Can anyone provide background on Peter Lance ?
Lance's website is pretty interesting.
I once had a couple beers with Peter Lance (I seem to recall he liked Dos Equis; I prefer reinheitsgebot-valid ones). This was back in college, in the Pittsburgh area. A university which will remain nameless had gotten him to speak at a lecture to aspiring college journos like me. At the time he was speaking to us, he was, or had just finished up a stint at the ABC News program 20/20.
My memories of him were these. He's a straightforward, meat-and-potatoes kinda reporter, with a healthy distrust of authority. More importantly, Lance struck me as someone for whom the truth matters a great deal. Lance gave me the impression he was the sort of guy who, if he came across information which directly contradicted the original premise of his story, would tell the facts instead of changing them to suit the original premise. You may not agree with everything he's written or produced, but for my money, I would tend to trust him instead of some of these other NYT/CBS News/WaPo types.
He's now a refugee from the MSM. Having spent an evening listening to him, and talking about the news over a couple of beers, I can see why he's an author now, and having nothing to do with television news.