In this episode, I sat down with Jefferson Morley, author of the book Scorpions' Dance The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate
Some of the things we discussed includes:
The Book and Audiobook: Scorpions' Dance The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate is out now.
As of now, this podcast is biweekly and prior to an episode I’ll let you know what audiobook I’ll be listening to before the next show so we can delve into it together!
Please don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you’re in the loop whenever a new episode comes out… and also connect with me on twitter and Instagram so we so we can keep the conversation going and share with each other fascinating content.
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I am now on goodreads!
www.goodreads.com/SoundsAboutPod
Are you an author that will like to be on the next episode of the podcast?
Listeners: Did I cover a book you read or listened to? Did I discuss the things which also stuck out to you? Or did I miss it out?..... get in touch, and let me know what your experience was or to give me audiobook recommendations: soundsaboutpod@gmail.com
In this episode, I sat down with Jefferson Morley, author of the book Scorpions' Dance The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate
Some of the things we discussed includes:
The Book and Audiobook: Scorpions' Dance The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate is out now.
As of now, this podcast is biweekly and prior to an episode I’ll let you know what audiobook I’ll be listening to before the next show so we can delve into it together!
Please don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you’re in the loop whenever a new episode comes out… and also connect with me on twitter and Instagram so we so we can keep the conversation going and share with each other fascinating content.
www.instagram.com/SoundsAboutPod
I am now on goodreads!
www.goodreads.com/SoundsAboutPod
Are you an author that will like to be on the next episode of the podcast?
Listeners: Did I cover a book you read or listened to? Did I discuss the things which also stuck out to you? Or did I miss it out?..... get in touch, and let me know what your experience was or to give me audiobook recommendations: soundsaboutpod@gmail.com
ng (00:03.534)
So first and foremost, Jeff, I'd like to say thanks for joining the podcast.
jefferson_m_morley (00:11.956)
Thanks for having me. I always like talking about my books.
ng (00:16.042)
Okay, so one thing I wanted to actually ask you was that you used evidence that had long been neglected in the telling of this book and I wanted to ask you how was the process of putting this information together?
jefferson_m_morley (00:31.172)
Yeah. So, you know, when I started writing Scorpion's Dance in the fall of 2019, I was working on this very tight deadline, right? Me and my agent had thought we want to do a Watergate book and we wanted to come out on the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. We knew that was a natural selling point. There was going to be a lot of news attention at that moment. So, but in order to get that book out by June, 2022, we had to have a book.
done by June 2021, which was less than two years away. And so, you know, the idea of reporting a well-known subject, right? Watergate, the Watergate scandal, there's dozens of books about it. So to do something original and substantive on that tight deadline was very challenging. Um, so what I set out to do was to both master that record, you know, what has been written before.
and then try and find those new sources of information and what had been neglected, what hadn't been really looked at. And so actually I found that that was easier than I thought. There was a lot of really interesting information that had come out that I had never seen people use before. And I'll cite a couple of examples that were really key. One was a man named Earl Silbert was the first prosecutor.
he assigned, Justice Department prosecutor, assigned to investigate the Watergate burglary and charge people. And he was eventually forced out of that job when the special prosecutor Archibald Cox took over. But for the first year of the Watergate investigation, Earl Silbert was very involved. And he had donated, I had learned that he had kept a diary during that year, really just dictating at night when he came home.
ng (02:03.683)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (02:26.588)
It's not even written, it's kind of rambling. But an extraordinary document, several 500 or 600 pages, a very detailed, and so this was a resource that only one other book had even referenced this material. You know, that was just a goldmine in terms of following the trail. A second source of information that I got was I knew that Howard Hunt, the chief
Watergate burglar, the former CIA man who was at the heart of the whole thing, had been friends with William F. Buckley, the conservative columnist, and very good friends. Buckley was like the godfather to Hunt's children. So I thought, well, that's interesting because Hunt, like Buckley, was a prolific writer and Hunt, like Buckley, was a real political conservative. So these men were friends and they were on the same wavelength.
ng (03:09.471)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (03:24.392)
you know, and so I thought his correspondent, and so I knew that, I wondered about their correspondence, had they corresponded since they were both writers, and I contacted Chris Buckley, William F. Buckley's son, who I knew slightly from Washington parties, and I asked him, could I see his father's correspondence, which is available in the Yale library, but is closed. It's not, you can't just walk in and get it, you have to get permission.
