Thursday, August 8, 2013

Edward Lee Howard

In Chapter Four "The Traitor's Disease" of my book I describe the case of  Edward Lee Howard, one of America's most destructive alcoholic traitors. I leave off the description of his treachery in the mid 1980's when, learning American authorities were on his tail, he escaped to Moscow.

Now Robert Stone has brought me up-to-date. In today's Wall Street Journal Stone expresses doubt about the official explanation for Howard's reported 2002 death in Moscow. The Russians claimed he died in a "drunken fall" in his dacha. Stone speculates instead that he may have been murdered by the Russians to eliminate a potential embarrassment in their relationship with the USA.

Perhaps. But people in the late-stages of alcoholism have been known to die in falls just as in the early to middle stages when their egomania is at its peak they tend to look for ways to express their need for power. For some in a position to do so, as was the CIA-trained Howard, that meant embarking on that ultimate power trip, betrayal of one's country.

I have no problem believing that the underlying cause of Howard's treachery and his flight to Moscow also led, years later, to his death: alcoholism.

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