Nine or The Irregulars

Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Author: Jeffrey Toobin

Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.

Just in time for the 2008 presidential election—where the future of the Court will be at stake—Toobin reveals an institution at a moment of transition, when decades of conservative disgust with the Court have finally produced a conservative majority, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, presidential power, and church-state relations.

Based on exclusive interviews with justices themselves, The Nine tells the story of the Court through personalities—from Anthony Kennedy's overwhelming sense of self-importance to Clarence Thomas's well-tended grievances against his critics to David Souter's odd nineteenth-century lifestyle. There is also, for the first time, the full behind-the-scenes story of Bush v. Gore—and Sandra Day O'Connor's fateful breach with George W. Bush, the president she helped place in office.

The Nine is the book bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin was born to write. A CNN senior legal analyst and New Yorker staff writer, no one is more superbly qualified to profile the nine justices.

The New York Times Book Review - David Margolick

The Nine is engaging, erudite, candid and accessible, often hard to put down. Toobin is a natural storyteller, and the stories he tells—how a coalition of centrist justices saved Roe v. Wade; why Rehnquist, despite having loathed the rights granted to criminal suspects by Miranda v. Arizona, eventually declined to overturn the decision; how right-wing firebrands deep-sixed the Supreme Court candidacies of Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers—are gripping.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

…the Supremes command more attention than ever, and Mr. Toobin's new book The Nine not only provides a vivid narrative history of the court's recent history but also gives the reader an intimate look at individual justices, showing how personality, judicial philosophy and personal alliances can inform decisions that have huge consequences for the entire country…Driven by the author's assured narrative voice, The Nine is as informative as it is fascinating, as insightful as it is readable. It is an altogether crisper, livelier performance than Jan Crawford Greenburg's book on the court (Supreme Conflict), which appeared this year, and it gives the reader a far more tangible sense of the court's day-to-day workings as well as a sharper understanding of issues, like executive power, which are at stake in pending cases.

Publishers Weekly

It's not laws or constitutional theory that rule the High Court, argues this absorbing group profile, but quirky men and women guided by political intuition. New Yorkerlegal writer Toobin (The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson) surveys the Court from the Reagan administration onward, as the justices wrestled with abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gay rights and church-state separation. Despite a Court dominated by Republican appointees, Toobin paints not a conservative revolution but a period of intractable moderation. The real power, he argues, belonged to supreme swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor, who decided important cases with what Toobin sees as an "almost primal" attunement to a middle-of-the-road public consensus. By contrast, he contends, conservative justices Rehnquist and Scalia ended up bitter old men, their rigorous constitutional doctrines made irrelevant by the moderates' compromises. The author deftly distills the issues and enlivens his narrative of the Court's internal wranglings with sharp thumbnail sketches (Anthony Kennedy the vain bloviator, David Souter the Thoreauvian ascetic) and editorials ("inept and unsavory" is his verdict on the Court's intervention in the 2000 election). His savvy account puts the supposedly cloistered Court right in the thick of American life. (A final chapter and epilogue on the 2006-2007 term, with new justices Roberts and Alito, was unavailable to PW.) (Sept. 18)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

KLIATT

Selected as a best book of the year by Time, Newsweek and the like, this book about recent Supreme Court Justices (Rehnquist, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Thomas, Kennedy, Scalia, O'Connor, Stevens, Alito, and Roberts) falls somewhere between scholarly and popular. With the death of Rehnquist and the retirement of O'Connor, and with the near certainty of further retirements in the near future, this is about transition, about how justices are chosen, how their ideas may be static or may evolve, and about the major philosophical differences among the justices. Serious YA students researching individual justices will find Toobin's style definitely accessible. Following the detailed descriptions of relationships and political influences may be quite challenging for YA readers, even the serious ones. Reviewer: Claire Rosser