ng (03:51.905)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (03:52.72)
And Chris Buckley said, yeah, that sounds like an interesting project. You know, I know my dad was friends with Hunt, you know, have at it. And so I, the pandemic came and so I couldn't go to the library, but I hired a kid up at Yale and he went in and copied all of this correspondence for me. Well, this was another gold mine because Hunt and Buckley were such good friends and they did write to each other all the time and they shared a lot of confidences. And so I got a real glimpse of Howard Hunt.
that nobody else really had had before from this, you know, unique historical source. So that's the kind of thing that I was looking for, probing, where could I find, you know, interesting material? And that was two examples of, you know, really rich source material that gave me something that was very original.
ng (04:42.438)
Ah, this is my opinion, but you can comment on whether it's fair for me to say or not. I really liked how the book did a great job in setting out Richard Nixon's path to presidency and also chronicling Richard Helms's background and how he became the director of the CIA. But it also mentions other matters that they faced along the way and how they handled it. So...
jefferson_m_morley (05:10.173)
Yeah.
ng (05:12.51)
it kind of gives you a good idea of the type of people that they are. And even though Watergate is within the title of the book, it's not until later in the chapters that the scandal is fully mentioned. Is this so we can understand the context of the relationship between Nixon and Helms?
jefferson_m_morley (05:15.667)
Yes.
jefferson_m_morley (05:30.352)
Yeah, yeah. As I looked at the story, I began to realize, I mean, I had written two other books about the CIA in this period. So I was very familiar with the character of Dick Helms. My first book, Our Man in Mexico, is about Wyn Scott, the CIA's top man in Mexico in the 1960s. And my second book, CIA book, was about Jim Angleton, the head of counterintelligence for the CIA in this period.
ng (05:37.322)
Yeah.
jefferson_m_morley (05:56.496)
Well, Helms had been good friends with both Scott and Angleton and colleagues. So by telling their stories, I knew a lot about his story already. But when I looked at the Watergate story, you know, Watergate is usually, has usually been told as a, a chapter in the history of the presidency and in the chapter of Richard Nixon's life. But when I looked at it, when you see the heavy involvement of CIA people, I wanted to look at
ng (06:05.504)
Oh.
ng (06:18.923)
Yeah.
jefferson_m_morley (06:26.34)
Watergate as a chapter in the history of the CIA. And to understand that, you had to roll back the story and start earlier when all of these characters begin to come together. Richard Helms, Howard Hunt, James McCord, Rolando Martinez, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, you know, the Cubans who were involved. And they have this big backstory. So in order to understand Watergate, I thought you gotta go back to the beginning and
ng (06:49.466)
Mm.
jefferson_m_morley (06:54.952)
follow all these people so that when the burglary happens and the men get arrested and the scandal begins to take shape and you know kind of cascade out of anybody's control, you can't really understand that without understanding what happened 10 years before. So that's why it's true Watergate's in the title but you know the burglary takes place about two-thirds of the way through the book or halfway through the book. But I don't think that you can really understand that.
ng (07:17.835)
Yeah.
jefferson_m_morley (07:24.508)
what happened that night without going back and really understanding the momentum that this history creates and this momentum that comes into play when the CIA men are arrested at the Watergate. And Helms and Nixon have to figure out, what do we do? How do we escape the predicament we're in now? So that backstory is very important.
ng (07:50.11)
I feel as though the backstory provides so much context when Watergate is mentioned, you're like, oh wow, you know? And so how much of an impact would you say JFK's assassination had on the career of Richard Helms? Because ever since it was mentioned in the early chapters, it seemed as though it's something that he couldn't escape from.
jefferson_m_morley (07:53.98)
Yeah. Yeah.
jefferson_m_morley (08:11.984)
Yeah, well, you know, it was a very big factor in Helms's career and also in his relationship with Nixon because, you know, when the president was assassinated under very suspicious circumstances, Helms had a lot to hide. You know, there was a whole lot about Lee Harvey Oswald that the CIA knew and did not want the American public to know that they knew.
