'“Brilliant, brilliant. Yes, he'd be absolutely convinced -- having seen the men and the faces.”

“Right. But of course you couldn't talk -- just seize him and go. What would you think if you looked out and saw three people you recognized, and suddenly they jerked you up and tied you behind a car and dragged you 40 blocks? Hell, you saw them. You'd testify, swear under oath. . . which would cause Nixon probably to go completely crazy. He wouldn't know what to believe! How could he be sure that Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Ulasewicz hadn't done it? Nobody would know, not even by using lie detectors. . . But that's a pretty heavy act to get into -- dragging people around the street behind rented Avis cars, and we never quite got back to it, anyway, but if we hadn't had that accident we might have given it a little more thought although I still have no idea where Colson lives and I still don't want to know. But you have to admit it was a nice idea.”

“That's a lovely thing, yes.”

“You know Colson had that sign on the wall in his office saying ONCE YOU HAVE THEM BY THE BALLS, THEIR HEARTS AND MINDS WILL FOLLOW.”

“Right.”

“He's an ex-Marine captain. So it would be a definite dose of his own medicine.”

“Do you really think he deserves that kind of treatment?”

“Well, he was going to set off a firebomb in the Brookings Institution, just to recover some papers. . . Colson is not one of your friendlier, happier type of persons. He's an evil bastard, and dragging him down the street would certainly strike a note of terror in that crowd; they could use some humility.”

“Poetic justice, no?”

“Well, it's a little rough. . . it might not be necessary to drag him 40 blocks. Maybe just four. You could put him in the trunk for the first 36 blocks, then haul him out and drag him the last four; that would certainly scare the piss out of him, bumping along the street, feeling all his skin being ripped off. . .”

“He'd be a bloody mess. They might think he was just some drunk and let him lie there all night.”

“Don't worry about that. They have a guard station in front of the White House that's open 24 hours a day. The guards would recognize Colson. . . and by that time of course his wife would have called the cops and reported that a bunch of thugs had kidnapped him.”

“Wouldn't it be a little kinder if you drove about four more blocks and stopped at a phone box to ring the hospital and say, 'Would you mind going around to the front of the White House? There's a naked man lying outside in the street, bleeding to death. . .' ”

“. . . and we think it's Mr. Colson.”

“It would be quite a story for the newspapers, wouldn't it?”