William D. Pederson - Library Journal

Forty percent of cases that reach the U.S. Supreme Court produce unanimous decisions. It is the others that pose problems, especially those involving issues that the elected branches of government have failed to resolve. In a sense, the Court serves as political umpire, with its decision making done in secret. The world of the Supreme Court has been probed in books like Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong's The Brethren(about the Burger Court). Toobin (Opening Arguments) follows their pattern with the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, basing his work on interviews with the justices and 75 law clerks (conducted on a not-for-attribution basis). Toobin writes like a skillful literary critic as he attempts to understand the character and values of each justice, their outlook on life, and their jurisprudence. He makes a convincing case that the Rehnquist Court was really Sandra Day O'Connor's moderate Court-she was the swing vote for moderation. Toward the end, Rehnquist largely gave up on transforming the Court in his image. The future direction of the Court, i.e., whether it goes extremist or remains more moderate, is clearly in the hands of the next President. Toobin himself seems hopeful that Justice Stephen Breyer may further promote moderation. Beautifully written, this is an essential purchase for all libraries interested in the contemporary Supreme Court. (The final chapter, on the 2006-07 term, was not available for review.)

Kirkus Reviews

Abortion, gay rights, disputed presidential elections and wartime powers have appeared on the Supreme Court docket under chief justices Rehnquist and Roberts, but this occasionally enlightening, often injudicious account focuses more on prickly egos. CNN senior legal analyst and New Yorker staff writer Toobin (Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election, 2001, etc.) raises red flags in noting that he conducted confidential interviews "with the justices and more than seventy-five of their law clerks." All the justices-even press-hostile Clarence Thomas and Washington-allergic David Souter? Since these interviews were "on a not-for-attribution basis," how can we judge, for example, the claim that Sandra Day O'Connor found the presidency of George W. Bush "arrogant, lawless, incompetent, and extreme"? This vague sourcing is regrettable, because much about the justices' personalities and deliberations in the last 20 years appears on the record. Moreover, Toobin displays a gift for narrative and abundant insights into how justice-and justices-get made. We learn that in the waning years of the Rehnquist Court, the justices' isolation meant they influenced each other not in chambers, but in public questions during oral arguments. Over the last two decades, Toobin informs us, even the most conservative justices have grown increasingly tolerant toward gay clerks. In another tidbit, we hear that Mario Cuomo tantalized Bill Clinton with his interest in the vacancy that ultimately went to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Despite periodic attempts at fairness, Toobin's views color his characterizations. Liberal Stephen Breyer has "an almost messianic belief in the power of reason,"while more right-leaning justices are dismissed as crusty (the late Byron White) or "famously pugnacious" (Antonin Scalia). Toobin's surprise that Dubya would appoint justices of his own ideological stripe seems disingenuous. Surely such a well-informed writer is aware of the confirmation reverses suffered by LBJ and Nixon in the 1960s and, at a greater extreme, FDR's court-packing scheme of 1937. A smart brief about the high court that suffers from sometimes dubious and occasionally inadmissible historical evidence.

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

Author: Jennet Conant

When Roald Dahl, a dashing young wounded RAF pilot, took up his post at the British Embassy in Washington in 1942, his assignment was to use his good looks, wit, and considerable charm to gain access to the most powerful figures in American political life. A patriot eager to do his part to save his country from a Nazi invasion, he invaded the upper reaches of the U.S. government and Georgetown society, winning over First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, Franklin; befriending wartime leaders from Henry Wallace to Henry Morgenthau; and seducing the glamorous freshman congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce.

Dahl would soon be caught up in a complex web of deception masterminded by William Stephenson, aka Intrepid, Churchill's legendary spy chief, who, with President Roosevelt's tacit permission, mounted a secret campaign of propaganda and political subversion to weaken American isolationist forces, bring the country into the war against Germany, and influence U.S. policy in favor of England. Known as the British Security Coordination (BSC) -- though the initiated preferred to think of themselves as the Baker Street Irregulars in honor of the amateurs who aided Sherlock Holmes -- these audacious agents planted British propaganda in American newspapers and radio programs, covertly influenced leading journalists -- including Drew Pearson, Walter Winchell, and Walter Lippmann -- harassed prominent isolationists and anti-New Dealers, and plotted against American corporations that did business with the Third Reich.

In an account better than spy fiction, Jennet Conant shows Dahl progressing from reluctant diplomat to sly man-about-town, parlaying his morale-boosting wartime propagandawork into a successful career as an author, which leads to his entrée into the Roosevelt White House and Hyde Park and initiation into British intelligence's elite dirty tricks squad, all in less than three years. He and his colorful coconspirators -- David Ogilvy, Ian Fleming, and Ivar Bryce, recruited more for their imagination and dramatic flair than any experience in the spy business -- gossiped, bugged, and often hilariously bungled their way across Washington, doing their best to carry out their cloak-and-dagger assignments, support the fledgling American intelligence agency (the OSS), and see that Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term.

