Though I was discharged from the Army in May 1971, I didn’t plan to start work for Roan & Grossman (at the time Roan, Grossman, Singer, Mauck & Kaplan) until that fall. Though far from the Vietnam warzone, my Army work in its own way had been intense at times and I wanted a breather before resuming my legal career in earnest. As I exited the Army, I believed my three-year experience had been an extremely unusual one due to my work in the middle of the racial unrest of the day and the companion civil dissonance flowing from the war. I also thought a break like this would give me a chance to see if there was a book in me that might capture some of the bizarre events I had been witness to during President Richard Nixon’s first term in office.

After several weeks of largely staring at my typewriter housesitting for a friend in upstate New York, I was rescued from my failing effort. I had only completed a single chapter. Worse, my meagre output only dealt with the evolution of domestic intelligence in the FBI and the military during the Red Scare in World War I’s aftermath.