QUILLBLOG

Trouble continues to brew for ex-commando author

From the Toronto Star:

It’s a tell-all book about an elite military unit the Department of National Defence didn’t want published for reasons of national security, and now pointed questions are being raised over whether some of the incidents it chronicles actually happened.

The 261-page book, titled Nous étions invincibles (We Were Invincible), is billed as the first insider’s account by a former member of the Joint Task Force 2, a covert anti-terrorism unit stationed near Ottawa.

The unauthorized memoir, penned in French, went on sale in Quebec last Wednesday – a day after its Quebec City-based co-author, Denis Morisset, was arrested on charges he contacted two minors for the purposes of committing a sexual offence.

Some of the exploits Morisset recounts – like the unit’s role in taking out 17 Shining Path guerrillas during a Peruvian hostage-taking in 1996 – have been documented elsewhere. But others, such as claims that six of his fellow unit members have committed suicide, the tale of a botched mission in Afghanistan, or the account of a commando raid to “eliminate” hostage-takers during an Ottawa bank heist in 1994, can’t be independently verified. A spokesperson for the Ottawa Police Service told the Toronto Star “there was no such incident.”

We obviously have no idea who’s lying in this case – whether Morisset is at all credible, or whether the charges against him are legit – but is somebody to quash the book and undercut his allegations, having unnamed spokesmen deny them and having him arrested on a sleazy charge the day before the book is launched would be one way to do it. Speaking hypothetically, of course.