It is an extraordinary tale of deceit, double-dealing, and moral ambiguity -- all in the name of victory. Richly detailed and meticulously researched, Conant's compelling narrative draws on never-before-seen wartime letters, diaries, and interviews and provides a rare, and remarkably candid, insider's view of the counterintelligence game during the tumultuous days of World War II.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

…if the part of the story Conant tells is comparatively minor, it is interesting all the same—especially for its high Washington gossip quotient—and Conant tells it well.…Over the span of a 74-year life, Dahl's World War II service was merely an extended episode, but Jennet Conant has made an entertaining and instructive story out of it.

Publishers Weekly

This carefully researched chronicle of Dahl's WWII espionage ought to be more interesting than it is-the word "spy ring" suggests thrilling acts of derring-do, yet they never come. While occasionally intriguing, this is too frequently a dry collection of old gossip with too many tangents discussing minor characters, their real estate and their clothing. Simon Prebble reads creditably and distinctively, and his English accent is perfect for the subject. But even he can't hold one's attention in this excessively digressive, slowly paced academic work. It's a pity, because this is a comprehensive look at a topic that most people probably know little about: England's efforts to counter American isolationism. A Simon & Schuster hardcover (Reviews, June 9). (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Elizabeth Morris - Library Journal

The tale reads like a classic spy novel. The setting? Washington, DC, in the early 1940s. The protagonist? A dashing RAF pilot, steeped in the city's social circles. He listens closely to government gossip while planting a few rumors of his own, then reports his findings to his mysterious chief. Instead of a spy novel (although Ian Fleming is featured), this is the true story of the young Roald Dahl's adventures working for the fledgling British secret service in its efforts to bolster pro-British support in America. As one of famous spymaster William ("Intrepid") Stephenson's trusted young agents, Dahl's covert responsibilities were basically to be himself: charm dinner party guests, romance socialites, and be seen and heard by power brokers while picking up information along the way. Conant (109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos) pieces together some of Dahl's political assignments, documenting the smaller cogs in the intelligence machine while including close-ups of many of the era's elite, such as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Noel Coward, and Ernest Hemingway. With this excellent history of personalities and politics during World War II, Conant adds successfully to her previous books that have made vivid the war's background players. Highly recommended.

Kirkus Reviews

The noted children's author was once one of several British agents conducting espionage in the United States. Advertising-titan-to-be David Ogilvy and future James Bond creator Ian Fleming were also members of the group assigned to infiltrate top levels of Washington and New York society to gain information that would help their government push the United States to enter World War II. But Conant (Tuxedo Park, 2002, etc.) focuses on Roald Dahl, who became a spy after a grievous injury ended his career as an RAF pilot. In her enjoyable popular history, she keeps the narrative moving at a brisk pace, including adequate doses of serious information and juicy gossip. She occasionally goes off on tangents and spends too long on some profiles, but she ably captures the complexity and paradox of the era as she depicts the spies' active professional and social lives, which included sexual affairs as well as diplomatic briefings. Dahl's roguish charm and dashing looks helped him become a trafficker of intelligence to British officials and a key provider of leaks to American journalists. Few suspected his secret life. "With his reckless sense of humor and general air of insubordination," the author writes, "Dahl may have been mentioned to someone on high as having the makings of an ideal informant, if for no other reason than no one so badly behaved would ever be suspected of working for British intelligence." While Conant admires the literary skills that Dahl eventually acquired, she abhors his willingness to use and discard people as they became more and less useful to him. Entertaining social history that also reveals a little-known aspect of an important literary figure's life. Agent: KrisDahl/ICM

Table of Contents:

1 The Usual Drill 1

2 Piece of Cake 35

3 Enthusiastic Amateurs 65

4 Special Relationships 99

5 Buffers 127

6 One Long Loaf 145

7 The War in Washington 179

8 Dirty Work 209

9 Good Value 237

10 Enemy Maneuvers 259

11 The Glamour Set 293

12 Full Lives 321

Notes 349

Bibliography 370

Index 381