Jill Dougherty's 'My Russia' is a must for Russophiles

 

For all the Russophiles (like me) who enjoy reading about the country’s history and culture, Jill Dougherty's My Russia:  What I Saw Inside the Kremlin is one for your reading list: A curiosity seeker’s background into contemporary Russian history and culture.

 

It may be too lengthy (330 pages; I skipped most of the chapter on vodka) and the font size, too small, but the content is a must.

That the few pictures are not chronologically arranged is a wonder and confusing. 

The book has lots of background on Vladimir Putin, now in his second term as Russia's president and maybe president for life.  (In 2013 in St. Petersburg, a Russian guide laughingly told my tour group of mostly British citizens: "I am sure Putin will be leader for life.") 

Ms. Dougherty and her twin sister, Pamela, studied Russian in high school, and the book goes on to detail Jill's ascent at CNN becoming its Moscow bureau chief for almost a decade.

She mentions Mr. Putin's autobiography, written many years ago with some falsehoods contained therein. She provides her psychoanalysis of him and why he is as he is, perhaps having a Napoleonic complex (he is 5'7") or an inferiority complex. 

His quirks (we all have) and more are outlined. 

To make him more of an "average guy," a p.r. campaign was instituted.

She mentions three times, I think, the mysterious kiss Putin planted on her for... why?  It was anyone's guess, but he is another Mr. Macho, after all.  

Ms. Dougherty recounts the decline of Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) who served as Russia's first popularly elected president (1991-1999) before Yeltsin named his favorite deputy, Mr. Putin, to succeed him when Yeltsin retired six months early. 

Remember the Kursk?  Putin didn't want to.  August 12, 2000 brought the explosion of Russia's nuclear sub, the Kursk, and the deaths of 118 sailors in the Barents Sea, a tragedy which Putin initially ignored, vacationing on the Black Sea but finally appearing several days later to recognize the deaths and the accident... wearing a golf shirt. 

Ms. Dougherty describes the evolution of U.S./Russian relations since 9/11, and their graduation deterioration with the growth of NATO, Russia always blaming the West, particularly the U.S., for its problems.

About the time of Ted Turner's death (May 6, 2026) was about the time I got to the chapter on his visit to Russia in 2000, there to meet with Putin and discuss business and Turner's possible purchase of a stake in the NTV, the Russian-owned free television channel, now owned by Gazprom, a purchase Putin shot down.

She ended her stay in Russia on March 6, 2022, sadly, she writes, probably the last time she'll be there. (I feel the same, Jill!  How can we visit Russia again?) 

Amanda Wilson's jacket design is exceptional, better than most covers, drawing attraction from bookstore browsers, no doubt. It contrasts the author's photo and her white hair with a dark cover and colorful Russian domes, dominated by the title in white. 

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John Dean, Watergate, and Jim Acosta

John Dean, left, and Jim Acosta at National Archives, June 1, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

It was a Washington crowd, after all, where most of us think alike (no friends of Trump) and groaned and laughed at the best of lines.

John Dean was in town at National Archives to talk about the upcoming CNN series Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal beginning Sunday night, June 5, at 9 p.m. and CNN's Jim Acosta was there with him to ask a few questions.

John Dean, left, and Jim Acosta at National Archives, June 1, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Dean looks healthy and about ten years younger than his 83 years.

He said he had saved lots of his papers and goods which he pitched to CNN a while back as the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in on June 17, 1972 nears, and CNN took the idea and ran with it.

If the first show is an indication of the quality, it'll be an excellent series!

National Archives, June 1, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Dean was the personal lawyer for President Richard Nixon hired when he was only 31 and advised not to take the job by then U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst (1923-2000), but who's going to reject a White House job offer?

Not Dean.

Not anybody!

Nixon knew he was breaking the law, but that didn't stop him from breaking the law, Dean said, and Nixon sicced the IRS on various "enemies" which his team thought was “great stuff [to use], but I thought it was awful,” Dean says.

Nixon’s team sabotaged the 1972 presidential campaign of Edmund Muskie (1914-1966) with a fake letter which led to Muskie's withdrawal from the race. 

