a captured Polish government document, hoping to expose Franklin Roosevelt as a ‘criminal hypocrite’ and ‘warmonger.’ The German embassy in Washington gave a U.S. newspaper a bribe to publish the document.” The efforts, of course, went nowhere. See Dov H. Levin, “Sure, the U.S. and Russia Often Meddle in Foreign Elections. Does It Matter?,” Washington Post, September 7, 2016.
18. Author interview with Dov Levin. Years later, KGB archives revealed that Wallace’s preferred candidates for both secretary of state and treasury secretary were Soviet agents themselves. Roosevelt’s replacement of Wallace with Truman “deprived Soviet intelligence of what would have been its most spectacular success.” See Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
19. “Text of Wallace Letter to Stalin Calling for Peace Program,” New York Times, May 12, 1948.
20. Author interview with Dov Levin.
21. Jason Daley, “How Adlai Stevenson Stopped Russian Interference in the 1960 Election,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 4, 2017.
22. Casey Michel, “Russia’s Long and Mostly Unsuccessful History of Election Interference,” Politico Magazine, October 26, 2019.
23. David Shimer, Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference (New York: Vintage Books, 2021), 87.
24. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield.
25. Alexander Feklisov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (New York: Enigma Books, 2001).
26. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield.
27. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016).
28. Ibid.
29. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield.
30. Ibid.
31. Peter Baker, “‘We Absolutely Could Not Do That’: When Seeking Foreign Help Was Out of the Question,” New York Times, October 5, 2019.
32. Manafort, Political Prisoner.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
7. EXCESS IS BEST
1. T. J. Stiles, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (New York: Knopf, 2016), 310.
2. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).
3. Thomas B. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm Typify Republican New Breed,” Washington Post, April 7, 1985.
4. Manafort, Political Prisoner.
5. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”
6. Meghan Keneally, “The Man Who Got Top Trump Aide into GOP Politics Recalls the Budding Talent,” ABC7 Bay Area, April 26, 2016.
7. To take one example: Baker’s negotiation with Nursultan Nazarbayev, dictator of the nuclear-armed and newly independent Kazakhstan, took place in the nude, as the two sweated together in a sauna. See J. A. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York: Putnam, 1995), 538–539.
8. “James Baker and the Art of Power,” The Economist, September 24, 2020.
9. Franklin Foer, “The Quiet American,” Slate, April 28, 2016.
10. Franklin, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.
11. Bernard Weinraub, “After Nixon and Reagan, Young Republicans Face ’88 with Uncertainty,” New York Times, July 11, 1987.
12. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”
17. Kenneth P. Vogel, “Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure,” Politico Magazine, June 10, 2016.
18. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”
19. Matt Labash, “Roger Stone, Political Animal,” Weekly Standard, November 5, 2007.
20. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”
21. In 1981 Atwater authored one of the most infamous quotes in American electoral history, describing the Republicans’ so-called Southern Strategy. As Atwater said, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N*gger, n*gger, n*gger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n*gger’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites.… ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N*gger, n*gger.’” See Rick Perlstein, “Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy,” The Nation, November 13, 2012.
22. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”
23. Vogel, “Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure.”
24. Michael Lewis, “Three Words a Lawyer Should Never Say to Clients,” Bloomberg, March 27, 1998.
25. Evan Thomas, “The Slickest Shop in Town,” Time, March 3, 1986.
26. Steven Mufson and Tom Hamburger, “Inside Trump Adviser Manafort’s World of Politics and Global Financial Dealmaking,” Washington Post, April 26, 2016.
27. Manuel Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders,” Washington Post, November 29, 2018.
28. Thomas, “The Slickest Shop in Town.”
29. Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders.”
30. One other element of the “swamp” refined by Manafort and his team: the political action committee. According to both Manafort’s memoirs and reportage elsewhere, Manafort’s colleagues formed the National Conservative Political Action Committee in the 1970s. Per Manafort, it was “the first real political action committee in the United States.” It was also a “precursor to the rise of super PACs,” according to The Washington Post, helping lay the groundwork for deep-pocketed donors to flood American elections with financing. See Manafort, Political Prisoner; Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders.”
31. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”
32. Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders.”
33. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”
34. Katy Daigle, “Trump Criticizes Pequots, Casino,” Hartford Courant, October 6, 1993.
35. Shawn Boburg, “Donald Trump’s Long History of Clashes with Native Americans,” Washington Post, July 25, 2016.
36. Joseph Tanfani, “Trump Was Once So Involved in Trying to Block Indian Casino That He Secretly Approved Attack Ads,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2016.
37. Marie Brenner, “How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America,” Vanity Fair, August 2017.
38. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”
39. Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, “Mystery Man: Ukraine’s US Fixer,” Politico, March 5, 2014.
8. SHAME IS FOR SISSIES
1. David R. Gayton, “A Letter by Walt Whitman: ‘The Spanish Element in Our Nationality,’” Comparative Literature Undergraduate Journal (University of
