How Doug Preston’s Wrong Claims In His MOF Afterword Were Often Contradicted In The Past

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“Mario Spezi and I stand by every single assertion of fact in that book today just as strongly as we did when it was first published three years ago.”

Not exactly a denial. And yet he’s never going to climb down off his high horse and admit he was wrong. In fact he’s probably under contract not to say anything that could undermine the MoF movie.

Did Preston ever specify which of Kermit’s claims he said were false?

Hi brmull.

On the MOF movie this report was dated 25 January 2011.  http://risingwatersentertainment.com/2011/01/george-clooney-monster-of-florence/

As the book portrays Italy in a very bad light, and as George Clooney lives there a lot of the time and presumably likes it, he may drop to the fact that a movie might not be very smart.

This is from the Professional area of IMDB which was updated this month.

Writers
  Nathan Alexander
  Christopher McQuarrie Screenplay
  Douglas Preston Book
  Mario Spezi Book

Producers
  George Clooney ... producer
  Bruce Cohen ... producer
  Grant Heslov ... producer
  Dan Jinks ... producer
  Christopher McQuarrie ... producer

Cast
  George Clooney

Production Companies

Fox 2000 Pictures
Los Angeles, CA:
10201 W Pico Blvd
Bldg 78
Los Angeles, CA 90035
USA
Phn: +1 310 369 2000
http://www.fox.com/

Jinks/Cohen Company
 
Smoke House [George Clooney’s company]
Studio City, CA:
12001 Ventura Place
Suite 200
Studio City, CA 91604
USA
Phn: +1 818 432 0330
Fax: +1 818 432 0337

Here is some more news about the Clooney movie.

It is from last October and it says Clooney thought Knox was probably guilty.

With the appeal verdict he changed his mind. He was happy because he now had a real villain in the evil Mignini.

Does he realize that with the cassation appeal the worst is still ahead? And that Mignini is off the hook in his own case and doing very well, with all of Perugia and Italy supporting him?

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/george_clooney_says_script_for_monster_of_florence_being_tweaked_he_wont_di

Also on the docket is “The Monster of Florence,” based on Douglas Preston’s true-crime book about an Italian serial killer. The movie has no director yet, but Clooney – who has a home in Italy – will definitely be playing Preston. However, the book features (and paints a very unflattering portrait of) the prosecutor in the case – the same one who recently presided over the Amanda Knox trial. And since Knox’s guilty verdict was just reversed on appeal, the ‘Monster’ script is currently being adjusted.

“I was very happy for that verdict,” Clooney says. “Because I was one of those people who thought Amanda Knox was probably guilty, and then I ended up changing my mind. And it will affect our screenplay, that verdict—and that mentality: get a conviction at all costs—because it’s the theme of the book and the screenplay.”

And Clooney definitely won’t be directing the picture, he said, because he only takes supporting roles in films he directs saying, “When you’re directing, you’re really doing everything—you’re really busy!” Which sounds like he might be up for a little real-life downtime. If there are no acting or directing projects for a while, he said, no problem. “I’m fine. I’ve got stuff to do.”

Smart thinking George: “that mentality: get a conviction at all costs… it’s the theme of the book and the screenplay”. That and shafting Mignini.

Preston is quoted below in an interview with The Atlantic.

That was three years before he came out with his MOF Afterword.

See any difference?

By the time of the MOF Afterword he had opportunistically created a very different Mignini.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/07/the-journalist-and-the-murderer/304997/

Judge Giuliano Mignini, the public prosecutor who interrogated you, is another important player in the case. Was Mignini just doing his job? How much weight do you give to the idea that Mignini had it in for Spezi and you?

First of all, as a novelist I’ve written about what it’s like to be interrogated. I understood that it’s a psychologically daunting experience, but you really can’t have any conception of what it’s like to be strongly interrogated until you undergo it. It’s a humiliating experience. You have no power. And it’s especially difficult in a foreign language. In order to speak well and to be convincing you have to have tremendous command of the language. And when you don’t you sound like a liar even when you’re not. I remember in this interrogation thinking, “My God, I sound like a liar.

If I were Mignini, I wouldn’t believe me, stumbling, stuttering, and sweating, and using the wrong words, and backtracking, and saying things two or three times, and trying to explain what I meant.” I was thinking, “They’re going to take me from this room and put me in jail, and I’m not going to see my wife and kids again, or at least for a while.” I was terrified that I was not going to see the outside world again. Because of course the crimes they were accusing me of were very serious.