And it was Helms' job to ride herd on that and make sure that story didn't get out. And he was, for the most part, he was successful. You know, the CIA's handling of Oswald and I would say manipulation of Oswald really doesn't become apparent until the 1990s when really the Fuller record starts to emerge. Helms kept that story buried and he had to in order to keep his job. And
Nixon knows this. So one part of the scorpions dance is, you know, they both understand that the Kennedy assassination is a very sensitive matter. And it's kind of like Nixon's kind of blackmailing Helms and Helms is kind of holding out on the president because it is such a tough thing. It's so explosive. You know, this is like, you know, the Kennedy assassination is like a third rail in American culture. It's like, you know, it's kind of sparking. It's like you touch it and it's like, and so.
That's a very important part of the dynamic between these two events, is how to manage this problem of the agency's secrets around Kennedy's assassination.
ng (09:47.31)
Yeah, even when he was put before congress he still wasn't really honest about the information the CIA had on Leo's world. I think there was around nine reports wasn't there?
jefferson_m_morley (09:58.884)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, basically, you know, what the CIA told the public and told the White House and told the Warren Commission was, you know, this guy came out of nowhere and, you know, we just didn't know there was nothing we could do. Okay. And, you know, it's now very clear that was a cover story. They were paying close attention to this guy Oswald for four years. And by close attention, I mean, very close attention. They were reading his mail. Okay.
ng (10:08.846)
Mmm.
jefferson_m_morley (10:27.388)
They knew his personal life, they knew his political life, they knew his foreign travel, they knew where he lived, they knew where he worked, you know, and they knew this over, and it wasn't like the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. That's a frequent excuse you get from the CIA. Oh, it was just an accident, you know, it was incompetence, we didn't know. That wasn't true either. All of this information was going to one office in the CIA, an office under the control of Jim Angleton.
and was held by a very small group of people. They didn't lose track of him or forget about him or think that he wasn't important. And in fact, you're right, nine reports, in the last 10 weeks of Oswald's life, in the 10 weeks before the Kennedy assassination, nine reports about Oswald are delivered, circulated at the highest level of the CIA, meaning people who work directly for Dick Helms. There's no piece of paper that has Dick Helms's name on it and Lee Oswald's name on it.
Helms was a very careful operator in that way. But all of his top subordinates, Tom Karam, the CNS, his top deputy, Bill Hood, his operational chief in the Western Hemisphere, Jane Roman, who was like the right-hand man to Jim Angleton, the liaison officer for the counterintelligence staff, you know, all of these people are very close to Nick Helms and they do sign off on on cables about Oswald. So that's an indicator of how high the interest in
ng (11:26.1)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (11:55.144)
the man who supposedly shot the president, you know, how high the interest was within the CIA. It was very high.
ng (12:02.748)
And listening to the audiobook, it really gave me an insight into the relationship between the CIA and the president. How would you describe the relationship between Nixon and Helms?
jefferson_m_morley (12:15.872)
Well, you know, complex. Um, you know, these are two very different men, right? Helms is this smooth East coast guy, a lot of style, a lot of money, friends in high places. Everybody likes him. Good boss, you know, but also, you know, covert operator, master of dirty tricks. Um, and Nixon is this outsider, this poor boy from
ng (12:22.318)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (12:44.2)
you know, a dusty farm in California. He resents guys like Dick Helms just in his bones. You know, they're everything he wants to be and they're the people who condescend to him and they're liberal and he's conservative, you know. So culturally very different. Politically, you know, they're pretty similar. Nixon sometimes thought, you know, Helms was some liberal because he was from the East Coast, but Helms was a real hawk. You know, he was anti-communist.
ng (12:50.379)
Mmm.
jefferson_m_morley (13:13.3)
pro-CIA, you know, he was no liberal. And so on political matters, they really kind of saw eye to eye, you know, they wanted to escalate the war in Vietnam. They wanted to spy on the anti-war movement, you know, these guys were real hardliners. And so they have this tremendous cultural difference, which Nixon's always grumbling about, you know, oh, the CIA, there's 40,000 people sitting out there reading newspapers, you know.
