Operation Wallet

Washington (CNN) -- The Department of Defense recently purchased and destroyed thousands of copies of an Army Reserve officer's memoir in an effort to safeguard state secrets, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

"DoD decided to purchase copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. April Cunningham said.

In a statement to CNN, Cunningham said defense officials observed the September 20 destruction of about 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's new memoir "Operation Dark Heart."

--- It's that time again. Remember Anthony Shaffer? He was the "confidential source" used by Curt Weldon in Weldon's Countdown to Terror, a book supposedly exposing other dark secrets of the government, the operation "Able Danger" the left/progressives went wild over for a minute.

Weldon served in the House (R-PA) from 1987-2006 (also vice-chair of the Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, and co-chair of the Duma-Congress Study Group, the official inter-parliamentary relationship between the United States and Russia.)

I mentioned Shaffer in this August 2005 KAB post, so I believe I can just use the same idea from 5 years ago, why not - the "activists" and "truth to power" people keep using the same formula for the same phony outrage.

My ending paragraph from that blog post: "Weldon + Shaffer = tabloid news = another distraction. Watch for my future exposé : Countdown to Another Phony Book While Planning the Real Bad Things For America: Top-Secrets Leaking Like a Sieve As Fast As We Can Write Them ... and How the People Eat it Up."

Forget the left/right progressive or whatever spin about Pentagon book burning, censorship, truthsayers, etc. etc. Here's the real scoop: Operation Dark..." is published by St. Martin's Press which is the textbook subsidiary of Macmillan Publishers which is owned by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a Stuggart-based holding company.

Georg von Holtzbrinck (joined National Socialist German Students' League in 1931) established a German book club back then and the von Holtzbrincks have been buying publishing houses worldwide ever since. Today run by inherited billionaire Stefan von H.

(That reminds me, many years ago when my oldest daughter was in her teens, an old fellow told her to make sure she married a man with a good job. She told him something we did not teach her ... she said she didn't want a man with a job - she wanted a man with an inheritance.)

Now with that worthless info aside ... the truth is that some bigwig in the aforesaid publishing houses called some bigwig buddy in government/DOD and said we got a pointless book we need to hype so you buy the first 10,000 printing (minus the ones we send to reviewers) and let the media know DOD is "book burning."

Yep, with dozens already in the hands of reviewers, who are already publishing excepts from the uncensored first run version, it seems kind of stupid to buy up the remaining 9,500. But I suppose it will make those 500 floating around more valuable, for at least a week.

I hear Wikileaks has a coveted first printing copy. Another thing - average first hardback printing for an unknown/unproven author is rarely more than 5000 (everyone waits for the paperback).

Rumors are the Pentagon paid $250,000 for the books and another $45,000 to pulp or burn them. That's a good margin for the publisher as the book is pre-selling for $14 on Amazon. And in a couple of months you will be able to buy the book for $3 in the can't-give-it-away bin at Barnes and Noble.

But ditto what I said years ago, people eat it up.