Len Bracken is the author of one of the first widely distributed books published in the United States suggesting the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror—reviewed in the Village Voice, September 2002—presents the “state-terror thesis” and describes the event as an “indirect defensive attack,” developing the offensive-defensive theory of terrorism created by Guy Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti. Bracken is the author of the first biography in any language on Debord and has translated a book by Sanguinetti. The kamikaze-style attacks, according to Bracken, must always be seen in connection with the anthrax-poisoned letters as interlocking stratagems by the established power designed to gain more power and as a pretext for going on the offensive. Bracken is also the author of a general theory of civil war and of a chronology on the strategy of tension in Italy (Arch Conspirator).

   On September 11, 2001, he was in Riga, Latvia as part of the citywide Untitled anti-consumerist exhibition. His subsequent pamphlet, Dialectical Hedonism, posits pain and pleasure in rest and movement as the essential categories of existence. As the translator of Paul Lafargue’s Right to Be Lazy and writer-director of the dramatic film The Lazy Ones, Bracken hopes that through the pleasures of resisting the consumer economy people will successfully oppose the strategy of tension. Failure to do so runs the risk of martial law and forced labor in detention camps similar to those described in his feature essay “New China Syndrome.”

   Bracken’s essays have appeared in publications as diverse as Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory and the London-based Principia Dialectica. During the nineties he edited the journal Extraphile and, after obtaining a professional editing certificate, he joined the copy desk of The Daily Report for Executives, published by the Bureau of National Affairs, where he received extensive training in legal journalism. He was the daily beat reporter at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve during the financial turmoil that erupted in the summer of 2007 into early 2008. He currently writes about export controls, trade preferences, sanctions, foreign investment in the United States and trade policies concerning Europe, the Middle East and Africa for BNA’s International Trade Reporter.

   Bracken’s works have been covered by the Associated Press, the Washington Post and Washington City Paper, as well as many small journals. He is the author of four novels:

• Freeplay reflects Bracken’s first-hand knowledge of the intentional Washington, DC community known as the Finders and of a terrorism incident in the Soviet Union;
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• The East Is Black is based on the true erotic story of a beautiful Berlin brunette during the fall of the Wall;
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• Liquid Zinc takes the reader to Paris and Barcelona during the nineties with what the author calls an anti-novel; and
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• Snitch Jacket is a visionary text set in 2000-01 that relies on the author’s insider knowledge gleaned from diverse sources—sedan chauffeurs and the mistresses of Cabinet secretaries, émigré intellectuals and black bloc anarchists.

   Born at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland, Bracken attended grade school in Rhode Island, Florida and Greece, and high school in California, Virginia and Switzerland; he is a graduate of George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. A student of foreign languages, Bracken studied Russian in Moscow, French in Paris and Spanish in Santo Domingo.