Word: cipherer
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Robert Vesco had escaped for so long it seemed he had escaped from memory. When the Cuban government announced last week that it had placed the fugitive American financier under arrest, Vesco was little more than a cipher, a relic from an earlier generation, recalled in vague outline for his criminal odyssey around the Caribbean and for a broad range of roles -- millionaire, gambler, stock cheat, illegal campaign contributor, Watergate shadow, drug dealer, scoundrel. He was, for archaeologists of roguery, the fossil evidence that money can buy power and immunity from the reach of the law. Now, suddenly and surprisingly...
...that agent Aldrich Ames was a Soviet mole. Even worse, large parts of the CIA's operation bored Woolsey, and its insular culture frustrated him. He once complained to an associate that the agency "needed a psychiatrist, not a manager." Senior agency hands were miffed when he put a cipher lock on the door to his already heavily guarded office suite, signaling to them that he wouldn't be accessible. Months ago a senior White House official concluded, "Woolsey has been miscast...
...tongue, the ever versatile F word. No other slang expression approaches it in its variety of permutation, application, hyphenation and intensification (e.g., unf -- -- -- ingbelievable). In its earliest recorded use (late 15th century), this word was possibly already taboo, says Lighter, who found it in a rhyming couplet written in cipher. The dictionary is rife with other synonyms for copulation; some are splendidly ingenious (for example, to have one's greens); most, however, are unprintable...
...life spread before the court, and usually torn apart by the defense. Gavel-to-gavel coverage only magnifies the misery -- perhaps even more so in this instance, as the accuser's face is concealed on camera in a way that protects her identity but also turns her into a cipher. The prospect of being at center ring in their own media circus may be discouraging other rape victims from coming forward Reported rapes in Palm Beach County dropped from 96 in April, when the Smith story broke, to 68 in November...
Last week Cairncross came clean. "I was made one of the Five during the war," he told the London paper the Mail on Sunday. While working at Britain's code and cipher school, he provided the Soviets with decoded messages that helped them defeat the Germans at Kursk in 1943. Later in the war, while serving in MI6, Britain's secret intelligence service, he told the Soviets about Allied plans for the future of Yugoslavia. Reflecting on his wartime misdeeds, he says, "I hope this will finally put an end to the 'Fifth Man' mystery...