I'll leave it to Jerome Corsi to tell you what he learned on his one-week investigative jaunt through Kenya in search of Barack Obama's unexplored political connections with a repressive regime.
I'm just glad our senior staff reporter is back in the West – safe and sound following his detention at gunpoint just as he was about to reveal some of what he had learned at a Nairobi press conference.
While Corsi was indisposed, being held incommunicado and without food for close to 12 hours, it was my unwelcome mission to confront an avalanche of misinformation being spread through the media about the nature of Corsi's trip.
These were the facts as I saw them:
A very courageous reporter in his 60s made an unpleasant trek to a hostile foreign country to investigate a matter of critical national interest a month before a presidential election. This reporter had recently written the No. 1 best-selling book in the nation about one of the presidential candidates. He had previously written another No. 1 best-selling book about a presidential candidate in 2004. He is well-educated, well-informed, dogged, determined and about as fiercely independent as any journalist could be. In fact, I know of only three prominent journalists in America who publicly proclaim they will not vote for either Barack Obama or John McCain – me, Lou Dobbs and Jerome Corsi.
Corsi made no secret of his mission in Kenya. He announced his intentions upon arriving in the country. He disclosed on his customs forms the purpose of his business trip. He met with some of the nation's top officials, sharing with them his objectives. He didn't travel around the country covertly. His every move was watched. Operating in a potentially unsafe environment, he understood there was more safety in the light than in the shadows.
Everything went just fine until it was time to announce his findings at a press conference. That's when Kenyan authorities determined it would be just too much for their prime minister to be implicated in wrongdoing on Kenyan soil.
I'm not sure what their intentions were when they grabbed Corsi on Tuesday. I'm not sure if they expected to release him a few hours later. I'm not even sure if they were thinking that far ahead. The important thing, it seems, was to stop him from holding that press conference.
I can tell you that many thousands of dollars in bribes had to be paid to officials to get them to release Corsi and his traveling partner and publicist, Tim Bueler. What would have happened if that money had not changed hands? We'll never know.
I can also tell you that all of the major media accounts of the critical events leading up to Corsi's release were inaccurate and biased in ways that were astonishing to me as a journalist.
Try to imagine, for a moment, how different coverage would be if a prominent reporter for the New York Times who was also a best-selling author was abducted at the point of automatic weapons by a foreign government as Corsi was, held without food, stripped of his passport and cell phone and denied the opportunity to make any calls or talk to the press. Do you suppose the Associated Press and other news service accounts would portray the reporter as some kind of reckless political operative? Do you suppose they would accept at face value the government's word for everything that was happening? Do you suppose they would assume the reporter was just on a mission to make trouble and sell books?
Let me tell you something: When your book is a No. 1 best-seller in the U.S., you don't really care about how many copies you sell in Kenya. Nobody goes to Kenya to sell books. Yet, that was a major emphasis of most of the U.S. and United Kingdom reporting about Corsi's trip. He was there to sell books.
Another article of faith throughout all the non-WND reporting was that Corsi had been deported. Frankly, it would have been a better story if he had been. But we knew otherwise. He had not violated any customs and immigration laws. He was never accused of doing so. And, in fact, Kenyan authorities said there would be no problem with him coming back. I don't think it will be high on Corsi's vacation plans, but those are the facts. The deportation story was an obvious cover for the government's decision to stop the press conference. But the AP, Reuters and the London press couldn't see that – or refused to see it because of their own political blinders.
Let me just say one more thing about this incident: I feel so blessed to have reporters like Corsi and Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein on my team – journalists who put the search for truth ahead of their own concerns for safety and welfare. They put their lives on the line when they go to work. I hope WND readers appreciate the sacrifices men like this make in the cause of fiercely independent, crusading, muckraking journalism.