“Well, Colson's the meanest man in politics, according to Pat Buchanan. Ulasewicz is the hit man, a hired thug. I thought if we put these masks on and wore big overcoats or something to disguise ourselves and went out to his house and kind of shouted: 'Tex, Tex! It's me, Tony. Come on down. We've got a big problem.' And the minute he opens the door, these people with the Haldeman and Ehrlichman masks would jump out from either side and seize him by each arm -- so that he sees who has him, but only for two or three seconds, before the person wearing the Ulasewicz mask slaps a huge burlap sack over his head, knots it around his knees and then the three of them carry him out to the car and lash him to the rear bumper and drag him down the street -- and just as we passed the White House Guard Station, slash the rope so that Colson would come to a tumbling bloody stop right in front of the guard. . . and after two or three days in the Emergency Ward, when he was finally able to talk, after coming out of shock, he would swear that the people who got him were Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Ulasewicz -- and he would know they were mean enough to do it, because that's the way he thinks. He's mean enough to do it himself. You'd have to pick a night when they were all in Washington, and Colson would swear that they did it to him, no matter what they said. He would know it, because he had seen them.”

'“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.”