As for Mignini himself, I think he’s a sincere man and an honest and incorruptible judge. I don’t think that he’s a bad man. I think he really believed that I was guilty and that Spezi was guilty. I could see that in the interrogation he believed I was a liar. So, yes, I think he was doing his job the best he could. I think in many ways he was badly misled by Giuttari, the police officer who was running the investigation.

What Preston doesnt include here is that Mignini apparently suspected Preston and Spezi were planting evidence and using false names to advance their theory of the case.

Mignini in his interviews (linked to above and well worth reading) says he barely remembers Preston. He was seemingly pretty generous to simply let Preston go without charges. 

Also hard to believe is that that interview appeared three months AFTER Preston raised this faux storm http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/03/prweb358544.htm

Indicted in Italy? Judicial harassment?

Did Preston lie to a huge trusting group of reporters? You decide.

Thousands of individuals all over the world are interrogated by the police and other authorities without any difficulties whatsoever.  Meredith’s UK friends did not have a good command of the Italian language and none of them, to date, have exhibited any of the fear that Preston related.

Sophie Purton was interrogated nearly as long as Knox and did not feel compelled to invent fanciful stories involving herself in Meredith’s murder.  Patrick Lumumba was seized from his home, trundled down to the police station, told there was an eyewitness to his involvement, and yet did not sign anything implicating himself or anyone else.

People like Knox and Preston find police interviews ‘daunting’ because they’re liars and not because of anything innately horrifying about talking to the authorities.

Is not the Italian court verdict holding some scientists guilty of manslaughter for not accurately predicting an earthquake going to make the Italian Justice system look incredibly foolish?

How in the name of heaven did the prosecutors decide to file such charges, and how in the world did it not get thrown out of court before going to trial?

Hi Gonzaga

It initially surprised me too. The US headlines made it look like they simply hadnt predicted the earthquake. But we of all people know to be careful of US headlines!

In fact the tremors had certainly been worsening in Abruzzo and a researcher Giampaolo Giuliani had predicted a big quake. The city and citizens were very anxious. Italian stories explain that the court concluded that information released after a rushed and very irregular meeting made no scientific sense. Here is one report:

“Bernardo De Bernardinis, then deputy director of the Civil Protection Department, said, “the scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy.” Most seismologists, including several of the indicted, consider this statement to be scientifically incorrect.”

Many lives were lost in that quake. The Berlusconi-era machinery did not perform well. As usual the scientists do have two automatic levels of appeal, and the Italian system is a learning system where lessons learned are often acted on. Maybe heads will roll, maybe some will be left with a clean record. Things will be done differently in future. 

European eyebrows are often raised at the US court system too. An incarceration rate 6X Italy’s, executions, elected prosecutors and judges who promote a hard line, Casey Anthony, OJ Simpson, not much remediation in the prisons, private for-profit prisons…  Both systems have their merits and things they could do better, and some lawyers read here because the ongoing comparison can help both.

@ Gonzaga

There is an ongoing debate in Italy, but the case is basically different from what you seem to believe.

The scientists are not convicted for their predictions. They are basically charged because they took part in a bogus meeting of a government commission, which was a kind of puppet meeting, a staging; they did not discuss (not all members of the commission were summoned), they did not issue an official transcript of their work, everything was irregular from the formal poiint of view.

This “meeting” was organized by the government as a ruse for the media. The purpose of this meeting was to produce a false communication to the local press and local authorities in order to counter the demands for security measures that were made by citizens and local representatives.

The cluster of quakes in the city area in the previous two months was unprecedented, a previous estimation, issued in 2008 by another group of seismologits from the National Council of Research, yielded a prediction of about 30% likeliness of a major quake in L’Aquila area in the years to come between 2008 and 2013. The population demanded a new estimation of risk, asked to organize an evacuation from old buildings and more presence of emergency forces (they had only 15 firemen in the centre that night).

The commission was totally reassuring and said there was absolutely nothing abnormal in the cluster of quakes.

The big problem in this, is the bogus nature of the comittee meeting, in which the scientists naively accepted to take part. This has to do with a major outrage by the population towards the Civil Protection, an agency which in Italy was factually the branch more directly corrupted by the government.

Currently, trials related to this are not limited to the case against the 7 members of the seismologists commission. The former head of the Civil Protection is under trial on major corruption charges, as well as the whole system including former ministers. The matter is a huge scandal, with trials ongoing in Perugia, Rome, Naples, L’Aquila and Milan.

Thanks Yummi.