ng (13:16.418)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (13:38.684)
Like, you know, he's like, let's fire Helms. You know, you hear this on the White House tapes. He doesn't like them. But on the other hand, you know, there's times when it's like Helms sticks up for Nixon, you know, when he's down. Helms flatters him, you know, so a complex relationship. But, you know, what I took away was Helms was a very good manager of men. You know, he knew how to get along with people. He knew how to appeal to them. And he knew Nixon.
ng (13:41.583)
Yeah. Mmm.
ng (14:02.851)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (14:06.576)
Nixon was insecure and his pride was wounded. And so Helms flattered him and Nixon loved that, you know, was like, cause somebody was finally saying, you know, you're so smart, Nixon, and Nixon needed that. He was very smart, but he was very insecure. And so Helms gave him what he wanted. And that was good for Helms because, you know, he could have gotten fired a few times, but you know, he was useful to Nixon and Nixon never had it out for him. So.
ng (14:29.122)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (14:34.812)
very complex relationship, but what it tells you, you know, in the introduction I call this book a biography of power. And in that relationship, you see how two men of power, and that's what these guys were. These were, you know, they were at the top, you know, of the US government, and they had fought for decades to get there. So they knew what power was. They knew how to get it, they knew how to hold on to it. And in this relationship, this very tricky relationship,
ng (14:49.079)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (15:04.848)
You see two men of power doing what they do best, holding power and exercising it and protecting it. And it ends badly for both of them. They're both swept out because of the Watergate and related scandals. But for a while, they were at the very top. So that's what makes it such an interesting story.
ng (15:26.53)
No, that's true. And also you mentioned in the book how Helms wanted like an American version of Ian Fleming's James Bond books and with a spy named Peter Ward and Although it did flop in the end at the time. How important would you say It was for the CIA to try and create a positive image of themselves
jefferson_m_morley (15:35.644)
Yes.
jefferson_m_morley (15:39.772)
Right.
jefferson_m_morley (15:52.028)
Well, earlier in life, Helms had aspired to be a newspaper publisher. And he had been a journalist early in his career before he got into the spy business. And so he viewed intelligence work in the broadest sense. And so while he was a covert operator, you know, dirty tricks and all of that, he was also a big believer in what we would now call soft power, you know, not covert operations, not military operations, but things that make
America look good, things that make the CIA look good, you know, without betraying the hand of the CIA. So he, in the mid-1960s, he enlists his friend Howard Hunt, a writer and undercover officer, to write these Peter Ward books with the idea, well, if it's a hit and they make movies about him, this will be good for the image of the CIA, just as the James Bond movies were very good for the British intelligence service. You know, the Brits were the good guys.
Look how clever and dashing and fun they were. And Helms wanted that for the CIA too. It would make the CIA look good. And it would protect them from criticism, which by the mid 1960s, people were criticizing the CIA, saying you're overthrowing governments left and right. We shouldn't be doing that. You're dirty tricks. And then the CIA really was called to task in the 1970s and really had to.
forced to change its ways in certain respects. So Helms was trying to enhance the agency's image. So yeah, I think it was important. I mean, it was important enough for him to assign Howard Hunt to do it. And Hunt was one of his top rated officers, as well as a personal friend. And he, you know, he excused Hunt from other intelligence duties so that he could focus on this. And Helms took this,
jefferson_m_morley (17:46.844)
you know, big Hollywood moguls and said, you know, do you guys want to make a movie out of this? You know, we'd love that. We'd love to work with you. So yes, Hunt was a bit of a hack and the writers and the books weren't very good. And Hollywood was, said, this is a bunch of crap. And so it never really panned out, but you know, Helms was trying to do that. He, it was, he wanted to wage that sort of cultural cold war, you know, and that was, you know, that was part of what he saw as his job as director.
not just dirty tricks but also this kind of soft power plays as well.
ng (18:21.694)
Yeah, Hunt even managed to get himself to Spain, didn't he, to write parts of the book.
jefferson_m_morley (18:26.148)
Yeah, so he gets a paid sabbatical basically, and he writes four Peter Ward books in a year in 1966, courtesy of Dick Helms. He didn't have to do anything else that year, just write those books.
ng (18:30.344)
Mmm.
ng (18:43.05)
must be nice. And another thing I wanted to say is, whilst I was listening to the audio book, I remember it mentioned how Nixon thought he could use the CIA to achieve his aims by secret methods. But when you hear how we tried to use agency to monitor his brother, and then also how he wanted to expand Operation Chaos.
jefferson_m_morley (18:44.088)
Nice work if you can get it, right?
ng (19:11.778)
How fair is it to say that?
