In Britain, if you are accused of “inciting racial violence” — and if you are white — telling the truth is no excuse. You go to prison for a year for telling the truth.

In America, if you are accused and you are innocent, you are still financially ruined. The Miranda warning says, “You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one….”

You have to spend every dime you have to fight any accusation. It doesn’t matter if the accusation makes any sense.

I got a long lecture from two lawyers on two continents. When I heard the second lecture in the US, it was like deja vu. I spent an hour listening to exactly the same warning from two men thousands of miles and years apart, but they were almost exact copies of each other.

They told me that:
1) I had HURT the Communists, and no liberal would ever forgive me for it, and
2) if I EVER said anything too specific about what I had done in intelligence, leftists would go after me and stay after me.

Leftists NEVER forget.

This was not a Conspiracy Theory. This was legal advice.

There is no statute of limitations on anyone who hurts the left. The left never forgives anyone who hurts the People’s Peace-Loving Worker’s Democracies (PPLDCs).

You know who the PPLDCs are, the countries that shot people who tried to escape.

Communists.

So after September 11, 2001, leftists kept reminding America that we were responsible for the Twin Towers attack because we had supported Al-Khaida in its fight in Afghanistan against the Soviet invaders.

I can testify that the left fought all support to any Afghani resistance to the Soviet invaders. We had to do some very questionable things to get that aid in.

The left has never forgotten it, and the left has never forgiven it.

These are the same people who would get me if they could. And the way they would get me is to tie me to some really rough stuff that went on during the Cold War.

There is no statute of limitations on murder. A lot of killing went on. I never murdered anybody, but the accusation is all that counts.

They could ruin me. They could ruin thousands of people by theorizing a connection with some of the violence that went on.

It’s been decades. They can theorize anything.

Leftists get prosecutors for free. They wanted to get David Duke and they got David Duke to serve hard time. It didn’t cost a single liberal a nickel. You paid for it.

But the legal advice, repeat, legal advice I got was that they will destroy me for hurting the Communists.

I’m proud I hurt the Reds. I hurt them a LOT. Which is why I got all that legal advice, repeat LEGAL advice, not Conspiracy Theory.

AND I have none of the protection a good conservative has. Nobody would be more anxious to denounce me than the conservatives I worked with.

So this might give you just one example of the kind of problem people like me face.

Meanwhile, those who read my stuff are busy pushing old books and Rush Limbaugh.

I routinely take chances no sane person would take.

I don’t feel the interview with Radio Liberty went as well as others have. No one called in, whereas usually lots of people call in when I am being interviewed.

I told a lot of jokes, but I could hear the hard edge in my own voice, and that turns people off. People who know me refer to this as “The Washington Bob.” It comes from fifty years in one long, rough, unfair, and vicious fight.

I was raised in rural South Carolina. We always used the term “pushy New Yorkers.” It was as if that were all one word, “pushy New Yorkers.”

One day in 1982 I got a call from my publisher, St. Martin’s Press. The person calling me was sitting on Manhattan Island and I was sitting in my office on Capitol Hill in Washington. I was in the hard Washington environment.

At one point the person sitting on Manhattan Island said, “Don’t be so PUSHY.”

I laughed out loud. I was from Pontiac, South Carolina, and a NEW YORKER was complaining about how PUSHY I was!

The New Yorker asked me what was so funny, and I said, “It would take me a week to explain.”

But my hard edge, from intelligence work, Washington power politics, and fighting alone against the odds has given me a hard edge that sounds ugly, and I know it.

I try to be a laid back Good Old Boy, but all those years and all that confrontation causes the hard edge to come through, even when it shouldn’t. I try hard as I try hard to keep it down. You can’t send a man all around the world to fight hard fights for decades without his developing some crust that is not appealing.

One person said, “New York is a rough town. Washington is a MEAN town.” But I have been in a mean world for many years outside DC, too.

You can listen to the show and tell me if I was too mean, too aggressive.

But always try to keep in mind that that mean old “Washington Bob” was very often the only force the good guys had, and he was just mean enough not to give a damn if anyone didn’t like it.

I have tried to be both a fighter and a diplomat. It doesn’t always work.