Kenneth R. Timmerman is an investigative reporter whose work has appeared in journals as diverse as Time, Newsweek, and the American Spectator. He ran for Senate in Maryland and heads the Maryland Taxpayers Association. He has worked on Capitol Hill and written five books, each meticulously researched and carefully footnoted. Politically, Timmerman bills himself a "proud conservative" and has never had to defend himself against allegations of racism. Not until now.

Timmerman has written a book titled Shakedown in which he exposes the Reverend Jesse Jackson as a fraud and a shakedown artist. In the book, Timmerman documents Jackson’s rise from a street hustler associated with an infamous Chicago street gang to President Bill Clinton’s "special diplomatic envoy" to Africa. He also ministered to the President’s spiritual needs during the impeachment crisis.

Jackson practically invented the "race card." He has played it skillfully to extort millions from American corporations, even some run by such staunch conservatives such as the Coors family. The Coors brewery coughed up nearly a million dollars in the mid-1980s after Jackson threatened to lead black consumer boycotts of Coors beer. Jackson ran the same type of scams against Toyota, Coca-Cola, Texaco, Viacom, AT&T and others. Timmerman shows how Jackson enriched himself and his wealthy friends instead of using it to help disadvantaged blacks get ahead.

Timmerman’s book found an audience eager to learn the truth about Jesse Jackson. Despite being ignored or panned by the mainstream media, Shakedown made it all the way to number three on the New York Times best seller list. It made the list right after it was published. The Washington Post didn’t get around to reviewing Shakedown until April 14, when it was already in its third printing.

The Post assigned the review to its Paris bureau chief, Keith B. Richburg,, who in his book, Out of America, A Black Man Confronts Africa, thanked God that his ancestors got out of Africa. He didn’t like Shakedown, but it’s hard to tell exactly why. While admitting that Jackson is "a ripe subject for a critical biography," Richburg employs the trick of making Timmerman the issue. His book is dismissed as "400 pages’ worth of character assassination." Richburg is put off by Timmerman’s references to Jackson’s "hard-left" agenda and advisors, and much of his review is about Timmerman’s critique of Jackson’s foreign policy adventures. He mentions only in passing Jackson’s extortion schemes, which, as the title indicates are the main focus of the book.

It is ironic that Richburg, who thanks God he was not born in Africa, attacks Timmerman as a racist and extremist. He says Jackson’s defenders have usually been able to call his critics "right-wing extremists" and "thinly veiled racists" and that in this case they may be right. He doesn’t mention that Jackson’s first critical biographer, Barbara Reynolds, was a black reporter who Jackson drove out of Chicago. Timmerman says, "These are typical tactics of the left. When they run out of ideas they resort to hate speech."

Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@aim.org