![]() ![]() One of my habits has been to approach them right away and tell them I’m intending to write about them. I’ve developed this kind of playbook in my head about how to cope with a subject that doesn’t volunteer to be written about and isn’t happy to know that you have volunteered to write about them. Can you talk a little about the difficulties of reporting this book? ![]() Reporting on Exxon can be so difficult-the company is famous for being secretive and cultish. ExxonMobil is famously reticent about its operations, and, as Coll explains in this interview, penetrating the company’s official PR line proved challenging, even for an experienced reporter. His latest peek behind tightly drawn curtains, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, is a detailed examination of the influential Irving-based oil corporation. New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll’s last two books, Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens, were, as he puts it, big projects about closed institutions-the Central Intelligence Agency and the Middle East’s most famous family, respectively. ![]()
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