Word: edgar
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American espionage was a clumsy toddler at first. (Some think it has not improved much with age and astronomical budgets.) F.D.R., magician and dissembler, improvised spy systems formal and informal. In the official line, he had the military's separate intelligence-gathering operations and the help of byzantine J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI. In 1940 the Army's Signal Intelligence Service, quartered at Arlington Hall in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, broke the top-secret Japanese Purple code, meaning, as Persico says, that with the decryptions, dubbed Magic, "the Tokyo foreign office might as well have placed F.D.R...
...hung out with my brother [Victor] because we had been through it all together”, he says. “He was very important for me, because we were really the only constants in our lives”. Although Victor tried to immerse himself totally in American culture, Edgar made a conscious effort to retain and display his Sierra Leonian heritage—by keeping his distinctive accent, for example, and playing soccer instead of basketball. Keeping in touch with his father was more difficult. “Dad was still in Sierra Leone, and I began to play...
...first few months were a period of total shock for Edgar, but he slowly became acclimated to high school life and went on to become Student Council president and voted “Most likely to succeed” by his high school class. “I found the best way to cope was to keep busy, because then I didn’t need to think too much about what had happened”, he confides. He goes on to say, “I started making friends and became involved in school activities…I think...
...Edgar has not been back to Sierra Leone, but has been able to see his father once a year when he travels to the United States. He retains a deep affinity for his homeland, and looks forward to the time after college when he can go back. “I want to return and help rebuild—I don’t know exactly what I will be doing, but I know I will be there”, he says. Edgar plans to study economics and wants to return to Sierra Leone before heading to graduate school...
With his surrogate country facing its own version of violence and attack, Edgar finds himself once again having to rely on strong family ties to get him through this difficult time. Though his parents are again in Sierra Leone, Edgar knows that “you don’t realize how much you love your family until you think you might never see them again…and I’ve been in that situation too many times...