letter of thanks from the agency's director, Michael Hayden.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Monchego's Extremadura
Vic Monchego’s Extremadura (formerly known as Vic Monchego’s Episodes) is an eclectic blog of sudden fiction, poetry and features. According to its Creators, the blog has an international readership “in the dozens.” In 2007, the blog briefly made Technorati’s Top 500,000.
Many posts are written by Victor Bravo Monchego, Jr., a fictitious underdog inspired by Don Quixote. Like Quixote, Vic Monchego wanders the blogosphere’s Extremadura. He is both a fool and a romantic.
The fiction is sudden in the sense that it is written spontaneously, often between flights, by a posse of travelers with so-called straight jobs, and because of the brevity of the serials. Like satirist George Saunders, Monchego frequently mocks corporate culture and capitalism.
Monchego also is intended to be an Everyman in that some readers may project themselves into the character, as no dominant characteristic of the Everyman prevents them from doing so.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
James Madison said,
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”
“War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.”
“Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.”
- James Madison: Father of the Constitution of the United States of America
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”
“War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.”
“Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.”
- James Madison: Father of the Constitution of the United States of America
Friday, August 31, 2007
Putin's Bare Chest is a Display of Power Best Kept Secret
by Michael Gove (UK)
Of all the menacing gestures associated with the newly assertive Russia, from annexing the Arctic to restarting nuclear bomber runs, none seems to have discomfited the rest of the world quite as much as President Putin being photographed bare-chested, with his perfect pecs on proud display. It was quite the most audacious demonstration of political self-confidence from any Russian leader since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Whatever else Vlad may have learnt in the KGB, he certainly absorbed everything one needs to know about psychological warfare. How many of the politicians charged with our safekeeping do you estimate would emerge enhanced if their torsos were laid out for all to see on a summer fishing trip? Does Des Browne have a perfect six-pack? Would we all feel a little better about our place in the world if Dick Cheney’s treasure chest was on proud display?
What Vlad’s tactical strip has revealed, apart from the lifetime benefits of Spetsnaz training, is the continuing role that nudity plays in male power relations. We’re used to discussion of how little, or much, women should safely display in a variety of circumstances. Any number of fashion experts, for example, will advise that when tempted to dress revealingly it’s necessary to choose between showing off either legs or décolletage.
Attempting to do both at the same time is like smoking while eating foie gras – either might be thought sophisticated – do them together and you look like a Ukrainian actress holidaying for the first time in St-Tropez.
But while there are all sorts of rules, and seasonally updated tips, on how much women dare to
bare, with the rival merits of halternecks and exposed midriffs regularly rehearsed, the question of how men should manage the exposure of their own flesh, and what can be read into these displays, is rarely given the close study it deserves.
As Putin’s careful release of the pictures of his own taut form demonstrate, the deployment of male nudity is, above all, a power play. On one level Vlad is showing us all that he’s a remarkably fit man for his age (54) and that, unlike in the decadent West, Russia’s leaders remain the physical embodiment of their nation’s vigour – classical champions in the manner of those Roman emperors who would renew their mandate to rule on the battlefield or even in the gladiatorial ring. His bare-chested peacockery is, in that respect, in line with the broader cult of Putin as his nation’s silverback – the leader of the band.
And while it’s becoming rarer, the assertion of prime physical vigour through summertime displays of shirtless masculinity has been a trick in several leaders’ repertoires. From Mussolini, to Jack and Bobby Kennedy, baring your torso for a publicity shot was just another way of demonstrating a break from the failed and flabby Old Gang and the arrival of New Hope.
But tactical exposure of holiday flesh is a way of asserting power which is certainly not restricted to the political sphere. For a particular class of man – think of pictures of Gianni Agnelli, say, or Aristotle Onassis, or even Michael Winner, letting it all hang out above deck has often been accompanied by the wearing of briefs so small that they look like sparrows that have crashed into the Matterhorn. These men present themselves to the world with an apparently unembarrassed delight in how much there is to see. And in so doing they appear to subvert one of the rules about what it is that the wealthy really cherish – discretion, privacy and protection.
