What do you think?
Rate this book
Unholy Alliances: Working the Tawana Brawley Story
An account of the people and politics involved in the racial discord which followed the alleged attack on a young, black woman by a gang of white men.
- GenresNonfiction
375 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1989
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 17, 2020
My earliest memories of this affair were watching a cameo of Tawana Brawley in a Public Enemy video and thinking "Who the hell is that?" and reading Times-Herald Record stories about a defamation suit filed by Stephen Pagones, a Dutchess County ADA dragged into the Wappingers mud. For me, this book served as a very good backgrounder on the whole case, even though its primary concern was detaling what it was like for two CBS 2 news reporters to hunt after every idiot bruit and fartblast of the Brawley story from late 1987 through 1988. The text's authors blend their voices seamlessly, offering in short bursts many fascinating asides about the news business and racial politics in New York in the tense late 80s. Otherwise, the story moves quickly and each turn underscores the extent to which Sharpton/Maddox/Mason were masterful manipulators of this smoke-and-mirrors cause celebre.
March 11, 2012
Previously, I had only known dimly about the Tawana Brawley Story: a young girl's extremely poor decision making engaging a neighorhood, local/national news and lies so deep she couldn't find her way out. In a way, that is merely a footnote, a setting for Al Sharpton to re-cast his image from traitorous government informant to champion for African-Americans. I have to admire Sharpton's ability to completely re-create his persona, regardless of how disengenuous and underhanded his motivations and techniques are as revealed in this book co-authored by the father of Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi.
I especially liked the business-of-journalist sub-plots in the telling: how investigations led to other stories that made air time, how editing and content decisions were made, how jury-rigged innovations made a key difference before the era of ubiquitous satellite trucks.
I especially liked the business-of-journalist sub-plots in the telling: how investigations led to other stories that made air time, how editing and content decisions were made, how jury-rigged innovations made a key difference before the era of ubiquitous satellite trucks.
January 26, 2016
This was a good, entertaining read about the loopy twists and turns in the Tawana Brawley case, from the POV of two TV news reports trying to keep pace with the craziness. It really took me back to those days and how much we all took that level of tension, hostility and race hate for granted in the late '80s. Really worth a read.
May 20, 2024
TWO TV JOURNALISTS RECOUNT THEIR INVESTIGATIONS OF THIS CASE
Authors Mike Taibbi and Anna Sims-Phillips wrote in the Preface to this 1989 book, “We were among the pack of reporters assigned to the Tawana Brawley case…We had no special qualifications for the assignment… But we were given the time, free of daily deadlines, to work on the case… It heightened racial tension in a city already traumatized by a series of ‘race-based conflicts.’ … Toward the end, the Brawley story was a festering sore that had fouled the air… But, in the end, something changed. Pieces of the truth were forced into the open air; not the whole truth: that’s still hidden. But enough of it emerged, through the efforts of forensic scientists and investigators and, yes, the press, so that there was room and time at last, away from the noise of the headlines … for people to measure those bits of truth and privately choose what was worthy of belief. The rhetoric has been silenced. The silence, though, remains.”
