News
Library Diplomacy
At the Nixon Library on Tuesday, the United States and China arrived at major commercial agreements at the 19th annual JCCT (US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade) after extensive talks led by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez along with Trade...
The Unthinking Man’s Nixon’s Four Second Moment
Forty years ago yesterday (sorry about that) — on 16 September 1968 — RN appeared on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. In those days the show was a big thing; and his appearance on it was a big deal. When Laugh-In premiered on NBC in January 1968, it was something the...
Hiss And The Rosenbergs In Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Bob Hoover, the book-review editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (and, thus, belonging to a breed now perhaps more rare than the ivory-billed woodpecker) has written an article for that paper concerning Sam Roberts' recent New York Times stories about the Rosenberg...
George Putnam, 1914-2008
They say that the deaths of prominent people come in threes, and remarkably, three of the notable Americans whose deaths were announced this weekend were California residents. These were the novelist David Foster Wallace, whose premature and tragic passing I note...
The Spy Who Almost Stayed In The Cold, and RIP DFW
The London Times has just published a lengthy interview, conducted by the paper's Rod Liddle, with renowned British spy novelist (and former MI6 agent) John Le Carre. He spends most of it reiterating his anger, often manifested in his recent statements and writings,...
Deep Throat And The Third Man
Over at his site Washington Decoded, DC journalist Max Holland has uncovered something truly startling: the identity of a man who seemingly was the very first person, after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to learn that W. Mark Felt, assistant FBI director at the time...
Martin Tytell – 1913-2008
On the day after the 91-year-old co-defendant of the Rosenbergs finally admitted that he was, like them, a spy, comes word of the death of the 94-year-old typewriter expert who was dragooned into service for the appeal lodged by Alger Hiss' defense team. Hiss' appeal...
The Last Shoe Finally Drops
Not all old men forget. Morton Sobell, one of the three defendants in the Rosenberg case, is now 91 and living in the Bronx. And he has just admitted, in an interview with Sam Roberts of The New York Times, that he was, in fact, guilty as charged: a Soviet spy...
Palin, Roosevelt, and American Originals
The rollout of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee appears to be morphing into a full-fledged juggernaut. Democratic strategists, not to mention their nominees, continue to scratch their heads while trying to play the familiar political games of...