Nixon lacked a bit of integrity.
jefferson_m_morley (19:19.276)
Well, you know, I mean, Nixon, yeah, I mean, Nixon felt, I mean, let's look at it from Nixon's point of view. You know, he felt that the anti-war movement was a threat. You know, he didn't understand it. He couldn't believe that Americans just didn't want any part of this war or not a lot of Americans. And as in the course of Nixon's term, you know, the anti-war movement grows and grows, you know, and so.
Nixon is alarmed by this and he's not gonna wanna give them any quarters. So, you know, and Nixon's style in politics was slashing, you know, go for the other guy's throat, you know, all dirty tricks are fine. You know, Roger Stone, you know, the trickster for Donald Trump, you know, he got his start in the Nixon White House, you know, and there's no accident. You know, these, that's how these guys wanted to do politics. And so when Nixon's in office and he needs...
perceives the need for dirty tricks to take on his enemies, well, he goes to Helms and he says, help me. And Helms provides his friend Howard Hunt, among other things. So Helms enables Nixon in this way. Nixon needs a dirty trickster? Fine, Mr. President, I will provide you one. That's what a spymaster does for his chief. And so that's how the Watergate burglars came together was.
Helms recommended Hunt to Nixon, and we have Bob Haldeman on tape saying that, you know, Helms says this guy is ruthless, quiet, and careful, you know. And that's a year before the Watergate burglary. So Nixon knows who Hunt is, and he likes him. You know, they, again, they share that hardline anti-communist politics. So Helms enables Nixon to do what he wants. Without Helms, Nixon never would have had his burglary.
ng (21:00.855)
Hmm
ng (21:13.834)
Absolutely, like even in the case of Operation Chaos, I think it was mentioned that Helms was actually happy to oblige in that case, but he wasn't happy to oblige when it came to monitoring Donald Nixon.
jefferson_m_morley (21:26.148)
Yeah, yeah. You know, Nixon, Helms was totally behind Operation Chaos, even while he was taking some grief from his own people. I mean, people inside the CIA were saying, you know, we shouldn't be spying on Americans. You know, we're spying on our own kids. You know, like that's not our job. You know, we should not be doing this. And Helms always said, you know, go away. I think it's important and we're going to do it. And one reason he said that was because he knew Nixon liked that.
Nixon wanted that. So that was, you know, yeah, Operation Chaos was a very, you know, they had at least 30 agents in the field working on that and more at headquarters. So a very large scale operation.
ng (22:14.318)
Okay, and I'm going to read this off because I don't want to get this quote wrong at all, but it was in the later chapter titled Puritan, the Puritan Ethic, and Helms is quoted to say Americans are peculiar in this respect, as one very wise American said to me one day, look, this is simple, the American people want you to go out and do these things. They just don't want to be told about them. And they don't want to hear have to
have them on their conscience. How accurate would you say that statement is even to this day?
jefferson_m_morley (22:45.235)
Yes.
jefferson_m_morley (22:50.788)
I think that's very accurate. I suspect that the very wise American who said that, it sounds kind of like Henry Kissinger. And I think it might be Kissinger. But yeah, I mean, you know, that's what a lot of people think, which is, you know, if you're going to have a clandestine service, they're going to do bad things, you know, they're going to do dirty tricks. And that's just, you know,
The world is a dangerous place and we, you know, presidents want that capacity. And so, you know, we have it and yeah, don't, you know, don't tell us about it. You know, we're better off not knowing. I'm not saying that's my opinion, but a lot of people do think that way, you know, um, that, you know, that anything goes in this, in this sphere. That's a, that's a common thought and it, and a common thought today.
ng (23:41.054)
Absolutely. I'd say that obviously Watergate was the straw that broke the camel's back, but of all the things in the book that you mentioned before Watergate, what would you say had a lasting impact? Was it the Castro issue or was it the handling of JFK and the Oswald? What would you say was the thing that had a real big impact in terms of Nixon's fate and Helms's fate?
