I want to acknowledge editors who have helped bring this story into focus. I first wrote of my history with the FBI for Padraig O'Malley of The New England Journal of Public Policy, and of my childhood connection to the Pentagon for Steve Pearlstein of The Boston Observer. I wrote of my first sermon for David Rosenberg, editor of Communion, published by Anchor/Doubleday. A version of that essay is reprinted here with permission. Some aspects of this story inspired my novel Memorial Bridge, which Joseph Kanon edited. Jack Beatty of The Atlantic Monthly expertly drew segments of this book together for excerpting in that magazine. Over nearly four years I have told small parts of this story in my weekly column for the Boston Globe, where my editors have been Kirk Scharfenberg, Loretta McLaughlin, H.D.S. Greenway, and Marjorie Pritchard. My friend and agent Don Cutler, as always, gave me crucial support. The manuscript editor Larry Cooper helped improve the text. Friends who read early drafts were Tom Kennedy, Bernard Avishai, Tom Winship, Howard Zinn, David Killian, Paul Lannan, John Kirvan, Sissela Bok, and Bob Baer. My brothers Joe, Brian, Dennis, and Kevin were the first to read this book, and the first to affirm it. My editor Wendy Strothman made my work possible at the beginning and at the end. My wife, Lexa Marshall, enabled me to write this book, and our children, Lizzy and Pat, gave me a compelling reason to do so. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all.