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"Why is it that you loathe St. Augustine?"

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      November 18, 1997,

     John le Carré complains that he has been branded an anti-Semite as a result of a politically correct witch-hunt and declares himself innocent of the charge. It would be easier to sympathize with him had he not been so ready to join in an earlier campaign of vilification against a fellow writer.

     In 1989, during the worst days of the Islamic attack on The Satanic Verses, le Carré wrote an article (also, if memory serves, in The Guardian) in which he eagerly, and rather pompously, joined forces with my assailants.

     It would be gracious if he were to admit that he understands the nature of the Thought Police a litte better now that, at least in his own opinion, he's the one in the line of fire.

Salman Rushdie