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Excerpts from WEDGE Except where noted, the following passages are adapted from draft text of the original hardcover editon of WEDGE. They should not be quoted without comparison to the find print edition. Ian Fleming and the OSS. -- How the creator of James Bond intrigued to help America form a proper spy service. -- "On May 25, 1941, Commander Ian Fleming entered the United States on a secret mission...." J. Edgar Hoover. -- How the legendary FBI director built his bureau, and why the British judged him inadequate to run foreign intelligence. -- "As Ian Fleming rode south toward Washington on the Palmetto Express, anticipating a meeting with one of the world's most famous and admired men, he turned over what he had gleaned from Stephenson's big, baize-bound file on J. Edgar Hoover...." Wild Bill Donovan. -- The charismatic war hero Fleming tapped to lead America into the Labyrinth. -- "Ian Fleming felt a twinge of excitement as the Admiral lifted the brass knocker at William Donovan's Georgetown home, an old brick beauty. Fifty-one years later it would host a victory party for a President whom some called a draft evader, but for now it housed the most decorated man in American military history...." Angleton: The Gray Ghost. -- CIA's legendary chain-smoking, fly-fishing, orchid-growing, poetry-reading catcher of spies. -- "His black hair was slicked back from a pale forehead, a bony blade of nose, sunken cheeks, an elegantly pointed chin -- a chiseled cadaverous face that had been proposed, only half facetiously, as a logo for CIA...." A Mind of Winter. -- Angleton's prized source: the KGB defector who predicted the rise of the Gorbachev and the fall of the Berlin Wall. -- "The defection of a KGB major was one of the few encouraging augurs on an otherwise troubling Friday for the U.S. Government. President Kennedy had boarded Air Force One for a weekend visit to Venezuela, pleased that a contract had been awarded Lockheed for a rocket to the moon, but disturbed by developments in Europe...." Sinister Implications. -- How J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson thwarted Angleton's conspiracy probe. -- "A chill mist came off Lake Geneva on the evening of January 23, 1964, exactly eight weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy. A CIA officer hung back in the shadows across from Cinema ABC at 42 Rue Rhone, watching people buy tickets in the strong pool of light under the marquee for Doctor Strangelove. An electrified trolley rattled past, blocking for a moment his view...." Who Was Deep Throat? -- Clues to the identity of the legendary source on whom Woodward and Bernstein claimed to rely in their Watergate probe. -- "The Central Intelligence Agency first heard about the Watergate break-in, according to its own records, at 5 p.m. that Sunday afternoon, when an inquiry about the arrested men was received from reporter Bob Woodward at the Washington Post...." The Golitsyn Predictions. -- The only analyst whose crystal ball was functioning during the key period of the late 20th century. -- "When the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989, the CIA was chastised for failing to foresee the change. ... Yet someone had predicted glasnost and perestroika, in detail, even before Gorbachev came to power...." Epilogue |