It Is Amazing We're Even Alive

I've started reading Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. I'll put up a longer review when I'm done. For now I'm just 100 pages into the book. I read the following passage on the El this morning.

(CIA Director William) Casey mumbled. In business his secretaries refused to take dictation because they couldn't understand what he was saying. He had taken a blow to the throat while boxing as a boy and he had a thick palate ... Even President Reagan couldn't understand him. During an early briefing Casey delivered to the national security cabinet, Reagan slipped Vice President Bush a note: "Did you understand a word he said?" Reagan later told William F. Buckley, "My problem with Bill was that I didn't understand him at meetings. Now, you can ask a person to repeat himself once. You can ask him twice. But you can't ask him a third time. You start to sound rude. So I'd just nod my head, but I didn't know what he was actually saying." Such was the dialogue for six years between the president and his intelligence chief in a nuclear-armed nation running secret wars on four continents.

(My emphasis)

Dear FSM it is amazing we ever lived to see 1988.