Word: veilings
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Question: Name a new book by an editor of the Washington Post dealing with the subject of the Central Intelligence Agency. Hint: Bob Woodward's much ballyhooed Veil, an expose by the renowned Watergate reporter of the deeds and alleged confessions of the late director William J. Casey, does not count. Reward: those who come up with the correct answer can settle down to read an uncommonly informative and intriguing espionage thriller...
Chanting in the dusky gloom before a battle, a robed figure stoops and ignites a circle of blue flame in the red clay soil around him. With one quick twist, a woman fluffs her white veil into swaddling and so conjures up a baby in arms. Horns blare as a crowd of celebrants, resplendent in red, holds aloft a richly caparisoned tent for the wedding of a blind king. A master of military arts orders a disciple to cut off his right thumb and thereby lose his strength and skill. "It is not cruelty," the teacher explains. "It is foresight...
...nothing new for Woodward. With ex-Post Colleague Carl Bernstein, he unraveled much of the Watergate scandal and later authored or co-authored juicy accounts of the inside workings of the Supreme Court (The Brethren) and the drug-related death of John Belushi (Wired). In familiar Woodward style, Veil reads as much like a novel as a work of journalism, with scenes, dialogue and characters' thoughts re-created. Woodward says he talked to more than 250 people, but his revelations are not directly attributed to specific sources. While this makes the book's credibility hard for a reader to evaluate...
...Veil also gives a detailed account of the CIA's history of covert support for the Nicaraguan contras and reveals that the agency, beginning in the Carter years, gave financial aid to La Prensa, the opposition newspaper that was shut down for 15 months by the Sandinista government before reopening last week. Past charges by the Sandinistas that the paper was CIA-supported have been denied, and Publisher Violeta Chamorro last week labeled Woodward's revelation "totally false...
While many of Veil's revelations remain to be corroborated, a number of former CIA officials interviewed by TIME, including ex-CIA Chiefs William Colby and Stansfield Turner and former Deputy Chief Bobby Inman, gave the book generally good marks for accuracy in the episodes with which they were directly involved. Their major complaint is Woodward's habit of overdramatizing and embellishing quotes. Says Inman: "Everything's just a couple of degrees more colorful than it really...