
Collateral Damage
By James Long
Saudi Arabia, 1991. Swept up in the speed of the land battle, top TV journalist David Challis films the Gulf War as a triumph of good over evil. But how much of his story is real? And how much of it is what others want him to say?
Back in London, still reeling from the tragic death of a colleague in the desert, Challis begins to re-examine the evidence and stumbles on a conspiracy more frightening than any war documentary would ever dare reveal.
With billions at stake in weapons’ sales, someone has been using the background of the Gulf War to play a terrifying new game. With the British and American governments. With Arab dictators. And with innocent people’s lives . . .
It went higher and higher, still weaving, then seemed to pause and thrash round in rapid, darting irregular circles high in the air. Then it pounced, arrowing down in a straight line . . . Now, as he watched, something happened before his eyes that took just the tiniest microsecond, but that microsecond was enough to ring an alarm bell in his experienced head.
James Long was born In Sussex In 1949. After university he went Into journalism on a London newspaper before joining the BBC In 1974. He worked first on radio, reporting on business subjects, and then as a television news correspondent. He played a major part In uncovering the details of the Guinness scandal and in the Investigations into Ferdinand Marcos’s missing millions. During his broadcasting career he has been interrogated by the Indonesian secret police, deliberately run down by a Cadillac in America and held by the Venezuelan army. He now lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor, making investigative documentaries as well as writing.