What, of course, they are really doing is reminding the rest of us how little they need to care for our approval, how liberated they are from bourgeois notions of propriety, how unrelated to their physical appearance is their considerable power of attraction. For them, daring to bare so much is just another assertion of how much, in every sense, they’ve got. And the knowledge that male nudity is linked to power, the more you’ve got, the more you are liberated to show, is now, I think, inherent in how we conduct ourselves.
And it’s not just related to wealth. The insouciance of a particular type of millionaire has its analogue in the breezy, what’s-it-to-you, shirtlessness of any man who is, in effect, making a declaration of machismo when he should, ostensibly, be relaxing. Baring your torso on holiday, whether in Ayia Napa or on the deck of your yacht, means setting aside the expected norms of modesty and thus, in its way, involves you staking a claim to attention, and occupying more space than if you were clothed. It is an act of assertion, a waving of the coxcomb. And, whatever the socio-economic background of the bare-chested male, his shedding of a protective layer, whether it’s Fred Perry or John Smedley, involves an implied challenge to other men – haven’t you got what I’ve got; what are you hiding behind?
Regular readers of this column will know that I am hiding something. I’m hiding 20-odd years of Ginsters abuse behind my comfortably baggy polo shirt. So perhaps my approach to holiday fashion is framed by my accumulated experience of holiday indulgence. But looking again at those chilling photos of Putin, his ice-cold eyes masked by shades but his torso on open display, I couldn’t help but feel my prejudices being reinforced. The region from a man’s waist to his neck should be like the nuclear deterrent – everyone knows it’s there, it’s often glimpsed slipping into the water, but its exact condition must always remain a mystery.
Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath
Of all the menacing gestures associated with the newly assertive Russia, from annexing the Arctic to restarting nuclear bomber runs, none seems to have discomfited the rest of the world quite as much as President Putin being photographed bare-chested, with his perfect pecs on proud display. It was quite the most audacious demonstration of political self-confidence from any Russian leader since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Whatever else Vlad may have learnt in the KGB, he certainly absorbed everything one needs to know about psychological warfare. How many of the politicians charged with our safekeeping do you estimate would emerge enhanced if their torsos were laid out for all to see on a summer fishing trip? Does Des Browne have a perfect six-pack? Would we all feel a little better about our place in the world if Dick Cheney’s treasure chest was on proud display?
What Vlad’s tactical strip has revealed, apart from the lifetime benefits of Spetsnaz training, is the continuing role that nudity plays in male power relations. We’re used to discussion of how little, or much, women should safely display in a variety of circumstances. Any number of fashion experts, for example, will advise that when tempted to dress revealingly it’s necessary to choose between showing off either legs or décolletage.
Attempting to do both at the same time is like smoking while eating foie gras – either might be thought sophisticated – do them together and you look like a Ukrainian actress holidaying for the first time in St-Tropez.
But while there are all sorts of rules, and seasonally updated tips, on how much women dare to
bare, with the rival merits of halternecks and exposed midriffs regularly rehearsed, the question of how men should manage the exposure of their own flesh, and what can be read into these displays, is rarely given the close study it deserves.
As Putin’s careful release of the pictures of his own taut form demonstrate, the deployment of male nudity is, above all, a power play. On one level Vlad is showing us all that he’s a remarkably fit man for his age (54) and that, unlike in the decadent West, Russia’s leaders remain the physical embodiment of their nation’s vigour – classical champions in the manner of those Roman emperors who would renew their mandate to rule on the battlefield or even in the gladiatorial ring. His bare-chested peacockery is, in that respect, in line with the broader cult of Putin as his nation’s silverback – the leader of the band.
And while it’s becoming rarer, the assertion of prime physical vigour through summertime displays of shirtless masculinity has been a trick in several leaders’ repertoires. From Mussolini, to Jack and Bobby Kennedy, baring your torso for a publicity shot was just another way of demonstrating a break from the failed and flabby Old Gang and the arrival of New Hope.
