Reporter: A Memoir

by Seymour M. Hersh

The ship was slowed by heavy rains, and the colonel in charge of the voyage called out to Cresswell at one point, in front of other officers, and said, “Hey, Father. Why don’t you ask your boss to do something about this?” The officers laughed, Cresswell recalled, and he responded, “I’m not sure God is in that much of a hurry for us to get to Vietnam to kill people.”

The thug then told the croupier to put ten thousand dollars in chips on the table. She did. Roll the dice, he said to the fund-raiser. He did so. The dice came up with one dot and two dots. “Lucky you,” said the thug. “A seven.” A much larger chunk of chips was placed on the table. “Roll again.” The fund-raiser, knowing nothing about a winner-take-all pass line bet if a seven or eleven is rolled, was confused and hesitated. “Throw the fucking dice, you moron,” he was told. He did so. A three and a six came up. “Another seven,” said the thug, and the pile was overflowing. The fund-raiser was told to collect the chips, take them to the cashier, and go home. He did so, with enough cash to keep the campaign alive for many weeks. It was a terrific lesson in the working of democracy.

The intelligence, gathered from satellite coverage, had been presented three times within a week to President Reagan without any indication he had read it, forcing CIA officials to redline the most pressing issues in the President’s daily intelligence brief that they prepared, which he apparently was not reading. (I was told at the time, but did not verify, that the White House’s national security aides eventually found a way to engage the President—by having the daily CIA intelligence brief recorded on a videotape and screened on TV for him.)

there was a widespread understanding that those who died in interrogation were not to be buried—lest the bodies be disinterred later—but had to be destroyed by acid and other means.