In 1981, Mr. Shawn suddenly scheduled the piece that once was dead: "G. Gordon Liddy in America." I went to see him. I said, It would have been one thing to run the piece when Jimmy Carter was president, there were hostages in Teheran, and the president was, rather embarrassingly, carrying his own suitcase at airports and speaking of national malaise. It was quite another to schedule it during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when the hostages had long since returned, the president was speaking of a City on a Hill, and even Gordon Liddy had begun to play a different role. When I wrote the
...more
