Dead Drop: August 27

GET ME RE-WRITE!   We’ve been telling you about the plethora of 9/11 anniversary documentaries and publications on the horizon.  Given the ongoing collapse in Afghanistan – we imagine there are a lot of video and print editors burning the midnight oil trying to account for recent events – as they try to explain the impact of the 9/11 attacks and their two-decade-long aftermath. Here is another entry in the documentary sweepstakes:  HBO has a four-part series made by filmmaker Spike Lee called “New York Epicenters: 9/11-2021½.”  Lee appears in the film himself and people who saw advance copies of it said it reportedly gave significant airtime to a widely discredited 9/11 truther who thinks the Twin Towers were brought down by a controlled demolition as part of an inside job. Lee says: “I got questions” about the “official explanations.” But there was so much complaining about giving a conspiracy theorist the stage that Lee is reportedly re-editing the piece.  Salon says Lee is back in the editing room and has issued a statement saying, “I respectfully ask you to hold your judgment until you see the FINAL CUT.” We hope Spike does the right thing.

BOOK REPORT:  Stand by for a deluge of books about what went wrong (and perhaps occasionally right) in Afghanistan.  Steve Coll, who wrote two excellent books on what Axios calls “the U.S. misadventure in Central Asia,” (Ghost Wars and Directorate S) has plans to write another book which will include the fall of Kabul and beyond.  And author and former Marine Elliot Ackerman has signed a deal with Penguin Books to write: The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, tracing the long arc of failure across four succeeding acts from 2001 on, culminating in the dark final act that is now playing out.” No word on publication date for either book. Turns out coming up with a workable plan for Afghanistan was even harder than selecting a new host for “Jeopardy.”