Reluctant Intelligence Reporter

This chapter addresses how the author was assigned to the intelligence beat. He protested, pointing out that it would be hard to cultivate sources within an intelligence community that had been embarrassed by his Andropov scoop and by his reporting from the Soviet Union. However, Ben Bradlee insisted on giving him the position. In July of 1986, with his book now finished and with him scheduled to return to the Washington Post, the author proposed another story that would help him see more of Louise Branson and delay his start on the intelligence beat. It involved Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general who was then president of Austria. Rumor had it that he had served with Nazi forces in Yugoslavia during World War II and had been accused of war crimes by Tito's government. The 1947 indictment was rumored to be stored in the basement of the UN building in Manhattan.