November 12th, 2008
The Strong Man, a biography of John Mitchell, Nixon’s atty general and campaign manager, and one of the first and largest bodies to fall from the heavens as the Watergate scandal unfolded, came out earlier this year.
Jim Hougan (author of two important books, Spooks and Secret Agenda, the latter about Watergate) and others commented on the new Mitchell book at the Education Forum, which across the years has housed perhaps the best discussion of inter alia the JFK murder.
I posted a comment in response to Hougan’s overview of the book, and asked him three questions. He replied. All visible here.
The discussion may not be entirely rooted in nostalgia. There is a tenuous Bush family connection that reaches, yet alive, into the present day. If looking for a quicky — here.
October 13th, 2008
Democrats sixteen years ago were desperate to boot the GOP from the White House.
September 22nd, 2008
I’ve never yet been able to get into DFW, although the problem is general: I’m rarely able to enjoy any American novelist my age or younger. Perhaps something to do with the fact that I’ve tried to be one myself.
But both he and his recent suicide certainly deserve notice. The world is poorer that he’s gone. And I intend to finish something he left behind.
I haven’t seen anything to indicate why he hung himself, aside from family reports of chronic depression. I recall that when Hunter Thompson checked out, in February 2005, he left behind a note indicating great distress that football season had ended.
September 19th, 2008
John Le Carre’s novels about the infighting and turncoating within MI6 (the British secret service) during the early cold war years feature the antagonist Bill Hayden, based on life’s Kim Philby, the most spectacular of Russia’s moles within.
Le Carre was himself an agent of MI6, until Philby outted him to the Reds. He then turned to writing.
In the novels, George Smiley of MI6 (based perhaps on Peter Wright, author of the spectacular memoir Spycatcher) manages to nab Hayden in the end, and then subjects him to genteel debriefings as to how and why.
One can read Philby’s own account of his motives in his memoir, My Secret War.
But, more briefly in Le Carre, Hayden explains to Smiley why he decided to support Moscow:
“Do you know what’s killing western democracy, George? Greed. And constipation. Moral. Political. I hate America very deeply. The economic repression of the masses, institutionalized. Even Lenin couldn’t foresee the extent of that.
“Britain? Oh dear. No viability whatsoever in world affairs. Until the mid 50s I still had hopes. Lingering loyalty to what we represented. Self delusion, of course. We were already America’s streetwalkers.”
In life Philby avoided arrest and lived out his golden years in Moscow, loyal to the end.
2. Â I see that le Carre published an opinion in 2003 about the American invasion of Iraq.