Kenneth R. Timmerman - And the Rest Is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies

Advance Praise for And the Rest Is History

Although I have known national security journalist Ken Timmerman for over twenty years, he only told me how he barely escaped execution by radical Islamists in a Beirut cellar a few years ago. His professionalism, modesty, and faith are qualities seen far too rarely in todays ego-driven field of journalism.

Fred Fleitz, Former National Security Council Chief of Staff under President Trump

Ken Timmerman is a superb investigative reporterand old schoolwhich means he does his research. His behind-the-scenes adventures in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Israel, and even France are a terrific read for those of us who share his passion for tracking down the facts, not molding the facts to a narrative.

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and NY Times bestselling author of Clinton Cash and Profiles in Corruption

And the Rest Is History is a memoir that reads like a rollicking, page-turning novel. From the cold war through the war on terror and beyond, Ken takes us on the wild adventure that has been his life as a global-trotting reporter: we enter war zones and the halls of power, eavesdrop on conversations with world leaders, terrorists, arms dealers, and spies, and become witnesses to extraordinary history. Dripping in vivid detail, his unforgettable story will have you riveted from page one.

Monica Crowley, Ph.D., Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury

Real reporters dont follow the pack. Ken Timmerman takes us down roads where few reporters have managed to go before and knows how to evoke people and places with remarkable grace.

Walid Phares, FoxNews National Security and Foreign Policy expert

Also by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Fiction

The Election Heist

ISIS Begins

Honor Killing

The Wren Hunt

Nonfiction

Deception: The Making of the YouTube Video Hillary and Obama Blamed for Benghazi

Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi

Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender

Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran

The French Betrayal of America

Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America

Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson

The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq

La Grande Fauche: La Fuite des Technologies vers lEst (Gorbachevs Technology War)

Fanning the Flames: Guns, Greed, and Geopolitics in the Gulf War

www.kentimmerman.com

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-63758-476-7

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-477-4

And the Rest Is History:

Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies

2022 by Kenneth R. Timmerman

All Rights Reserved

Bottom Cover Photo by Rich Gibson

Interior Design by Yoni Limor

All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the authors memory. While all of the events described are true, occasional names and identifying details have been changed where indicated to protect the privacy of the people involved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

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Published in the United States of America

For Niclas, Julian, Clio, Diana, and Simon

Table of Contents

In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them.

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters , p. 148

By Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center

I n 2008, I was approached by Kurdish and Iraqi diplomats with a request to create a UN exhibition commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Saddam Husseins gassing of five thousand of his Kurdish citizens.

To prepare for the exhibition, my colleague, Liebe Geft, the director of our Museum of Tolerance, and I traveled to Kurdistan to hear from survivors of that horrific day in 1988.

This orthodox rabbi had one request: to pray at the site of the mass grave of five thousand innocent Muslims.

As I grappled to find the appropriate words for a prayer, I remembered a conversation I had with the namesake of our institution, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, one of the few world leaders to denounce Saddams crimes against humanity. He warned that the silence and apathy greeting the atrocity would be interpreted as a green light by other tyrants for future atrocities. He was to be proven right over and over again.

Standing in that windswept cemetery, the souls of the innocents seemed to be silently screaming, How could the world let this happen? Why the silence and apathy from the world?

I knew the answers. They were supplied by a courageous investigative journalist, Kenneth Timmerman, years before. He could detail where the poison gas came from, who sold the helicopters, and so on.

I first learned about Ken Timmerman years before from my colleague Shimon Samuels, who was the Paris-based European director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and who alerted me to alarming news that Ken had published about the German connections to Saddam Husseins poison gas programs.

Poison gas is a sensitive subject for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose mission is to teach the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust and to help the world avoid repeating the horrors of the past. The idea that Saddam Hussein might be getting poison gas technology from Germany to use against Israel was beyond horrifying.

The founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier, and I decided to commission Ken to do additional research. We released his Poison Gas Report in late 1990. It identified eighty-six West German companies as major supplies of Saddam Husseins burgeoning WMD programs. It was the first of several collaborative projects we did together.

As I got to know Ken and his wife, Christina, better, I realized he was no ordinary reporter. His energy was prodigious. One week he was in Paris, the next in Washington, then he flew to Israel and Jordan and onward to tour machine-tool plants in Germany, always meeting sources who were willing to compare notes because he actually had notes to compare.

But his uniqueness went way beyond this extraordinary ability to drill down into complex subjects. It was Kens story .

As you will read in this book, Ken started his career as a young American liberal, went to Beirut, and promptly got taken hostage by terrorists. Its the classic American story of a transformation. He came out of that experience a changed person, born again to his Christian faith and with an unshakeable devotion to the cause of freedom.

That devotion led him to do things many journalists would not consider, including helping his own government and that of Israel.

Ken went on to dedicate his life to exposing terrorists, or as Simon Wiesenthal put it, the murderers of tomorrow. His many books are full of them.

You will find this book a good place to understand yesteryears crises and todays challenges. I can only hope that Ken Timmermans dedication will inspire a new generation of journalists who will pursue their stories the old-fashioned wayseeking out the truthwherever that journey takes you.