Meanwhile the White House operationalized its longtime goal of expanding its internal secret-policing capacity. They called it ODESSA, or the Special Investigations Unit, or the Room 16 Project, for its suite number in the White House basement. It contained the kind of “sterile” telephones used by the CIA (a Secret Service agent used an IBM card to enter the access code every morning) and a safe that required three combinations to open. A doddering elderly relative of the coleader of the operation was proud to learn her boy was working on “leaks”: “Your grandfather,” she said, “was a plumber.”
...more
