In a previous post I linked to Bill Tonelli’s debunking of I heard You Paint
Houses, the book that is the basis for the upcoming Martin Scorsese and Robert Di
Nero crime film, The Irishman, on Netflix, at Slate - www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2019/08/the-lies-of-irishman-netflix-and-martin.html
Like Tonelli, I don’t believe Frank Sheeran murdered Hoffa or Crazy Joe
Gallo. I don’t believe most of the book and although I’ll watch the Irishman
when it comes out, I’ll watch it as fiction.
Slate published the publisher’s response to Bill Tonelli’s piece, and
Tonelli responded to the publisher.
Chip Fleischer, the publisher of Steerforth Press, sent
the following letter in response to Slate’s Aug. 7 cover story,“The Lies of the Irishman.”
Slate is running the letter as it was submitted, followed by a reply from the
story’s author, Bill Tonelli. Slate stands by the story.
To the editors:
Bill Tonelli’s August 7 write-up for Slate on I Heard You
Paint Houses, Charles Brandt’s book about Mafia hit man and Teamsters official
Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, is a hit job. It is not journalism in the
traditional sense, but rather a glib, intellectually dishonest taunt. Its
author, Bill Tonelli, chose to set aside the overwhelming majority of evidence
and information contained in the book and provided to him by its author and
publisher. Slate’s decision to run the article under the headline, “The Lies of
the Irishman” and to add in the subhead “the guy made it all up,” despite the
fact that Tonelli’s piece does not contain details of fact in support of such
conclusions, is irresponsible in the extreme, not to mention damaging. A
longtime reader of Slate, I expected better. Charles Brandt and I focused on
providing Tonelli with evidence and corroboration in response to his
agenda-driven questions. His write-up is built upon a base of ad hominem
attacks and larded with strong opinions and assertions that, while from experts
in many cases, are not supported by facts, and certainly do not disprove
anything published in our book. Since publishing I Heard You Paint Houses 15
years ago, we have received substantial independent third party corroboration
of its revelations and conclusions, so much in fact that we added a 57-page
Conclusion to the current edition to go along with a 14-page Epilogue that was
added to the first paperback edition in 2005 detailing much of that
corroboration.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