But tactical exposure of holiday flesh is a way of asserting power which is certainly not restricted to the political sphere. For a particular class of man – think of pictures of Gianni Agnelli, say, or Aristotle Onassis, or even Michael Winner, letting it all hang out above deck has often been accompanied by the wearing of briefs so small that they look like sparrows that have crashed into the Matterhorn. These men present themselves to the world with an apparently unembarrassed delight in how much there is to see. And in so doing they appear to subvert one of the rules about what it is that the wealthy really cherish – discretion, privacy and protection.
What, of course, they are really doing is reminding the rest of us how little they need to care for our approval, how liberated they are from bourgeois notions of propriety, how unrelated to their physical appearance is their considerable power of attraction. For them, daring to bare so much is just another assertion of how much, in every sense, they’ve got. And the knowledge that male nudity is linked to power, the more you’ve got, the more you are liberated to show, is now, I think, inherent in how we conduct ourselves.
And it’s not just related to wealth. The insouciance of a particular type of millionaire has its analogue in the breezy, what’s-it-to-you, shirtlessness of any man who is, in effect, making a declaration of machismo when he should, ostensibly, be relaxing. Baring your torso on holiday, whether in Ayia Napa or on the deck of your yacht, means setting aside the expected norms of modesty and thus, in its way, involves you staking a claim to attention, and occupying more space than if you were clothed. It is an act of assertion, a waving of the coxcomb. And, whatever the socio-economic background of the bare-chested male, his shedding of a protective layer, whether it’s Fred Perry or John Smedley, involves an implied challenge to other men – haven’t you got what I’ve got; what are you hiding behind?
Regular readers of this column will know that I am hiding something. I’m hiding 20-odd years of Ginsters abuse behind my comfortably baggy polo shirt. So perhaps my approach to holiday fashion is framed by my accumulated experience of holiday indulgence. But looking again at those chilling photos of Putin, his ice-cold eyes masked by shades but his torso on open display, I couldn’t help but feel my prejudices being reinforced. The region from a man’s waist to his neck should be like the nuclear deterrent – everyone knows it’s there, it’s often glimpsed slipping into the water, but its exact condition must always remain a mystery.
Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath
Monday, August 20, 2007
Bad Memories Tied to DNA
By Benjamin Lester
ScienceNOW Daily News
30 July 2007
People haunted by traumatic memories could be missing a few amino acids, say researchers. A new study links a deletion in a neurotransmitter receptor gene to a marked increase in an individual's ability to remember emotionally charged events. The finding represents the first gene shown to play a role in emotional memory and could have implications for anxiety and other psychiatric disorders.
For more than 10 years, neuroscientists have known that our brains' emotional memory circuits are linked to the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Higher levels of this hormone, released as part of the fight-or-flight response, can increase a person's ability to recall emotional events. Because the clarity of emotional memories varies from person to person, a team of European and African researchers set out to determine whether a common deletion in a specific norepinephrine receptor gene called ADRA2B might be responsible.
The researchers recruited nearly 450 Swiss volunteers, as well as about 200 refugees of the Rwandan civil war. The Swiss volunteers were shown photos varying in tone from cuddly puppies to accident scenes. They were asked to rate the photos as emotionally positive, negative, or neutral and give the strength of the emotion. Ten minutes later, the researchers asked the volunteers to write descriptions of the photos. The two groups had equal success describing neutral photos, but for emotionally charged photos, the deletion carriers wrote descriptions judged "successful" 34% more of the time than did noncarriers, the team reports online 29 July in Nature Neuroscience.
The Rwandan refugees responded similarly. When rated on the degree to which they recalled the traumatic events of their country's civil war and genocide, the deletion carriers scored more than 50% higher than did noncarriers on the test.
The findings make sense, says Dennis Charney, a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. ADRA2B shuts off norepinephrine release when levels of the hormone rise, he explains, so people with a mutated, impaired gene would be expected to have higher norepinephrine levels and thus better recall of emotional events.
However, Charney notes that having a crystal-clear emotional memory may be as much a curse as a blessing. Emotional memories are evolutionarily vital because they help avoid repeats of dangerous situations--"you want to remember where that tiger was," he says--but if the memory of a traumatic event is too strong, it can begin to intrude into everyday life and cause problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
ScienceNOW Daily News
30 July 2007
People haunted by traumatic memories could be missing a few amino acids, say researchers. A new study links a deletion in a neurotransmitter receptor gene to a marked increase in an individual's ability to remember emotionally charged events. The finding represents the first gene shown to play a role in emotional memory and could have implications for anxiety and other psychiatric disorders.
