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Book Editor Who Spiked Bergdahl Story Was ‘Laid Off’

Aaron Bandler Contributor
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The senior editor at Atria Publishing, a division of Simon and Schuster, was laid off on Monday, Aug. 11, before the story about her desire to spike the Bergdahl story came out — and Simon and Schuster reportedly knew about the story before she was laid off.

On Aug. 13, reports emerged that former Atria Publishing senior editor Sarah Durand didn’t want to publish a book proposal by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s former platoon mates because she was afraid of “the Right using it to their ends” to criticize Obama.

Atria Books Vice President and Director of Publicity Paul Olsewski said in an e-mail to The Daily Caller that Durand was let go as part of planned layoffs.

“I want to make it unequivocally clear that Sarah Durand was part of a planned editorial downsizing that took place on Monday and has absolutely nothing to do with this story,” Olsewski said.

However, sources close to the situation told TheDC that Michael Isikoff, the reporter for Yahoo! News who first broke the story, had e-mailed Simon and Schuster sometime last week and they didn’t get right back to him.

Olsewski denies that this is the case.

“I did not hear about this email story until early this week,” Olsewski said.  “To make any connection to this story is categorically wrong and harmful.”

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