“Dragon Skin” Authors Joe Trippi, Patrick Hayes and Jules Radcliff Engage Alan Morell, Creative Management Partners for Book to Film Option Rights
“Dragon Skin”: The Amazing True Story of a Congressional Hearing, a Charlatan, and a Game-Changing Body Armor
BEVERLY HILLS, CA, Sept. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Announced today, “Dragon Skin” Authors Joe
Trippi, Patrick Hayes, and Jules Radcliff have engaged as their
Literary and Broadcast Agent, Alan Morell of Creative Management
Partners LLC in Beverly Hills CA for their Book to Film Option
rights. Mr. Trippi, (former FOX and current CNN Analyst) is a character
featured in the Hugh Jackman upcoming fall film SONY release, “Front Runner”, the true story of Gary Hart and his presidential bid.
Said
the Authors Joe Trippi, Patrick Hayes, and Jules Radcliff : “As first
time Authors for our book to film, we went through a thorough
investigative process for representation and unanimously selected Alan
Morell of the Creative Management Partners in Beverly Hills to champion
our true story narrative. We know there is a huge, international
audience for this timely and shocking story, and more than a few
reporters will be on pins and needles over fears their own roles will be
revealed. The blogosphere is going to go wild.”
Said
Agent Alan Morell, Creative Management Partners: “My clients, Joe
Trippi, Patrick Hayes, and Jules Radcliff have captured perfectly in Dragon Skin, the incredible true Body Armor story, inside the Washington DC beltway, whose scandal reached the very top political international levels; with Dragon Skin, insider glossary terms language known to very few. It’s going to be a very exciting Book and Book to Film.”
ABOUT “DRAGON SKIN”:
This
book tells two extraordinary, improbable, and intertwined true stories.
One revolves around the consequences of the media’s love affair with
narratives. The other recounts what happened when military families
engaged in an amazing act of self-help, doing for their loved ones in
combat what the political class in Washington, D.C. refused to do. The
subject is the saga of Dragon Skin body armor, still the source of
misunderstandings and controversy, and for the first time anywhere this
book reveals that its media-acclaimed inventor, Murray Neal, was a
charlatan, a fact ignored by the media and hidden by the House Armed
Services Committee in one of the most controversial and
highly-publicized episodes of the Iraq War.
OVERVIEW:
It
was a scandal that threatened the presidential ambitions of Hillary
Clinton and of an obscure Chicago pol by the name of Barack Obama
... until the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) put an end to it.
Was Dragon Skin body armor the best personal protection in the world?
Generals and visiting VIPs in the Iraq war zone were wearing it, the
Secret Service bought Dragon Skin, as did other elite federal agencies.
And yet, it was being denied to regular troops.
The
media had gleefully flogged the story ever since Massachusetts senator
John Kerry first lit the fuse on it in his challenge to the presidency
of George Bush. The Army’s inexplicable resistance to making Dragon Skin
available to the men and women doing the fighting and dying in the
barbarity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was an irresistible
narrative, serving as a proxy for the political war at home on Bush, on
the Iraq War, and on the Republican brand generally. When that narrative
got around to blaming it on corruption, something utterly unexpected
happened: The grass roots of the left joined with the grass roots of the
right, unleashing a fury directed at politicians in both parties.
Business-as-usual in Washington, D.C. was about to be upended.
The
only challenge the Chairman of the HASC faced was in coming up with a
way to put an end to what was by then known as the Army v. Dragon Skin
controversy without revealing political dynamite that would make
everyone look like fools. His staff did their job, and both Dragon Skin
and its media-acclaimed inventor, Murray Neal—who had become a modern
hero and symbol of hope for military families besieging the Congress for
answers to why their loved ones in combat did not have Dragon Skin—were
thoroughly discredited. The billion-dollar body armor cartel supplying
the Army under monopoly contracts breathed a sigh of relief, as did
Hillary Clinton, one of the big recipients of the political money they
splashed around in Washington, D.C.
To this day
the name Dragon Skin ignites controversy and misunderstandings. In
recent focus groups with defense industry professionals both in and out
of government, Dragon Skin was cited as an example of Pentagon
resistance to anything new, especially if put forward by a small company
unfamiliar with the Kabuki of military procurement. Nothing could be
further from the truth.
This book, after leading
off with the HASC hearing that left military families fuming, picks up
with the extraordinary story of how those families turned the tide and
took Dragon Skin right to the welcoming arms of the U.S. Army.
It
was a rescue campaign designed, run, and managed by an unusual—and
unusually well connected—team of insiders. The authors were three
leading members of that team, and over the course of the effort it came
to be supported by a never-before-seen network among the military
families who are to be found all over the federal government, at all
levels, who opened doors, shared insights, and prayed for the team’s
success. The story tells of the involvement of such major figures as
Barry Zorthian, described by Life Magazine as one of the most important
figures of the Viet Nam era, and later, in his role with Radio Free
Europe, one of the architects of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And
of John Young, a pillar of the defense industry establishment, a man
once in charge of major Pentagon programs and credited with developing
some of the nation’s strongest weapons systems. All of them were
motivated by their own roles as veterans, as members of military
families themselves, or by a conviction affirmed early in the process
that Dragon Skin was exactly as advertised: a supremely better armor
technology that would save lives.
The task as
initially seen by the team was to balance a visceral dislike of Murray
Neal among many government defense officials against intriguing reports
from some of the same individuals that Dragon Skin might be welcomed
under the right circumstances. The foreseeable challenges involved
surviving the assaults of the body armor cartel while overcoming the
animus still simmering within the HASC. The unforeseen challenge turned
out to be Murray Neal himself.
The media’s
fawning and uncritical coverage of Murray Neal had not only turned him
into an international celebrity but bestowed on him an unearned
credibility and gravitas as a critic of the Army bureaucracy. The
military families that first came to his rescue deferred to him even as
he asked them for money, which they readily gave him. As the rescue
campaign got underway, working with him proved to be like flying a 747
with a rattlesnake in the cockpit.
The book
follows the team of insiders as the Dragon Skin rescue effort—fueled by a
sense of urgency in the race to save lives—first took shape in a
meeting that included well-known political operatives from both sides of
the aisle. As the strategy unfolded against great odds, first in South
Africa, then in the UK, and finally in the U.S., Murray Neal’s role and
unexpected interference with the strategy also surfaces. Beginning with
his odd circumstances in Fresno where he was surrounded by
ne’er-do-wells, the story follows a rescue effort that is ultimately
wildly successful externally, even as Neal’s behavior internally ranges
from botching a simple assignment to install armor in a FedEx jet, to
his explosive and disruptive confrontation with a former member of SEAL
Team Six. That former SEAL was personally assisting the management team
as the SEAL Command prepared to become the official sponsor of Dragon
Skin in an Army test that would mark the success of the entire rescue
campaign.
On the eve of that all-important test
Murray Neal took off in the dead of night. The revelations that followed
pulled back the curtain on what the HASC chairman had worked so hard to
keep from the public’s eye. Murray Neal was a charlatan who had scammed
the Army, the nation, and, unforgivably, those whose lives might have
been saved by a better body armor.