For more than 10 years, neuroscientists have known that our brains' emotional memory circuits are linked to the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Higher levels of this hormone, released as part of the fight-or-flight response, can increase a person's ability to recall emotional events. Because the clarity of emotional memories varies from person to person, a team of European and African researchers set out to determine whether a common deletion in a specific norepinephrine receptor gene called ADRA2B might be responsible.
The researchers recruited nearly 450 Swiss volunteers, as well as about 200 refugees of the Rwandan civil war. The Swiss volunteers were shown photos varying in tone from cuddly puppies to accident scenes. They were asked to rate the photos as emotionally positive, negative, or neutral and give the strength of the emotion. Ten minutes later, the researchers asked the volunteers to write descriptions of the photos. The two groups had equal success describing neutral photos, but for emotionally charged photos, the deletion carriers wrote descriptions judged "successful" 34% more of the time than did noncarriers, the team reports online 29 July in Nature Neuroscience.
The Rwandan refugees responded similarly. When rated on the degree to which they recalled the traumatic events of their country's civil war and genocide, the deletion carriers scored more than 50% higher than did noncarriers on the test.
The findings make sense, says Dennis Charney, a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. ADRA2B shuts off norepinephrine release when levels of the hormone rise, he explains, so people with a mutated, impaired gene would be expected to have higher norepinephrine levels and thus better recall of emotional events.
However, Charney notes that having a crystal-clear emotional memory may be as much a curse as a blessing. Emotional memories are evolutionarily vital because they help avoid repeats of dangerous situations--"you want to remember where that tiger was," he says--but if the memory of a traumatic event is too strong, it can begin to intrude into everyday life and cause problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Going to Court over Fiction (NY Times)
The New York Times, June 15, 2007
Cloaking one’s identity while writing — to hide, in other words, in order to reveal — is an old literary tradition. Mary Ann Evans used the gender-crossing pseudonym George Eliot to publish “Adam Bede” in 1859, when female authors still struggled to be taken seriously. Charlotte Bronte released “Jane Eyre” in 1847 under the name Currer Bell.
What, then, of the complex case of JT Leroy, the pseudonymous writer with the titillating past, a supposed child of a truck-stop prostitute who rocketed to fame in 2000 with the publication of “Sarah,” a novel of poverty and sexual abuse set among the grease-stained highway rest stops of West Virginia?
Mr. Leroy seemed at first to be a hot commodity in today’s biography-obsessed literary world, a gifted writer with a grotesquely compelling story that only enhanced the value of the work. After years of celebrity that included friendships with Winona Ryder and Madonna, articles in The New York Times and Vanity Fair, and many other gaudy trappings of early 21st century fame, JT Leroy was revealed to be the name not of a writer — in fact, not even of a person — but of the fictive alter ego of Laura Albert, a mother and otherwise obscure young novelist from Brooklyn Heights.
This intricate game of hide-and-seek with its interlocking issues of identity, fame, money and the healing power of art has now leapt from the media to what is arguably the culture’s second most obsessive arena: the courts. A film production company has sued Ms. Albert for fraud, saying that a contract signed with JT Leroy to make a feature film of “Sarah” should be null and void, for the simple reason that JT Leroy does not exist.
At its heart, the case revolves around the contract, signed by Antidote International Films Inc. (producer of, among other movies, “Laurel Canyon” and “Thirteen”) and Ms. Albert’s company, Underdogs Inc., to option the film rights to “Sarah” in 2003. Underdogs was paid $15,000 under the contract, which was renewed, at the same rate of $15,000, for each of the next two years. Antidote is suing for its money back.
Along with tales of commerce, the jury was treated yesterday to a bit of culture: A lawyer for the defendant referred in his opening remarks to the O. Henry story “The Last Leaf” moments after the plaintiff’s lawyer played a recording of Terry Gross interviewing someone posing as JT Leroy on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” The trial, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, promises to be an Escher-like convergence of the movies, literature and journalism with references to sex in truck stops thrown in and a documentary filmmaker, considering a project on the case, sitting quietly in back.
