Swifvet author threatened with lawsuit

By Art Moore

Picking up where he left off with best-seller “Unfit for Command,” author Jerome Corsi once again is entering a maelstrom with the impending publication of a book that blows the whistle on U.S. politicians and activists allegedly on the take from Iran’s radical Islamic regime.

New York Daily News columnist Lloyd Grove plans to report tomorrow that Iranian-American activist Hassan Nemazee, a figure Corsi criticizes in his upcoming WND Books title “Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians,” has threatened the author with a $10 million defamation lawsuit.

Corsi, a WND columnist, was the co-author with John O’Neill of “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” regarded by many political analysts as a crucial factor in the 2004 election after it reached the top of the New York Times list.

Nemazee is a New York investment banker and former board member of the pro-Tehran lobby American-Iranian Council who served as Kerry’s chief Iranian-American fund-raiser during the recent presidential campaign.

Corsi, whose book is scheduled for a March release, told WorldNetDaily the multi-million-dollar threat does not concern him.

“Why so little?” is his response, Corsi said, pointing out one of his sources already has been sued by Nemazee for $10 million, Aryo Pirouznia, leader of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran.

“I’ll say the same thing as I said to John Kerry – I’ll send him the Federal Express package and save him the trouble,” Corsi said.

According to Grove, Nemazee is upset at allegedly being cast as an agent of the mullahs who control Iran.

Corsi insists the book does not make that claim.

“I don’t have any proof of that,” he said. “But he was part of the pro-mullah lobby who worked with the Iranian-American Council, a group whose policy was to establish relations with the mullahs.”

During testimony last October in his suit against Pirouznia, Nemazee admitted Tehran’s Islamic regime is sympathetic to terrorism and presented a threat to the world and the United States, essentially repudiating Kerry’s position on Iran.

Despite top Iranian officials openly calling for the development of nuclear weapons and overwhelming confirmation from intelligence, Kerry had vowed that as president he would provide Tehran with nuclear fuel as long as it were used only for peaceful purposes.

Nemazee warned that Kerry should do nothing to lend credibility to the regime and that normalizing relations with Iran would be a mistake.

However, the Iranian-American said he could not explain the inconsistency of having been a board member of a group on record in support of normalizing relations with Tehran.

Corsi said he still plans to take up residence in Boston this spring as the first step of a plan to challenge Kerry for his Senate seat in 2008.

He acknowledges an issue likely to come up amid publicity for the book and his political aspirations is allegations made by opponents last year of bigotry against Catholics, the pope and Muslims, based on some of his posts to the Internet site FreeRepublic.com.

Corsi insists he wrote the posts only to be satirical and provocative.

“I apologize to anyone who took them as a direct expression of my beliefs,” he said.

Corsi emphasized he’s a Catholic who has created a mutual fund for Israel and now is establishing a group led by two Muslims, called the Iran Freedom Foundation.

“I’m reaching out to Christians, Muslims and Jews to stop these criminal mullahs who have hijacked Islam and stolen a good country,” he said.


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Art Moore

Art Moore, co-author of the best-selling book "See Something, Say Nothing," entered the media world as a PR assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. He reported for a Chicago-area daily newspaper and was senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine and an editor for Worldwide Newsroom before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He earned a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College. Read more of Art Moore's articles here.