Charlie first met Bissell in a closed-door hearing after his much-heralded high-altitude U-2 spy-plane program, which had been collecting reams of data through its illegal flights over the USSR, was ignominiously exposed after one of its planes was shot down over Sverdlovsk and its pilot captured. This happened literally days before President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev had been set to meet in Paris to discuss possible nuclear disarmament and a test ban. Eisenhower ultimately was forced to admit the United States had been spying on the USSR. Behind closed doors to the House Oversight subcommittee, Bissell demonstrated no contrition, no repentance, nothing indicating that he accepted responsibility for actions that had put the nation at greater risk.

Bissell next appeared before Charlie after the April 1961 Bay of Pigs disaster. The attitude, again, was pure hubris. Under questioning by Charlie, Bissell revealed that he’d feared that sharing a candid assessment of everything that might go wrong could frighten President Kennedy and keep him from taking any action, which he could not allow to happen. Again, he took no responsibility for the fiasco, the loss of life, or the embarrassment the president felt.

Charlie had spent a great deal of his time in Washington, DC, feeling staggeringly dismayed at the sad state of intellect in the nation’s capital. It wasn’t that they weren’t smart, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration officials, congressional leaders, and members of the military-industrial complex Ike had warned everyone about in his farewell address. It was that they thought they were smarter than they were. They came up with plans that were so convoluted that if they backfired, they caused repercussions that lasted for years and only grew in their destructiveness. And here we had CIA officers and generals—the goddamn chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—

“Charlie.” Lawford interrupted Charlie’s furious train of thought. “Do you watch The Twilight Zone?”

“Sure,” said Charlie. “Rod Serling’s a genius.”

“A few months ago they had this episode where this kid, I think his name was Anthony, had terrifying powers and could just wish people into the cornfields or transform them into horrific creatures. Did you see it?”

Charlie had. “Yeah. Creepy. Everyone’s afraid of the kid so the family turns into a bunch of sycophants. ‘It’s good you’re making it snow. A real good thing!’”

“Yeah,” said Lawford. “Exactly.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Charlie was about to ask why he’d brought up the episode, but then he understood. They pulled into Sinatra’s Rancho Mirage estate.

They knocked on the door, and George Jacobs opened it while pouring from a shaker into two martini glasses. Despite the festive greeting he was offering, his tone was grim: “The boss has a cold,” he warned them.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Charlie said, wondering what that might mean in terms of Sinatra’s mood.

“How bad?” Lawford asked. “His pipes clogged?”