Gregory Curtner, a lawyer for Antidote, opened the trial by painting a broad picture of JT Leroy’s supposed rise from Appalachian misery to stardom. The son of a truck-stop prostitute, the jury learned, JT Leroy (according to the stories concocted on his behalf) would sit in parked cars or at a diner while his mother turned tricks. He himself eventually turned to prostitution and, after finally picking up a pen to describe his ordeal, tried to peddle his early works to agents, publishers and the like by sending faxes from gas station bathrooms.
It was this hardscrabble “life” that caught the attention of a director, Steven Shainberg, who wanted to work with Antidote and blend elements of JT Leroy’s biography into the narrative of “Sarah” in what Mr. Curtner called a film about “how art could emerge from a ruined childhood.” The trouble was there was no ruined childhood from which art could actually emerge.
Or at least not one that belonged to the imaginary JT Leroy. Ms. Albert’s lawyer, Eric Weinstein, began his own remarks with the memorably understated line, “Laura is a complicated person.” He said she was physically and sexually abused as a child. He said she was institutionalized in psychiatric wards and in a group home as a ward of the state. He said she was in therapy for 13 years with a psychiatrist whom she spoke to by telephone while posing as a teenage boy named Jeremy, an embryonic version of JT Leroy.
By the time the psychiatrist advised her to write, the persona of the teenage boy had become engrained as Ms. Albert’s alter ego, what Mr. Weinstein called her “bridge to the world.” Ms. Albert herself, in conversations before the trial, called JT “her respirator,” an unreal, though entirely necessary, entity that allowed her to breathe.
As movie people say, the “inciting incident” of the lawsuit came with the publication in late 2005 of an article in New York magazine that questioned JT Leroy’s identity. The Times followed with an article in February that identified Ms. Albert as the true author of “Sarah.”
The producers at Antidote were stunned; they were also worried that the commercial prospects of their project might crumble. As Mr. Curtner put it: “The whole autobiographical back story aura that made this so attractive was a sham.”
Mr. Weinstein told the jury that the contract with Antidote was for a book, not a back story, and that the film company could have made the movie no matter who wrote the novel. He then went on to suggest that the project was in freefall (a bad screenplay) and that Antidote had used the excuse of disputed authorship as an escape hatch.
It was at this point that the sort of lemonade-from-literary-lemons notion that can exist only in Hollywood was introduced. Mr. Weinstein said the director, Mr. Shainberg, decided he would now make a new film, something in the vein of “Adaptation” or “Being John Malkovich,” a “meta-film” that mixed the novel with the lives of its real and purported authors in a project touted in-house as “Sarah Plus.”
But that required obtaining the rights to Ms. Albert’s story — a story of such apparent darkness that she herself had required a literary dopplegänger to tell it.
She refused to grant the rights. “And that,” Mr. Weinstein said, “is why we find ourselves here.”
Cloaking one’s identity while writing — to hide, in other words, in order to reveal — is an old literary tradition. Mary Ann Evans used the gender-crossing pseudonym George Eliot to publish “Adam Bede” in 1859, when female authors still struggled to be taken seriously. Charlotte Bronte released “Jane Eyre” in 1847 under the name Currer Bell.
What, then, of the complex case of JT Leroy, the pseudonymous writer with the titillating past, a supposed child of a truck-stop prostitute who rocketed to fame in 2000 with the publication of “Sarah,” a novel of poverty and sexual abuse set among the grease-stained highway rest stops of West Virginia?
Mr. Leroy seemed at first to be a hot commodity in today’s biography-obsessed literary world, a gifted writer with a grotesquely compelling story that only enhanced the value of the work. After years of celebrity that included friendships with Winona Ryder and Madonna, articles in The New York Times and Vanity Fair, and many other gaudy trappings of early 21st century fame, JT Leroy was revealed to be the name not of a writer — in fact, not even of a person — but of the fictive alter ego of Laura Albert, a mother and otherwise obscure young novelist from Brooklyn Heights.
