(A view of the Capital from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital)   Maddie was in the right seat of the Bluesmobile and Colonel Mike Grafton was keeping a wary eye out the back.   The car bumped over broken concrete by the old Hospital as we went down to the DC Impound Lot, hoping there was a […]

(Official Logo of the Washington Metro System) The remarkable thing about the recent renaissance of Washington is that Mayor-for-life Marion Barry is still part of it, just as much as J. Edgar Hoover was part of the great downfall.   Former Mayor Barry is the Councilman representing Ward 8, which includes the grounds of the […]

(Map of Blue Plains, Extreme SE Washington DC) The revelation came to me on the road up from Brandy Station. It had been building as I poured over the disconnected bits of information in the files about the Nazis, and why now, suddenly, the appearance of the wannebe-National Socialists a couple decades ago, and their […]

(Hoover Family marker in Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC. Photo by Declan McCullagh.) There is some curious activity here in this curious town. I listened to the news, unfocused as Sunday mornings are wont to be. I head nothing about demonstrations downtown. I was at the farm most of the day and National Public Radio coverage […]

(The Nazi monument found in the park)   I was down on the farm last night. It was cool and clear downstate, away form the nagging low pressure system that is lingering off the Delaware coast.   Slept great, despite being on the fold-out sofa. I had been in Charlottesville, on another feckless mission of […]

I am going to take a strategic pause in the story I have been telling these last several days. There is plenty of time to finish it, and it is going to take a dramatically different path anyway. It is dark and cold and wet as I write this morning. There could be no more […]

(Edward Moore Kennedy Grave, Arlington, VA)   I am going to get to the end of this presently- and of course, the end is only the beginning, when we transition from the black-and-white and musty papers to the Technicolor that masquerades as life.   Life is the stuff that gets in the way of what […]

(The Memo to the President) It is entirely possible that George Dasch had misgivings about his deadly mission from the beginning, and it was just dumb luck that Punchy Cullen happened to stumble across his four man team in the middle of the black night on the Long Island beach.   It was even luckier […]

(The Old DC Jail)   It is gray and wet and, and like that sad winter morning in Cannes when we ran out of weekend and holiday parties and champagne and it was finally, after all, time to get back on the ship and go be sailors once again.   There was something ominous in […]

(Military Tribunal Deliberates, 1942)   Note: I would prefer to go back to the Big Pink pool. I got revved up again late yesterday with the usual suspects, and this morning an alert reader commented thusly:   “Who the hell is in charge of this place where all of you live and pay the bills? […]