Word: mens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Chester Arthur Kinsman is one of Bova's ideal astronauts. These are not the sterile, blandly patriotic robots projected by NASA flacks, but intensely human and necessarily flawed men--and women--who believe in what they are doing and possess enough independence to reject or exploit bureaucratic maneuvering that surrounds them. As Bova portrays it, the path into space--whether it be military, industrial or political--will be strewn with the carcasses of careers and programs that, regardless of merit, lose behind-the-scenes struggles of power and influence...
...affair with Ambrose Mensch, a dilettante writer late of Lose in the Funhouse. Barth makes a feeble effort to set her up as an allegorical representation of "Belles Lettres," on which her--or Ambrose--hopes to father forth a new novel, but she balks, her past liaisons with famous men of letters notwithstanding...
...colleagues, Helms had also lacked their visibility--and thus did not make an easy target or scapegoat when CIA projects went awry, as they did with increasing frequency after the early "successes" of the Cold War. He covered his tracks well, and when superiors sacked other, more imaginiative CIA men in the shake-ups that followed such failures as the ill-advised backing of Indonesian rebels against Sukarano in 1958 or the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Helms was passed over; he was a survivor...
...activities began trickling out a Watergate unfurled, finally exploding onto the front page of The New York Times in December 1974, and then in the hearings of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Powers details how the CIA, on orders of five presidents, had sabotaged elections, overthrown governments, destroyed men and movements, and routinely interfered in the internal affairs of other countries--spending unknown fortunes in the process. And presiding over the treasonous disclosures was Helms' successor (after James Schlesinger '50's short reign) William Colby, reluctant, but cooperative as the secret history became--to an extent--public knowledge...
...primary rationalization behind the CIA's illegal activities--"the Russians do it too, and worse, so we have to respond"--all but disintegrated. Agency men resorted to another: "We were just following orders." Though Helms and others declined to implicate the chief executives in the most sensitive operations--for example. John F. Kennedy '40 in the attempts out Fidel Castro's life--the message was clear: the CIA was not, in Frank Church's phrase, "a rogue elephant rampaging out of control." The orders had to come from somewhere...