This intricate game of hide-and-seek with its interlocking issues of identity, fame, money and the healing power of art has now leapt from the media to what is arguably the culture’s second most obsessive arena: the courts. A film production company has sued Ms. Albert for fraud, saying that a contract signed with JT Leroy to make a feature film of “Sarah” should be null and void, for the simple reason that JT Leroy does not exist.
At its heart, the case revolves around the contract, signed by Antidote International Films Inc. (producer of, among other movies, “Laurel Canyon” and “Thirteen”) and Ms. Albert’s company, Underdogs Inc., to option the film rights to “Sarah” in 2003. Underdogs was paid $15,000 under the contract, which was renewed, at the same rate of $15,000, for each of the next two years. Antidote is suing for its money back.
Along with tales of commerce, the jury was treated yesterday to a bit of culture: A lawyer for the defendant referred in his opening remarks to the O. Henry story “The Last Leaf” moments after the plaintiff’s lawyer played a recording of Terry Gross interviewing someone posing as JT Leroy on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” The trial, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, promises to be an Escher-like convergence of the movies, literature and journalism with references to sex in truck stops thrown in and a documentary filmmaker, considering a project on the case, sitting quietly in back.
Gregory Curtner, a lawyer for Antidote, opened the trial by painting a broad picture of JT Leroy’s supposed rise from Appalachian misery to stardom. The son of a truck-stop prostitute, the jury learned, JT Leroy (according to the stories concocted on his behalf) would sit in parked cars or at a diner while his mother turned tricks. He himself eventually turned to prostitution and, after finally picking up a pen to describe his ordeal, tried to peddle his early works to agents, publishers and the like by sending faxes from gas station bathrooms.
It was this hardscrabble “life” that caught the attention of a director, Steven Shainberg, who wanted to work with Antidote and blend elements of JT Leroy’s biography into the narrative of “Sarah” in what Mr. Curtner called a film about “how art could emerge from a ruined childhood.” The trouble was there was no ruined childhood from which art could actually emerge.
Or at least not one that belonged to the imaginary JT Leroy. Ms. Albert’s lawyer, Eric Weinstein, began his own remarks with the memorably understated line, “Laura is a complicated person.” He said she was physically and sexually abused as a child. He said she was institutionalized in psychiatric wards and in a group home as a ward of the state. He said she was in therapy for 13 years with a psychiatrist whom she spoke to by telephone while posing as a teenage boy named Jeremy, an embryonic version of JT Leroy.
By the time the psychiatrist advised her to write, the persona of the teenage boy had become engrained as Ms. Albert’s alter ego, what Mr. Weinstein called her “bridge to the world.” Ms. Albert herself, in conversations before the trial, called JT “her respirator,” an unreal, though entirely necessary, entity that allowed her to breathe.
As movie people say, the “inciting incident” of the lawsuit came with the publication in late 2005 of an article in New York magazine that questioned JT Leroy’s identity. The Times followed with an article in February that identified Ms. Albert as the true author of “Sarah.”
The producers at Antidote were stunned; they were also worried that the commercial prospects of their project might crumble. As Mr. Curtner put it: “The whole autobiographical back story aura that made this so attractive was a sham.”
Mr. Weinstein told the jury that the contract with Antidote was for a book, not a back story, and that the film company could have made the movie no matter who wrote the novel. He then went on to suggest that the project was in freefall (a bad screenplay) and that Antidote had used the excuse of disputed authorship as an escape hatch.
It was at this point that the sort of lemonade-from-literary-lemons notion that can exist only in Hollywood was introduced. Mr. Weinstein said the director, Mr. Shainberg, decided he would now make a new film, something in the vein of “Adaptation” or “Being John Malkovich,” a “meta-film” that mixed the novel with the lives of its real and purported authors in a project touted in-house as “Sarah Plus.”
But that required obtaining the rights to Ms. Albert’s story — a story of such apparent darkness that she herself had required a literary dopplegänger to tell it.
She refused to grant the rights. “And that,” Mr. Weinstein said, “is why we find ourselves here.”
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