District Insiders Latest: Expert Reveals History-Changing Oil, Book Publishing Intrigues

Globe-Trotting Energy Expert and Author Charlotte Dennett Shares On ‘District Insiders’ Long-Secret Events, Strategies that Shaped Our World and Understanding

Charlotte Dennett, an author, commentator and attorney whose father played a key role during the mid-1940s in the United States alliance with Saudi Arabia on energy and foreign affairs policies, describes on the latest District Insiders podcast her findings on those events — as well as the implications and her rare insights into how book publishers can scheme against their own authors whose books are too critical of the powerful.

Hosts Andrew Kreig and Wayne Madsen explore with Dennett what the public —including authors who naively believe publishers want only book sales, not useful relationships with the powerful — needs to understand about such vital matters.

Dennett, shown at right, describes why she and her husband and co-author Gerard “Jerry” Colby drew on their first-hand research – including about her father’s suspicious death in a 1947 air crash over Ethiopia — to raise public awareness about policies that have shaped global energy and military-related policies for generations.

She describes also what they learned during a decade of litigation against her husband’s publisher Prentice-Hall regarding the publishing industry’s secret practice of sometimes “privishing” a published book if the content becomes, in the phrase of the old Wild West bounty hunters, “worth more dead than alive.”

That was the case as they proved in federal court regarding Prentice-Hall’s secret sabotage of her husband’s in-depth 1974 history, DuPont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain, whose publishing launch included Book-of-the-Month Club selection, mysteriously cancelled.

The litigation showed the following: The book suddenly disappeared after the powerful DuPont company and family complained to the publisher in secret and at the highest levels. In a major irregularity then hidden from Colby, the DuPont complaints were not the typical issues about questions of defamation and inaccuracy that sometimes arise in publishing. DuPont complained that the book was “scurrilous and actionable,” but at trial could not come up with inaccuracies and instead complained about embarrassment to the family legacy.

Dennett describes also how organizers of the 14th Annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival this summer bestowed their Pillar Award for civic dedication and courage on her husband, a former president of the National Writers Union, at the National Press Club.

The clips below describe in more detail the importance of the Dennett-Colby lifetime of research. As one example, District Insiders co-host describes his parallel experience identifying other authors who strongly suspected and in some cases proved that their published books on such topics as the political influence of morbidly wealthy families, mob influence on legitimate business, President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and similar sensitive matters were secretly sabotaged by the targets complaining to ostensibly public-spirited book publishers seeking merely book sales in the tradition of a free press:

Related Stories:

• Justice Integrity Project, “Whistleblower Alert: Authors, Beware the Covert Art of Privishing,” Guest Column: Charlotte Dennett, Sept. 28, 2026. https://www.justice-integrity.org/2200-whistleblower-alert-authors-beware-the-covert-art-of-privishing Author Gerard Colby, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, reveals publishers’ dirty secret of how non-fiction books are commonly censored in America.

• Who Benefits: Cui Bono? Via Substack, “Whistleblower Alert: Beware the Covert Art of Privishing,” Charlotte Dennett, Aug. 30, 2026. https://charlottedennett.substack.com/)

Watch the Charlotte Dennett interview on District Insiders:

• Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/district-insiders/id1679198072
• Podbean: https://districtinsiders.podbean.com/
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kcuaiy3SHhYT4do9iz0vY
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@districtinsiders

About Charlotte Dennett

Charlotte Ruth Dennett, a Vermont-based author, attorney, blogger (“Who Benefits” – “Cui Bono” https://charlottedennett.substack.com/) and former foreign correspondent born in Lebanon, has built a multifaceted career with each role reinforcing her lifelong commitment to advocacy and accountability. In her first career as an investigative journalist. She began reporting in Beirut Lebanon, first by covering art, archeology and then writing “Special Issues” on changes in Gulf Countries (Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oran and Iran) due to oil wealth for the Middle East Sketch, then covering politics and the build up to the Lebanese Civil war for the Beirut Daily Star. She and her husband later investigated the genocide of Amazonian Indigenous peoples, a project that drew international attention to human rights abuses. Over the years, she has written extensively on topics ranging from global politics to corporate power, always with an emphasis on truth and accountability.

Her work has appeared in multiple books, including “Follow the Pipelines: Uncovering the Mystery of a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil,” with a forward by her late brother Daniel C. Dennett III; “The People V. Bush: One Lawyer’s Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encounters Along the Way”; and “Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil,” co-authored with Gerard Colby.

She leads her own legal practice, where she focuses on personal injury, medical malpractice, family law and real estate law. She entered the legal profession through the Abraham Lincoln Way, a unique path in Vermont that allowed her to apprentice with law firms rather than attend law school before passing the bar. Earlier, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Wheaton College in Massachusetts and went on to receive a Master of Arts degree in art history from Villa Schifanoia Pope Pius XII Institute in Italy. About District Insiders

About District Insiders

District Insiders features experts on timely topics affecting “districts” in the United States and globally – congressional, parliamentary or other – that are in the news.

Co-Hosts

Wayne Madsen is a journalist, newspaper columnist, and author of 28 books on intelligence matters, historical events, and the dangers of neo-fascism in threatening democracy in the United States and abroad. Based for many years in Washington, DC, he is a former U.S.Navy officer and NSA analyst.

For more than two decades, he has published The Wayne Madsen Report.com, an investigative news website now on Substack. Madsen is also the third generation of Madsens who have opposed fascism in its varied forms. His recent books include two on the Trump family and “A Parade of New Sovereignties: A Post-Hegemonic World,” an illustrated,  encyclopedia-style reference book providing core details, one to a page, on more than 500 ethnic hot spots globally potentially in the news because of nationalist, religious and patriotic aspirations of populations governed by others.

Andrew Kreig is non-profit executive, reporter, attorney, strategic consultant and author. After careers in journalism, law and business, he became a founding director of the the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project and serves on the boards of several other business, non-profit and civic groups. 

He began his career as a newspaper reporter for the Hartford Courant in Connecticut and then earned law degrees at Yale and the University of Chicago before serving as law clerk to a U.S. District judge in Boston and working at a national law firm’s office in Washington, DC.He then became vice president and then president/CEO of the Wireless Communications Association before becoming a research fellow at two universities. His most recent book Is “The Complete Annotated Durham ‘Russiagate’ Report: A Corrupt, Cruel Fraud,” which documents Russian interference in U.S. elections and efforts of denial or diversion by politically motivated Justice Department prosecutors. 

• Andrew Kreig, Andrew [at] justice-integrity.org
• Wayne Madsen, wmadsen777 [at] aol.com

 

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2208-district-insiders-latest-expert-reveals-history-changing-oil-book-publishing-intrigues