Word: blackmail
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hoover was a vital part of anti-communist hysteria from the beginning. For nearly half a century he warned Congress and the public about communists hiding under their beds. They shuddered, and he combined their fear with adroit use of influence and blackmail and built his FBI into an empire, an uncontrollable superagency which is already far down the road to being a national political police force...
Eventually, Lufthansa-or the West German government, which owns 74% of its stock-paid $5,000,000. "Had it been only the plane, I wouldn't have given a penny," said West German Transport Minister Georg Leber afterward. By paying the blackmail, though, Leber had established a rather ominous precedent...
Europeans were most disturbed by Connally's calculatedly slowpoke handling of the gold bill. They regarded the delay as a polite form of blackmail, aimed at forcing trade concessions from them as the price of monetary stability. Then, as time dragged on, some believed that Nixon might try to gain trade advantages on his own by seeking approval of a devaluation larger than the 8.57% level agreed to in December. After all, London's Financial Times noted icily, the Nixon Administration "has been known before now to reverse itself suddenly...
WELL WHAT MORE do you say about a girl from California who doesn't wear underwear? That on arrival at Logan, the cops bust her? That in order to secure her release Peter and John then set but to blackmail a cop who is dealing the confiscated dope on the sly? That complications follow--from the introduction of heroin to a mock-up of the South Station to a climactic shoot-out at Walden Pond between the cops and the Mafia? That Peter and Susan survive it all to ride off into the sunset...
Around this ill-matched pair cluster ranks of middle-aged lovers and seekers, winners and mostly losers, caught in the "horrible, messy world of quarreling and forgiving." As the book runs its course, there are endless realliances of romance and necessity, suicide attempts, fatal mishaps, missing persons, blackmail. Cutting from character to character in short sequences, the author builds suspense reliably and often ingeniously. In the end, however, only Ludwig, who must choose between "unreason and dishonor," seems to have faced a true crisis. In leaving Gracie and sailing home, he achieves integrity after a long struggle...