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Back from trip

Back from a grueling trip --18 hours on the plane or awaiting connections, in 2.5 days -- to Minneapolis to film Joe Olson for my documentary, and to Milwaukee to be filmed by JPFO for their upcoming documentary. Got to meet Aaron Zelman for the first time -- yup, he's a true believer!

Had an interesting experience while on the road... stopped outside a hotel and wound up chatting with a retired CIA employee. He had some great war stories. In DC, diplomatic cars have special diplomatic plates. The first two digits are a two-letter code for the country they were issued to. He told me that the Soviet Union's code was FC... which stood for "f___ing communist." This wasn't speculation -- they guy in the State Department in charge of assigning the codes was a retired Marine officer, and took pleasure in assigning the code to them.

He also mentioned there was a constant low-grade harrassment war between us and the Soviets. One day a Soviet diplomat/KGB went to incredible length to shake off his "tail" as he drove thru DC. Next morning he found all his tires slashed, a sort of "so there" message. Next day an American diplomat in Moscow found all his tires slashed, a message of "we can play that game, too." This sort of thing went on constantly.