Thanks to Ron Goldfarb and George Witte and St. Martin’s Press for supporting publishing Scorpions’ Dance. I’m blessed to have a wise agent and independent publisher.
When I first came across Professor Luke Nichter’s online collection of taped conversations between Richard Nixon and Richard Helms in 2009, I thought, “There’s a story there.” This book is that story, so my thanks to Luke.
Peter Voskamp helped launch the project by loaning me his library of Watergate books, including a rare signed copy of James McCord’s memoir, A Piece of Tape.
Mark Sugg shared a cabin. Fernand Amandi shared contacts. Margot Williams provided invaluable and creative research assistance from beginning to end.
This book would not be possible without the archival documentation available at Mary Ferrell Foundation (maryferrell.org). Thanks to my friend Rex Bradford for building his indispensable site.
Thanks to John Dinges, John Hadden Jr., Noah Kulwin, and Jim Hougan, who read drafts of the manuscript and helped improve it vastly.
Many thanks to Christopher Buckley for giving me access to his father’s correspondence with Howard Hunt. Thanks to Tanzi Sakib, who retrieved the correspondence from the William F. Buckley papers in the Yale Library.
Thanks to Calla Cameron, who copied material from the Richard Helms papers at Georgetown University.
Thanks to James Rosen for giving me access to his interviews with Richard Helms.
Thanks to everyone who sat for an interview.
And special thanks to the archivists who made research possible in the time of Covid. Allen Fisher, archivist at the LBJ Library, responded quickly to all my questions. So did Meghan Lee-Parker at the Nixon Library. Kris Bronstad, archivist at the University of Tennessee, scanned a wealth of material in the Howard Baker Papers. Laurie Langland scanned material from the George McGovern Collection at Dakota Wesleyan University. Hannah Soukup, oral history curator at the University of Montana, delivered material on Senator Mike Mansfield.