The following article was written by Charles Ealy, Staff writer of the Dallas morning news on 10/12. It makes a lot of sense and provide good reference for its readers.

Title: Tibet's Shaket history. Much of this ("7 years in Tibet") 'true' story just isn't so.

Seven Years in Tibet may succeed as a movie, but it fails as history.

The trouble stems from the source: Austrian explorer Heinrich Harrer's 1952 memoir of life in the isolated Tibetan capital of Lhasa during World War 2. A look at the historical record shows that the book is a mountain of misrepresentation and omission, a monument to conveniently selective memory.

Hollywood, of course has a long tradition of garbling history just recall the firestorms Oliver Stone kicked up with JFK and Nixon), so Seven Years in Tibet, which opened Friday, isn't exactly a standout in that regard. And Mr. Harrer's adventure tale is highly readable.

But director Jean-Jacues Annaud and his movie's disstributor, Mandalay Entertainment, discovered just how troublesome a memory can be when the German magazine Stern reveal this summer that Mr.Harrer-the hero of the $70 million movie-was a former Nazi, a member of the elite Schutzstaffel , or SS.

The disclosure prompted such an uproar that Mr. Annaud made changes in the script to acknowledge his subject's past. (In the film, during the Chinese invasion of Tibet, Brad Pitt as Mr. Harrer intones in a voice over, "I shudder to recall how at one time I embraced the same beliefs, how at one time I was no different from these intolerant Chinese.") Mandalay, also wary of a public relations disaster, quietly suggested that Mr. Harrer stay home Liechtenstein during the U.S. movie premiere.

Since then, Mr. Harrer has been apologetic about the omission, saying that his membership in the SS was "an aberration" in an otherwise honorable life. but he has also a tinge of indignation, telling Vanity Fair: "I can't go around with a plate on my chest. Everybody has something they are not proud to show off." He has also failed to include the information in the book's 1997 reprint (Counterpoint, $26)

That's not the only missing fact. Mr. Harrer declines to reveal that he left a pregnant wife to go on his Himalayan adventure and that the mother, after giving birth, left the son with a grandmother. While the movie includes the father's desertion, the son says it misrepresents the rest of the story giving the boy a happy home life with mother and stepfather. The movie also stages a grand reconciliation atop a mountain between father and son.

That never happened, the son says. In fact, peter Harrer told vanity fair that he spent most of his youth in boarding schools, that he wasn't invited to attend his father's second wedding and that he and his father see each other about once a year.

The book- and the movie-also paint a highly emotional portrait of Tibetan political history, failing to acknowledge the enormous complexities that have troubled international diplomats for decades. Such simplification is typical of the U.S. media's approach to history, says Dr. A. Tom Grunfeld , a Tibetan expert who teaches at the State University of New York. "There is an accepted wisdom on Tibet and it's very difficult to get the U.S. media interested in an intellectual discussion," he says. "Many people won't accept that there's a middle ground between being an advocate for Tibetan independence and being a Chinese communist, but there is."

A review of recent books on Tibetan history illuminates these key points:

* The Dalai Lama fled Lhasa after the arrival of Chinese troops in the early 50's. He even wrote poems in praise of Mao Tse-tung. For details see Dr. Grunfeld's the making of modern Tibet (M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1996).

* The movie asserts that more than 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed since the Chinese invasion. These figures are based on estimates from the Dalai Lama, but there is little documentary evidence to determine their accuracy. Whatever the case, the human tragedy in Tibet is not in question.

* Contrary to the movie, the Chinese entry into Lhasa in 1950 was peaceful rather than violent. By far, the greatest number of casualties came during the rebellion in the late 1950s and during the famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward of the 1960s.

* Tibet's own policies have muddied its claims to independence. On numerous occasions before the 1950s, Tibetan officials acknowledged that China had "suzerainty" over their land. In essence this meant that china was in charge of all foreign policy and diplomatic matters.

* Tibetan society was far removed from the utopian Hollywood vision found in such movies as Lost Horizon - and at odds with the portrait painted by Mr. Harrer . It was essentially feudal, with nearly 60 percent of the population in serfdom. Several scholarly studies also assert the existence of slavery, although Tibetan independence advocates deny the allegation. But Dr. Grunfeld's book documents slavery's existence in the most affluent households. And there are even allusions to slavery in Mr. Harrer's book.

Several other new books explore various facets of the Tibetan controversy:

* Mary Craig provides exhausting detail about the Dalai Lama in her new history of the family in exile, Kundun: A Biography Of The Family Of The Dalai Lama (Counterpoint, $26).

* Jestun Pema, the sister of the Dalai Lama, provides more intimate details in Tibet: My Story (Element Books, $24.95).

* Tashi Tsering, a Native Tibetan, describes the daily life of the lowest rung of Tibetan society in The Struggle For Tibet (M.A. Sharpe Inc., $27.95)

* And Melvyn C. Goldstein, an anthropologist at Case Western Reserve University provides an overview of Chinese politics in The Snow Lion and the dragon (University of California Press, 19.95)