Dean described G. Gordon Liddy (1930-2021), a Nixon deputy who directed the Watergate break-in, as “radioactive.”

Walking near the White House with Liddy one day after Watergate was discovered, Dean said he'd never forget a conversation they had. Liddy pleaded with Dean that if it became necessary "to take him [Liddy] out," to please do it anywhere but his house where his children were.

Before Watergate, the Nixon gang came up with other grand schemes to obtain sources of leaks and find damaging information about their opponents, Dean said, like "firebombing" the Brookings Institution and hiring prostitutes to lure secrets from attendees at the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach. 

The absurdities of the ideas produced loud guffaws from the Archives' audience. 

Dean took credit for single-handedly killing the Brookings plot when he told H.R "Bob" Haldeman (1926-1993), a chief Nixon lieutenant, that it was "insane."

At times in the show, Dean's heroics make him seem grander than he was. He did spend four months in prison and was disbarred in Virginia and the District of Columbia (which go unmentioned, at least in the first show).

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, lead the show, aided by memories from CBS's Lesley Stahl who describes Nixon's henchmen John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) as personable and likeable, but, Haldeman, his partner in crime, was "dark" and "humorless." (No surprise to anyone who lived during the era.)

Nixon later denied pardon requests to both because he was annoyed by their tactics and unfaithfulness to him.

After only a year of working in the White House, “I was losing my respect for these people,” Dean said to audience laughter. When he broached the idea of leaving, Haldeman threatened him with inclusion on Nixon's enemies list.*

During the evening, laughter, moans, and/or groans often greeted the name of Donald Trump whenever it came up, which was probably more often than any other contemporary's.  

At the conclusion of the film, Acosta asked Dean, “why is this story so relevant now?” and the audience sighed loudly.

Dean: “It's impossible to look at Watergate now" and ignore comparisons to the Trump administration. In “an understatement,” Trump does or did not want to follow the law, and the audience laughed again.

“Nobody made ignoring standard operating procedures illegal until we get to the Trump years,” Dean said.

He spent 4.5 years with graduate students transcribing the Watergate tapes, and Archives has much of the material.

Acosta: “Did this country learn its lesson from Watergate?” and the audience, with mixed ages, groaned again.

Dean thinks Washington was sensitized to Watergate’s lessons for the first ten years after the scandal, "but since then….My hope is that they [the January 6 Committee] have witnesses who quietly come forward.”

Acosta: What will happen to our democracy?

Dean: “I worry much more about it now. During Watergate, I never worried about a constitutional crisis,” but things are different now with the Republicans carrying Trump’s water.

The show's music is fitting, if sometimes harsh and overpowering which may have been due to acoustics in the Archives' McGowan Theatre where almost every seat was filled.

The interview lasted about 15 minutes and no questions from the audience were taken.

*Some of the names from Nixon's "enemies list" floated on the screen including that of U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) (1994-2005), whose 50th anniversary of her presidential launch is celebrated this year, too. Last week she was featured in an excellent talk by Ashleigh Coren at the National Portrait Gallery which, alas, has no planned exhibitions on Ms. Chisholm.

This is also the 50th anniversary of the founding of CNN.

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Reuters is the fastest

 

This is a MD-83 aircraft like the one which crashed today in Mali/Reuters

 

When it comes to the story today about the Air Algerie tragedy in Africa, Reuters was the first news service I could find to confirm the crash.

Here is a headline timeline in EST:

10:22 a.m.  Reuters confirms the plane has crashed

10:38 a.m.  Bloomberg News reports the plane has vanished

10:39 a.m.  BBC reports the plane is missing

10:41 a.m.  CNN says the plane is "lost" and "off radar"

10:42 a.m.  Washington Post reports the plane has vanished

10:44 a.m.  New York Times has no mention of it on its website

10:50 a.m.  Wall Street Journal reports the crash

10:52 a.m.  Reuters was added to my "favorites"

The planned route of the Air Algerie flight/Chicago Tribune, NDN

EUMETSAT

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