Publishing, the Rules of the Trade

L'Agent noir. Une taupe dans l'affaire Abdallah

Laurent Gally, Robert Laffont, original edition, 1987, Coll. Bfm - Limoges

In March 1987, a zealous bailiff, and perhaps juridical dysfunction, led to the destruction by fire of 17,000 copies of L’Agent noir, une taupe dans l’affaire Abdallah by Laurent Gally, in an industrial dump.  This journalist with Libération investigated the forces around the Lebanese militant Georges Abdallah, judged and condemned for terrorism in France. In the book were two internal documents from the French intelligence services on which figured the names of agents. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence obtained the decision that these documents, in an annex, should be removed from the book. Robert Laffont decided to rebind the 60,000 volumes of the first print run without the annex. The bailiff destroyed 17,000 books that hadn’t yet been rebound.