Fascinating piece by Donald Gregg in the Washington Post titled "George Smiley's War"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/30/AR2007123002236.htmlThe bio at the bottom doesn't give you the real flavor of it. Gregg worked for Shackley - the Ghost - in covert ops in Burma in the 60s and ran a good deal of Phoenix in Vietnam. He was the prime mover in the support of the Contras. He ran Felix Rodriguez - "Max", the guy who got Che ... He is one of George Bush senior's closest confidants in the intelligence world. If Scocroft speaks for Poppy on foreign policy, Gregg speaks for the Bush who ran CIA.
If you know how to read between the lines on this one, it is a very big deal and I guarantee you there are folks from Langley to Baghdad to Islamabad to Seoul reading it like tea leaves.
Tracy, you're probably the only one who'll realy get this, but I didn't want you to miss it <s>
Sed Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Happy New Year.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.