jefferson_m_morley (24:08.592)
Well, you know, the JFK story is in the background at all times with Nixon and Helms. And sometimes it comes, they talk about it literally. One conversation I talk about in the book is when Nixon is probing Helms for CIA records from the past about the Bay of Pigs operation and all that.
and Helms wants to know why is he interested. And Nixon says, and you can hear him say it on the tape, the who shot John Engel, right? Like he wants to know, this Kennedy assassination is a live issue, eight or 10 years after the fact of the assassination. So that's there. And when the Watergate burglars are arrested, Nixon tries to blackmail Helms and says,
ng (24:47.458)
Good chapter, by the way. Sorry, Jeff. That was a good chapter, by the way.
jefferson_m_morley (25:06.876)
This is gonna blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing in. And we now know that from that comment, when Nixon said the whole Bay of Pigs thing, he was talking about JFK's assassination. So that's one very important thing, a secret that the two of them had to manage. The other thing that happens in this period is, you have this kind of counter-cultural change coming, right? The Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement have really.
changed the composition of American opinion. And people no longer trust the government the way they did during World War II or even during the 1950s. Because there had been too many lies, there had been too many false statements. And reporters who had once thought the CIA were the good guys and just ran their stories and didn't ask any questions, reporters were embarrassed. They were getting used by the CIA. And so the reporting, the attitude of reporters starts to change.
You know, the fact that you had aggressive reporters like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein going after this story, that was a sign of the cultural change. That wouldn't have happened a few years before. And their editors wouldn't have said, you know, go for it. But by 1972, you know, just the government didn't have that credibility anymore. And so that's another big thing that drives the change, because after that, Nixon and Helms don't have the levers to control the story the way they did before.
Helms could call up some editor and say, that's a bunch of baloney, don't touch that, don't go near that. And senior editors would go along with that. That wasn't the case anymore. Dick Helms had plenty of friends in high places, but they were a little more wary about just buying the CIA's line. And that cultural change contributes to the downfall of both men, definitely.
ng (26:54.493)
Hmm.
ng (27:03.394)
Thanks, Geoff. And one last question I wanted to run by you as well is that it seems as though in the book, which is obviously a great thing, but it seems as though in the book that you maintain the very objective stance and focus solely on the information. I don't think there's even a part where you put your opinion in in terms of what you think about the things that are unfolding. Is there any particular reason why this is the case?
jefferson_m_morley (27:28.392)
You know, I mean, I like to write a book that people of all political persuasions can believe. And so, you know, and I feel like, hey, you know, I was in kindergarten when all this stuff happened. I was in elementary school. So, you know, the idea that I know better than Dick Helms, I mean, I have historical perspective and I can call him out on his things. But you know what?
seven years. I talked to people who really liked the man, really admired him. And I want those people to read my book. And that's part of the reality of who he was. So in my books, I do try and, I wouldn't say objective. I don't think there's anything such thing as objective, but I try to be fair. I try to understand people on their own terms so that readers, if somebody's a conservative Republican, which I'm not,
They're still going to get my book and enjoy it and like it. And they can come to any conclusion they want. You know, I think a polemical book makes it harder in some ways for readers to connect to the story. Because if you're doing that, you're asking people to buy into your opinion as well as your facts. You know, that's a heavy lift. You know, I mean, it's hard enough to get people to buy into your facts. If you're telling them something new, like in this book, like everything you thought about Watergate. Well.
ng (28:46.702)
Hmm.
jefferson_m_morley (28:57.308)
think again, you know? And so I'm asking a lot of the reader, I don't want to take on the burden of my opinion, you know? Like I said, my opinion is not that important. You know, at the end of the book, I say, I pass judgment, you're entitled to know my opinion. But that's not the point of the book. The point of the book is a biography of power. How does power work in America? And anybody of any political persuasion from far left to far right and in the middle,
that's going to be a subject of interest. And so let's talk about that. That's what's really interesting. That's what's new. And, you know, yeah, we want to talk about your opinion. To me, that's more like, you know, let's go across the street to a bar and buy me a couple of beers. I'll tell you my opinion all night long, you know, but that's not, that's not, that's not what I want to put in a book. You know, it's not that kind of book.
ng (29:49.238)
Mm. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Jeff.