You never know what you don't know.
The reason success is fleeting is because human desire is infinite. As soon as you know one thing, you want to know another. Suddenly the value of what you know becomes relative, and then you get bored with yourself. Conversely, the value of knowing something new may be proportional to the time you've been satisfied knowing relatively nothing about it. I know all that sounds convoluted but I deal with economies of thought all the time, and to me such notions are fascinating.
It is with that in mind that I approach the almost invisible reception of Larry J. Kolb's 'America At Night', which is an expose of the highest order of the nature of dirty tricks and dirty tricksters who insinuate themselves into the corridors of American power. I could tell you the crux of the book, but with all respect to the price of the book, letting you know the easy way would be somewhat unethical. You need to read the first 100 pages of this book, and then you're there - in the middle of what would have been one of the greatest scandals in American presidential election history. If you think Bush stole the election in 2000, wait until you read what was going on in 2004.
Larry Kolb is an ex-CIA man whose specialty was political espionage. He is the author of the excellent 'Overworld' reviewed here by me a while back. He understands very well, having learned from a great spymaster, what efforts are made and what tools are used to assault and batter political candidates. In this tale of high intrigue he finds himself, now done running for his life, once again drawn into the world of enormous consequences. This is the result of him playing his hunches and employing his considerable research skills in connecting dots that the American intelligence community had not hitherto connected. What he discovers are a couple of operators, each of them incredibly clever and dangerous on their own, who might be working together. Considering the grudge one of them has against the US, which has thwarted his international grifting in the past, Kolb wouldn't put it past them to collaborate with Al Qaeda for profit and vengeance. Having made a startling discovery, Kolb determines he must do what must be done to save the integrity of the 2004 election.
At this stage of the game, especially in light of the fates of Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby, Sandy Berger and various other convoluted intrigues, it's almost impossible to tell how important Kolb's account will be in the scheme of things. It's rather like finding out the truly ugly side of a woman you've already decided to divorce. Once your heart is broken, the marginal insult to injury makes no difference. And yet, we must know, and we are driven to know such things. I say "Bob Sensi" here in this blog, and challenge myself to find it in any search engines six months from now. If you Google it today, no blog has it. Why? Has the Internet been scrubbed? Such things actually happen, in America, at night.
I'll finish this blogpost when I finish the book.
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