Word: secret
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Secret Meeting...
Murray Kempton said the task of editorial writers is to come down out of the hills after the battle is over to shoot the wounded. Is it the job of jackboot reporters in this country to conduct house-to-house searches, ransacking private lives for every disreputable little secret, driving quarry to such humiliation that their only refuge is self-destruction? Shame on my profession! To hell with its venal careerism, its hypocrisy, its prurience, its pietistic ruthlessness...
After all the horrors of the Soviet Union--the gulag, the secret police, the famines, the totalitarian control over every aspect of life--is it possible that the citizens of Russia would voluntarily return power to the Communists? In the coming weeks they may very well do just that, by electing a Communist as their President. What would induce a people to take such a step? The Russians have enjoyed unprecedented tastes of freedom over the past few years, and the process began so hopefully, even heroically. Now the descendants of Stalin's victims are poised to welcome as their...
...mole, a master criminal. Many minor characters of menacing mien, dubious loyalty and short life expectancy. Computer and explosive technology to die for (many will). An imperturbably resourceful undercover agent (in this case Tom Cruise) who must, among other strenuous chores, penetrate a supposedly impregnable vault wherein reposes a secret, sacred document that everybody else is pursuing too. And last but not least: a helicopter/train chase ending in the predictable fireball that equally predictably fails even to singe Cruise's beetle brows...
Regrettably, both novelists use these intrigues and their violent consequences to avoid the larger and much more interesting issues implicit in the confrontation of ancient and modern hominids. The heroes of both books eventually decide to keep their extraordinary discoveries secret. Most remarkable of all, distinguished scientists in both books spend an inordinate amount of time laboriously explaining to one another stuff they had to have learned as undergraduates. Couldn't more convincing stooges have been found...