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Jim and Deborah

Excellent piece, as always, just like your flying. When I was a staffer on the Church Committee (not the Jim Jones Church Committee of the 21st Century) One of my jobs was to oversee the investigation of the CIA's effort to assassinate foreign leaders. The most extended interaction at the CIA was with their Historian - Walt Elder. Walt was a Rhodes and did his D.Phil on Kant's Aesthetics. After most every convert mission Walt would interview the participants so the Agency would have a complete history of the mission's success or failure.

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please write a book!

generally misunderstood but so interesting to those of us who have seen what war is like close up: the first go to plan often includes false flags and these type of weird covert operations like the fidel castro cigar thing

give peace a chance ;) but thanks for serving on that committee, great story for a book

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Pat, thank you! We appreciate your reading and weighing in.

I had forgotten that you had been a staffer on the Church Committee. And I don't think I ever knew about the role of Walt Elder. That is fascinating.

The illustrations of other institutions at least trying to learn systematically from successes and failures only highlights what most of the press just refuses to do.

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