Nick Wadhams

Corsi's Kenya Adventures, Part 2

So it begins. Now that he's left the country Jerome Corsi is recounting his "ordeal," and it seems that the obfuscations have begun.

At World Net Daily, Corsi claims that he was "held incommunicado" by immigration officials. He says that  "Kenyan authorities took their cell phones and passports. Err... but his publicist, Tim Bueler, was available every time  reporters called him during the course of the day. Bueler even called from the car on the way to the airport. Didn't seem like his mobile got confiscated.

Corsi also says he and Bueler "were offered no food until Tim began feeling a problem with his blood sugar, then around 2:30 p.m." At about 2 pm, Tim sounded upbeat. A couple hours before, he said they had been given water and Cokes, and were doing great.

My favorite part is where Corsi describes their being detained: "Tim got placed in the back of the vehicle and was surrounded by the armed military. I was in the front between the driver and the top immigration officer who first identified himself at the hotel."

Tim was probably "surrounded" by armed military because it was the only car they had and no one wanted to walk back to the immigration office.

Corsi's Kenya Adventures

Author Jerome Corsi's detention and deportation yesterday was one of those great stories that bubble up from nowhere and make it all worthwhile.

It's obvious that the government did not want Corsi to go ahead with a planned news conference, where he said he would "expose" some sort of secret plot that would be launched in Kenya if Barack Obama is elected president. And it's also likely that Corsi's visa was not in order (the Daily Nation says today that he told officials he was here to visit the game parks).

But what really happened? It seems likely that he was getting a lot of his information from a fringe group of ethnic Kikuyus in government and the church, and thought that he'd have a receptive audience for his book, which accuses Obama of secret ties to Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who is a Luo. Politicians have exploited Luo/Kikuyu rivalries for years, and those tensions were a central undercurrent in the January post-election violence. Obviously Corsi miscalculated. He seriously underestimated just how much support Obama has in Kenya, across ethnic lines.

Corsi was getting in over his head by coming to Kenya to make these claims. His allegations were incendiary to say the least, and Kenya's leaders _ no matter where they come from _ may not have wanted him to air them with the wounds from the post-election violence still so raw. Considering that most of the allegations seem like patent baloney, it's hard not to see their point.

Corsi's detention makes him look a little foolish now, but once he gets back to U.S. soil, you can bet the accusations will fly. Corsi will no doubt claim that the Obama campaign silenced him for daring to speak the truth. Comments on some of the stories written already suggest that Corsi's fans already believe that's the case.

P.S. I was on PRI's The World last night discussing this. Link here  about halfway down.

UPDATE: An interesting editorial from Business Daily Africa. Regardless of your thoughts about Corsi, it is a little tactless to boot him from the country. Allow him his news conference, and the worst thing that happens is he repeats obvious falsehoods. Deny him his news conference, and he fashions himself a hero for having been muzzled. I can't wait to hear what he has to say once he gets off the plane from London.

Hacks on Books

Had breakfast with a few fellow hacks today, and we meandered onto the subject of books about Africa. The fiction has usually been better than the non-fiction at capturing the feel of a place, and often in far fewer words. I wasn't quite as enamored of "What Is The What" as my cohorts, who seem to think it deserves instant canonization. But I will say that V.S. Naipaul's "A Bend In The River" is probably one of the most evocative (and succinct) books I've read in a long time, Africa-related or not. Doris Lessing's "The Grass Is Singing," another model of brevity, is wretchedly depressing but also wonderful.

Maybe it's time to join the Africa Reading Challenge. Working through "Half of a Yellow Sun," which is promising so far.