The problem with staying in Washington was that I couldn’t just tell everyone to piss off and go away. I was a public person now, stripped of any privacy. People called me at 2:00 A.M.—reporters, cranks, who knew who they were?—until I got an unlisted number. I was an official bad guy; my job was to act contrite. My former friends in the media, now as earnest with me as they would be in talking to a cancer patient, counseled that I should go through the ritual of public confession and absolution—on Nightline, preferably. But that was the last thing I wanted to do. I still wasn’t sure, in my heart, that I had committed any ultimate sin. I knew I had violated the rules of my profession, and that I deserved to be fired. But the rest, I didn’t know. I was never going to survive in that ambiguous position in Washington, where people actually whispered behind my back in the checkout line at the Safeway in Georgetown that I was “the CIA reporter.” I knew I had to leave. I needed a job, for one thing, and in Washington I was untouchable.

I am happy to report that bad things happened to Michel Bézy. His mistake was that he had made too much noise. His power was truly of the secret variety, and it turned out he couldn’t survive long in a public fight. When Sellinger called in the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Press Alert, he set in motion a formal process of investigation. Unlike most of what Bézy had encountered in his previous dealings, the SEC could not be bribed or tortured or intimidated into submission. The agency was like a giant, lumbering animal; once it started, it was very hard to stop. Worst of all for Bézy, the SEC requested assistance from Paris. The French authorities, after several weeks of indecision, agreed to comply.