“Senator, may we not drop this?! We know he belonged to the Lawyer’s Guild… Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” – Army secretary Joseph Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy, June 1954 Legendary journalist […]

I will tell you, now that summer is officially here, that it has been pure heck trying to get to the Church Commission. Mac is going to be relaxing at the beach, and we won’t be able to get to Willow to talk about the seminal Congressional panel that changed fundamentally the way we Spooks […]

“They were very specific about their effort to destroy American intelligence…It was Senator Church who said our intelligence agencies were ‘rogue elephants.’ They were supposedly out there assassinating people and playing dirty tricks and so forth…” –         Robert Ellsworth, US State Department It is the longest day of the year, which is wrong, of course, […]

(Henry Kissinger on the phone. Photo US Government.) “The president wants you to know that if this doesn’t work, Henry, it’s your ass.” – Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, longtime Nixon pal to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger on the eve of the invasion of Cambodia. I swear, looking back on it, we took leave of our […]

(11th DCI William Colby.  Photo Time-Life, Inc.) Sorry- I have been distracted. It is a soft gray Sunday morning, and it will wind up at the office presently to catch up on some projects that were deferred in the swirl of activity near and far. I was telling you about Jim Schlesinger and his report […]

(Baked eggs and Corned Beef comfort food. Photo Betty Crocker, bless her soul.) I am still stunned by the news of the suicide of a pal at her own hands. I have been told there is nothing I could have done, and I can appreciate that; the act of suicide being so awful and profound […]

(Nats Stadium at dusk with rain coming in. Photo Socotra.) I was at the desk, looking over some financials. There were many balls in the air; more than I knew possible. The skies were ominous to the west; we were supposed to go to a Nationals game with Joe, since his hometown Cards were in […]

My pal The Lawyer had returned to San Diego fast, and he called me up, furious. I was at the desk, looking out on a day in the Ballston neighborhood that was exquisite in its simple beauty. The heat was gone, and the women seemed to dress up for it. I wanted to go out […]

(Abraham Zapruder 8MM Camera And Film, 1963. Photo Bell & Howell.) “I’m here to make sure you don’t screw Richard Nixon.” – James Schlesinger’s first words upon becoming DCI in 1973 I mentioned yesterday that I looked at a film clip and got agitated. You can see it for yourself: it is not hard to […]

(Then-AEC Chairman Schlesinger with Pat and Dick Nixon, 1970) “Covering this upcoming election is like covering a competition between two Soviet refrigerator companies, cold-war relics offering products that never change.” –       David Brooks, NY Times token Hamiltonian pundit, today. (Loyal readers, there have been recent and unsettling allegations out there in the world-wide web. We […]