Mark Halperin

Most of my conversations with my dad and my brothers were about about government and about policy.

So less, you know, who's going to be the next nominee for whatever and more national security policy, economic policy, civil rights.

But yeah, I would say, although there was plenty of normal, definitely a heavy dose of policy and kind of Washington seriousness in my childhood.

Um, you know, he was friends with a lot of reporters, friends with a lot of diplomats, friends with a lot of people in government, some some friends with some more famous people.

And, you know, he worked when I when I was born, he worked, he taught at Harvard, then then he worked in the Pentagon, then he worked in the White House.

So if your dad's office is the Pentagon and the White House, it's pretty clear there's something different going on.

That's not a normal, normal experience for a kid.

And then probably the seminal thing was in, let's see, when I was about, how old would I have been?

about eight, we found out our home phone had been wiretapped for 21 months by Nixon and Kissinger.

So that initiated a 21-year lawsuit against Nixon, Kissinger, the FBI, a whole bunch of other people that didn't end with the millions of dollars I thought we were going to get.

But that lawsuit, being the plaintiff in a lawsuit against a president of the United States and a former secretary of state, that was an omnipresent reality of my childhood.

They did.

The FBI did.

And the poor FBI agents had to actually sit and listen to all these things and then read the transcripts of them.

And I wasn't on the phone all that much, but my younger brother was friends with a little girl across the street.

And they were like three years old during the wiretap.

And they would call each other on the phone.

and look out the window across the street and just look at the window and sort of goo-goo-ga-ga back and forth at each other.

And when we found out our phone was wiretapped, I wondered how those agents justified their existence on the earth if they had to listen to that.

well this doesn't relate to government and politics but certainly the culture of washington uh one of my favorite lines from president kennedy he had a lot of good jokes uh but one was that washington is a city he said of northern charm and southern efficiency and um it's still true as compared to tokyo