TV reporter Mary Murphy interview Tawana Brawley’s mother, and “had found Glenda Brawley’s demeanor curious, to say the least. She had not expressed outrage in her interview, and in fact didn’t appear to be angry. She’s seemed disconnected from her daughter in some way, never offering the gestures of comfort and reassurance one might have expected to see… listening as the terrible narrative of abduction and gang rape was repeated for the camera, Glenda Brawley appeared… uninterested.” (Pg. 21)
David Sall told the reporters, “Listen, they say she was raped and maimed and beaten? … in the woods, for four days… There was nothing in her pants, her clothes, her skin. No dirt, grass, stains, twigs, you name it... Then, six white men, including cops. They know who the cops are, then can arrest everybody by sundown. You think six guys wouldn’t be missed for four days over the Thanksgiving holiday? Or that someone wouldn’t break? C’mon…” (Pg. 73)
They recount, “On March 7 the symbiotic, improbable, yet irresistible relationship between the Brawley advisers and the press reached a new level, and perhaps a new low. [Rev. Al] Sharpton charged that a ‘racist cult’ with links to the Irish Republican Army, a cult operating within the Dutchess County sheriff’s department, was responsible for the attack on Tawana Brawley… [All the media] quoted Sharpton’s claim that an ‘inside source’ within the sheriff’s department had revealed the existence of the cult.” (Pg. 94)
They record, “the Brawley Task Force went to work… informing the grand jury, that in all likelihood Tawana Brawley would never tell her story under oath. The early analysis of the available physical evidence relating to the teenager’s medical condition and the scene where she’d been discovered tended in each instance to prove the negative: Tawana Brawley had been neither assaulted nor raped. The hospital rape kit test, analyzed by the FBI crime lab… showed no evidence of sexual contact.” (Pg. 141)
They note, “May had been a rough month, many of the key witnesses in what had become the process of disproving Tawana Brawley’s story either changing their own stories, refusing to come clean, or being exposed as liars themselves. Trayvon Kirby, who’d driven Tawana to Newburgh that fateful November day, had claimed at one point that he’s ‘spoken to Tawana several times’ during her disappearance. He also handed over twenty-two letters or notes Tawana had written to him---several of which included graphic and revealing descriptions of her sexual adventures---and the promise of his useful testimony won him lenient treatment on gun, drug, and stolen-car charges. Then he failed two polygraph tests, finally admitting that his story about having talked to Tawana during the four days was fiction.” (Pg. 251-252)
Perry James McKinnon told the reporters, “Something is wrong with this case… there’s no facts, I don’t see anything that says that she was raped…. I warned [lawyer Alton Maddox], ‘Legally, you’re going to be in trouble legally trying to pursue this.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to pursue this legally. I’m going to pursue this politically!... I don’t care about no facts.’” (Pg. 303)
A source told them, “There was a period there… when everybody was going home … and trying to write on themselves. We’d heard before that the writing of Tawana’s shirt consisted of ‘carbonaceous material.’ Burned cotton fiber… That charred cotton fiber stuff? We found some of it under Tawana’s fingernails, in the fingernail clippings that were taken at the hospital… And that’s how we got the ‘smoking gun.’” (Pg. 369-370)
Another reporter said, “Tawana Brawley was prepared to admit that ‘she did write the racial slurs---including the letters ‘KKK’---on her own body,’ that she did in fact spend time during her four-day disappearance in the old family apartment, but that she was forced to do so ‘by her kidnappers.’ … Al Sharpton … insisted, ‘I’m saying she will in fact say she was forced to do many things… and that the only ones lying are those that say that this changes her story.’” (Pg. 374)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the Tawana Brawley case and related issues.
Authors Mike Taibbi and Anna Sims-Phillips wrote in the Preface to this 1989 book, “We were among the pack of reporters assigned to the Tawana Brawley case…We had no special qualifications for the assignment… But we were given the time, free of daily deadlines, to work on the case… It heightened racial tension in a city already traumatized by a series of ‘race-based conflicts.’ … Toward the end, the Brawley story was a festering sore that had fouled the air… But, in the end, something changed. Pieces of the truth were forced into the open air; not the whole truth: that’s still hidden. But enough of it emerged, through the efforts of forensic scientists and investigators and, yes, the press, so that there was room and time at last, away from the noise of the headlines … for people to measure those bits of truth and privately choose what was worthy of belief. The rhetoric has been silenced. The silence, though, remains.”
