LOOMING DISASTER

LOOMING DISASTER
Christine, slammed the story as a political ploy. 2 “If he were still alive
today,” she said, “he would be furious [about the story].” Lauber
was not, in any way, a broken spirit. He was a tough guy who had
toured the world with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders. Moreover,
Lauber did not die because his spirit was broken by Romney. Lauber
died of cancer. According to his obituary published in the South
Bend Tribune at the time of his 2004 death, “Lauber led a full life,
graduating from Vanderbilt and becoming a member of the British
Horse Society. He earned seaman papers, was licensed in three states
as mortician, and was head chef of the [upscale] Russian Resort in
California. He also served as a civilian contractor during the war
in Iraq.” 3 Romney was never able to recover after that framing, and
lost the election.
The leaders of the Soviet bloc intelligence community, when I
was one of them, looked at the Washington Post as one of the most
credible Western newspapers. Its courageous Watergate reporting
made even Ceauşescu fear it. In that socialist world, fear meant
respect. In January 1990, when U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) got
my daughter out of Romania, the Post published a powerful condemnation
of socialism signed by Judith Weinraub. 4 Soon after that,
I became acquainted with the Post’s Book World editor, William
McPherson, and I was amazed by his staunch exposure of what he
called “Marxist heresy.” He even went to Romania to see the horrible
legacy of Ceauşescu.
The transformation of the Washington Post from an outspoken
defender of truth into a tool for changing the historical past was,
in my view, the beginning of a new era in the U.S. mainstream
media. This is an era in which even some of the most prestigious
U.S. newspapers have lost their political independence.
There is a widespread belief that the worst damage from enemy
intelligence operations against the U.S. has been the theft of highly
classified secrets, such as the technology for the atom bomb. Not so.
The absolutely worst – and often irreparable – damage done to the
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