B. U. G. S.

I have pointed out that one of the rules of interrogration, hell, one of the rules of living in this world, is that when someone talks, he is telling you all about himself. The specific example I keep giving is that if someone keeps using the words “lie” and “liar,” his word is not to be trusted.

If you do not understand THAT up front, you are going to have some real troubles in life.

When I was on Capitol Hill, there were about twenty thousand people employed there. The group I knew were the people like me, those you could call at 2 am at their desks.

I read a book called “Workaholics.” It made me feel better because it pointed out that while a lot of people think New York is the center of workaholism, actually that center is Washington, DC. So my impression was generally corret.

But in this fallen world nothing is perfect. Washington was also polluted by the presence of sane people.

The point is that I had little contact with sane people. I dealt with the OTHER workaholics. So if you ask me my impressions of Capitol Hill or the Reagan Administration, I will tell you about lights on at 2 am, about peole who were wildly dedicated to what they were doing.

My enemies were the same way. I could reach Chris Matthews at 2 am as well as I could at 10am, often better. In the former case, his secretary wasn’t in the way.

But I began this piece by saying that the first rule of knowing people is that when they talk they tell you all about themselves.

If someone who worked in exactly the same place I did did not talk about workaholics but about bribes and scandal, he would have far more interesting story, and it is probably true.

Such a person ended up in tne middle of group where bribes, scandal, payoffs and other exciting things were the facts of life.

That tells you a lot about the realities of power that he was familiar with.

It also tells you a lot about him.