TV reporter Mary Murphy interview Tawana Brawley’s mother, and “had found Glenda Brawley’s demeanor curious, to say the least. She had not expressed outrage in her interview, and in fact didn’t appear to be angry. She’s seemed disconnected from her daughter in some way, never offering the gestures of comfort and reassurance one might have expected to see… listening as the terrible narrative of abduction and gang rape was repeated for the camera, Glenda Brawley appeared… uninterested.” (Pg. 21)
David Sall told the reporters, “Listen, they say she was raped and maimed and beaten? … in the woods, for four days… There was nothing in her pants, her clothes, her skin. No dirt, grass, stains, twigs, you name it... Then, six white men, including cops. They know who the cops are, then can arrest everybody by sundown. You think six guys wouldn’t be missed for four days over the Thanksgiving holiday? Or that someone wouldn’t break? C’mon…” (Pg. 73)
They recount, “On March 7 the symbiotic, improbable, yet irresistible relationship between the Brawley advisers and the press reached a new level, and perhaps a new low. [Rev. Al] Sharpton charged that a ‘racist cult’ with links to the Irish Republican Army, a cult operating within the Dutchess County sheriff’s department, was responsible for the attack on Tawana Brawley… [All the media] quoted Sharpton’s claim that an ‘inside source’ within the sheriff’s department had revealed the existence of the cult.” (Pg. 94)
They record, “the Brawley Task Force went to work… informing the grand jury, that in all likelihood Tawana Brawley would never tell her story under oath. The early analysis of the available physical evidence relating to the teenager’s medical condition and the scene where she’d been discovered tended in each instance to prove the negative: Tawana Brawley had been neither assaulted nor raped. The hospital rape kit test, analyzed by the FBI crime lab… showed no evidence of sexual contact.” (Pg. 141)
They note, “May had been a rough month, many of the key witnesses in what had become the process of disproving Tawana Brawley’s story either changing their own stories, refusing to come clean, or being exposed as liars themselves. Trayvon Kirby, who’d driven Tawana to Newburgh that fateful November day, had claimed at one point that he’s ‘spoken to Tawana several times’ during her disappearance. He also handed over twenty-two letters or notes Tawana had written to him---several of which included graphic and revealing descriptions of her sexual adventures---and the promise of his useful testimony won him lenient treatment on gun, drug, and stolen-car charges. Then he failed two polygraph tests, finally admitting that his story about having talked to Tawana during the four days was fiction.” (Pg. 251-252)
Perry James McKinnon told the reporters, “Something is wrong with this case… there’s no facts, I don’t see anything that says that she was raped…. I warned [lawyer Alton Maddox], ‘Legally, you’re going to be in trouble legally trying to pursue this.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to pursue this legally. I’m going to pursue this politically!... I don’t care about no facts.’” (Pg. 303)
A source told them, “There was a period there… when everybody was going home … and trying to write on themselves. We’d heard before that the writing of Tawana’s shirt consisted of ‘carbonaceous material.’ Burned cotton fiber… That charred cotton fiber stuff? We found some of it under Tawana’s fingernails, in the fingernail clippings that were taken at the hospital… And that’s how we got the ‘smoking gun.’” (Pg. 369-370)
Another reporter said, “Tawana Brawley was prepared to admit that ‘she did write the racial slurs---including the letters ‘KKK’---on her own body,’ that she did in fact spend time during her four-day disappearance in the old family apartment, but that she was forced to do so ‘by her kidnappers.’ … Al Sharpton … insisted, ‘I’m saying she will in fact say she was forced to do many things… and that the only ones lying are those that say that this changes her story.’” (Pg. 374)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the Tawana Brawley case and related issues.
April 11, 2018
I liked the premise of this book - and I did enjoy reading the minute by minute accounts of all the issues and that is what the book promised itself to say. What I missed was the bigger picture, but in all truth, the book didn't promise to let us know this. Did Tawana really do all of this by herself, did she not realize what was going to happen, why does she never finally admit to the silliness of it, those questions were not probed. But the accuracy of the chronology and the details of the events surrounding the reporting of the story show these two (Phillips and Taibbi) to be truly good reporters.
August 30, 2008
read this after following the trial avidly; al sharpton,2 lawyers a young girl and her family took new york city and the government to a stand still. even sought sanctuary in the church to not testify before a grand jury.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews