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? […]

(Jolly Roger Done the Right Way)   I was going to write about the breathtaking efficiency of the Military Tribunal system this morning- the one held here in the District in 1942, not the ones in Guantanamo today, though there are some interesting parallels. It is necessary to finding the missing saboteurs, #276-281.   I […]

(G-Men Fighting Crime with Science- Mechanics Illustrated 1938) If you get the hint that I am bashing the FBI just because their long-time director was a prick, please don’t take it that way. I respect the men and women of the organization, and am only trying to describe just how hard it is to balance […]

(German Agent Fritz Duquesne) The FBI is Roosevelt’s creation. Everyone would agree with that; the issue would be that they would probably have identified the wrong one. The concept of a national investigative force was problematic for the first four score and twenty years of the Republic, since despite the unpleasantness between the states, their […]

(# 279 Edward John Kerling) The Coast Guard had already found the boxes of munitions and uniforms on the Long Island sand. The FBI had been alerted; a nation-wide man-hunt under the tightest security had been launched when U-584, a type VIIc submarine, surfaced off the empty beaches of Ponte Vendre, south of the sleepy […]

The Long Island Boys (George John Dasch, 1942, no number)   It is positively chill this morning. It makes me long already for the summer that is still with us.   I’m sure the French have a word for it- missing something that is still around, but I have been feeling like this for quite […]