There is a parallel to this Berlusconi-era situation in the US national emergency preparedness group which performed abysmally when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

The president had stripped the budget and put an unqualified crony in charge. Around 1500 people died, many of them preventably. Almost nobody was held to account.

http://www.wanttoknow.info/femafailureskatrina

The Katrina situation is really quite different.  The people running FEMA were and are likely incompetent but they did not actively participate with federal and state officials to conceal the extent of the disaster.

It would have been similar if the National Hurricane Center had issued false statements about the strength and vectors of the storm.  As we know, the citizens of New Orleans were warned to evacuate but that many of the lower income people were simply unequipped to do so.  That evacuation order and planning was simply beyond the scope of any existing agencies.

Thanks Yummi for telling the details.

I have some idea about the committees. In a committee, nobody feels responsible and generally go with the flow. Essentially, nobody believes that they have a role to play and they always refer to what is bureaucratically called “collective decision”- whatever that may mean.

Committees have perks- incentives that make members go with the rest even if they are personally against. Sometimes they are called to the meeting with a very short notice and it is not surprising that many may not know about the details of the agenda. Some members never open their mouths. They are the hot favourites in all committees.

You will get the idea if you take a hard look into how the members are selected. Also you should look at the queue people are waiting to be members of any committee- I mean any committee.

In this particular case, I can perhaps guess what happened. Somebody, some political person perhaps, asked: what are the chances for the earthquake: 50%, 10%, 1%? Some scientist perhaps accurately replied: something between 1-5%. It was a wrong decision to consider 1-5% as an acceptable risk. But then someone calculated that if we spend money 100 times, it is going to be useful only 5 times!

Americans have a different concept: spending money by the govt is always welcome. You see, the committee was actually trying to save the govt some money and it just happened to be a bad idea!

All committees are deadly: nobody is safe from them! Universality of the human nature!

We agree that the Italian situation looks to be worse. Katrina politics however were similarly murkey if you can believe the fired FEMA director Michael ““Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” Brown:

“Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, ‘We had to federalize Louisiana because she’s a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,’” Brown said, speaking before a group of graduate students at the Metropolitan College of New York on January 19, 2007. “‘We can’t do it to Haley [Mississippi governor Haley Barbour] because Haley’s a white male Republican governor. And we can’t do a thing to him. So we’re just gonna federalize Louisiana.”

New Orleans is better than before in my recent experience and the huge seawall is awesome.

FEMA couldn’t have done anything about the botched evacuation plans anyhow.  That’s a different agency.  The US is also very very different than Canada or Italy, too. 

During the Winnipeg Red River Flood of 1997, federal troops were engaged in building levees.  This was impossible in Grand Forks, ND, and much of its central business district was destroyed in the same flood.

It’s a different way of doing things:  in the US the federal government cannot simply plant troops into the middle of a city to help with flood control.  That requires several levels of permissions.  Here the government is actually expected to react like that.

@ chami

your wrote: ” In this particular case, I can perhaps guess what happened. Somebody, some political person perhaps, asked: what are the chances for the earthquake: 50%, 10%, 1%? ....  “

It was possibly worse than that.

The head of the Civil Protection was already under secret investigation; there was a wiretapped phone call between Guido Bertolaso, head of the Civil Protection, and Enzo Boschi, a geologist head of an agency for assessment of geological risk.

The phone call was on the same day of the meeting, a few hours before. There are statements as follows:

Giudo Bertolaso:“they asked me: are new tremors expected?” ... “(...) you know the meeting of today has this purpose, so it’s true that we are not going to tell the truth ” (...)

Then he instructs Boschi about what to do at the meeting: 

Bertolaso: “you will make your press release at the end, with the usual things that are said about the topic of possible tremors, and we won’t talk about the real purpose of the meeting. All right?”

Boschi: “Don’t worry, you know our attitude is extremely cooperative. We do a press release, and we’ll submit it to your approval before …”

The wiretapped phone call between Bertolaso and Boschi:

http://www.cadoinpiedi.it/2012/10/25/terremoto_laquila_bertolaso_la_verita_non_va_detta.html

If you listen to the phone call you hear how the scientist, on this occasion, is not behaving as a scientist; instead he takes orders from his “friend” Guido.

I don´t know why Preston reminds me of Dan Brown.

Is that an outside toilet? where anything Preston writes belongs anyway.

Where next:

Or to next entry Frank Sforza Serial Defamer of Italian Justice Must Face Hard Truths Of American Justice

Or to previous entry Increasingly The Good Lawyers Are On One Planet And The PR Shills Are On Another