Udo UlfkotteIf you look up Udo Ulfkotte, the author, on Wikipedia, you'll get the impression that this man was a wild-eyed right-wing conspiracy theorist. The fact that he spent most of his career writing for prestigious mainstream media outlets, working in clos contact with top politicians and Western intelligence agencies, and making countless television appearances as a war correspondent and foreign policy expert, doesn't seem to count. At the bottom of his Wiki page, you'll also notice the long list of books he wrote, many of them run-away bestsellers in the German-speaking world - despite a virtual blackout on advertising. So, who was Udo Ulfkotte? Was he a highly-respected, mainstream journalist or just some unhinged conspiracy theorist? Presstitutes is the closest we will ever get to an Udo Ulfkotte autobiography. It is both an apology for his own personal conduct and a warning to a new generation of journalists. With his own career as the example, he details how easily young journalists are lifted up and swept along by the mainstream, unable to resist the reward system that shapes the Western media. From his first nudge as a university student toward working with the BND, German Intelligence, Ulfkotte's career provides many a look behind the scenes at what is packaged and sold in the media. After graduation, without any journalism background, but having been vetted by the BND, young Ulfkotte miraculously landed a job as an assistant foreign policy editor at Germany's most prestigious newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). He stayed with them for 17 years, travelling to 60 countries and spending more time in the Middle East than in Germany. In 1988 he nearly died from an Iraqi nerve gas attack on Iranian troops, and discovered the gas had come from Germany. His reports and photos were buried. Gradually he became disillusioned with the dishonesty. His first critical book title, Classified Information: Federal Intelligence Service (BND), was published in 1997 and was promoted by the FAZ. He also began lecturing on "security management" in the University of Lüneburg's business school. But the FAZ was not happy when he published How Journalists Lie in 2002. He suffered another serious physical injury in 2003. The last straw was when a political party offered him a fat bribe to use his press credentials to spy on a rival politician's private life. After a heart attack, Ulfkotte decided he must expose as much political corruption as he could before he died. He wanted to wake people up. He still had an extensive network of sources who were also fed up, and he published about a book a year, each one more scathing than the last. Presstitutes was the biggest bestseller. The issue that was dearest to him was the loss of cultural identity, which was being aggressively promoted through massive corruption in the government and media. He warned of the dangers of mass immigration before the crime rates shot off the charts. He was now an official persona non grata. Police and prosecutors searched his home and offices six times over the next 10 years, as he said, "because I reported things in public that are not politically correct, especially things the public shouldn't know, things they would like to keep secret... the bearer of bad news is the first one to be hanged, beheaded or otherwise quartered." The searches were always reported in the media, and he lost his professorship, No charges were ever filed, but the media never reported on that. Dr. Udo Ulfkotte survived a poison gas attack in Iraq, a bout with cancer, and head injuries from being pushed down the stairs of his home by a spy for the ISI, the Pakistani CIA. He died of his fourth heart attack on January 13th 2017, just before his 57th birthday. Did he die a natural death? We may never know. Read More Read Less