Can You Spell “Punxsutawney?” We had a vigorous discussion about movie rentals this morning. You know the one we are talking about. The crowd at Gobbler’s Knob up in Pennsylvania has already dispersed. The land-beaver named Phil has spoken, although his remarks were unintelligible. “Six more weeks of Winter,” is what they say he said. […]

(Arlington Hall Station, where some of the tools of victory in 1945 were forged). This used to be part of a story we couldn’t talk about. That changed just before the careers (and lives) of some of those folks who worked at Arlington Hall left us. Keeping secrets was a component of the Spook trade […]

We are engaged in direct support to a proxy conflict in Eastern Europe that could lead to an atomic exchange. That is still a bit of a surprise. The Writer’s Section at Socotra House apologizes for a slight lapse of attention to the matter. Some of us had been distracted by what happened in New […]

(General Curtis LeMay, former Chief of the Strategic Air Command. Photo USAF). We talked yesterday about the Cracker Caper and the occupation of Japan after a savage war. That conflict was the one that established the bipolar system we have known most of our Boomer lives. The landscape of that new world pitted two nuclear […]

We let Tom “Big Smoke” Duvall tell his story about how the Occupation of Japan unfolded at the beginning. That is part of the tale unfolding about the emergence of a new branch of government here in the United States. That would be the Deep State we hear about frequently these days. There is some […]

Yokosuka—Japan 1949 (For dinner tonight: a K-Ration package with tasty components on display). Editor’s Note: This tale of Japan under the American Occupation is told by Tom “Big Smoke” Duvall. He sent it to former Director of Naval Intelligence RADM T.A. Brooks fifteen years ago. He shared it with us. Big Smoke was one of […]

It is Friday, and so we may as well get the headline out of the way. The War in Ukraine continues. We were chatting about it on the balcony this morning. Seasonal weather has affected the tempo of operations. Restricted mobility has limited things to artillery, rocket and drone strikes on Ukraine’s electrical grid. That […]

There are predictions about what is coming next in Ukraine. Some say the Russians are facing what their leaders consider an “existential threat” to the existence of their nation. They have thousands of nuclear weapons, so the prospect of what we always considered as horrifying now is just another item on a fairly long list. […]

Editor’s Note: Downsizing in the here-and-now of a new year (2023) has caused some joyful chaos. The movement made some forgotten things emerge from the memory locker. Some are a little disconcerting. We started on “The Cracker Caper” as one of them yesterday. It is a story from an extraordinary time. It features Tom “Big […]

(‘Big Smoke’ Tom Duvall at his desk in Yokosuka, Japan, 1950. There were challenges in The Occupation, and some of them came from a variety of directions). Editor’s Note: The missive below is from “Big Smoke” LCDR Tom Duval, USN-Ret., to a former Director of Naval Intelligence. For many of us, that DNI defined the […]