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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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Did Xi Jinping Bungle the Hong Kong Crisis? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/world/asia/china-hong-kong-xi-jinping.html

Is Xi Mishandling Hong Kong Crisis? Hints of Unease in China’s Leadership

Beijing’s halting response to the protests in Hong Kong has raised questions about President Xi Jinping’s imperious style and authoritarian policies.

By Steven Lee Myers, Chris Buckley and Keith Brasher | Published Sept. 7, 2019 Updated 10:21 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 7, 2019 12:07 PM ET |

BEIJING — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, warned a gathering of senior Communist Party officials in January that the country faced a raft of urgent economic and political risks, and told them to be on guard especially for “indolence, incompetence and becoming divorced from the public.”

Now, after months of political tumult in Hong Kong, the warning seems prescient. Only it is Mr. Xi himself and his government facing criticism that they are mishandling China’s biggest political crisis in years, one that he did not mention in his catalog of looming risks at the start of the year.

And although few in Beijing would dare blame Mr. Xi openly for the government’s handling of the turmoil, there is quiet grumbling that his imperious style and authoritarian concentration of power contributed to the government’s misreading of the scope of discontent in Hong Kong, which is only growing.

On Friday and Saturday the protests and clashes with the police continued in Hong Kong, even after the region’s embattled chief executive, Carrie Lam, made a major concession days earlier by withdrawing a bill that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects to the mainland, legislation that first incited the protests three months ago.

The Communist Party’s leadership — and very likely Mr. Xi himself — has been surprised by or oblivious to the depth of the animosity, which has driven hundreds of thousands into the streets of Hong Kong for the past three months. While it was the extradition bill that set off the protests, they are now sustained by broader grievances against the Chinese government and its efforts to impose greater control over the semiautonomous territory.

Beijing has been slow to adapt to events, allowing Mrs. Lam to suspend the bill in June, for example, but refusing at the time to let her withdraw it completely. It was a partial concession that reflected the party’s hard-line instincts under Mr. Xi and fueled even larger protests.

As public anger in Hong Kong has climbed, the Chinese government’s response has grown bombastic and now seems at times erratic.

In July, at a meeting that has not been publicly disclosed, Mr. Xi met with other senior officials to discuss the protests. The range of options discussed is unclear, but the leaders agreed that the central government should not intervene forcefully, at least for now, several people familiar with the issue said in interviews in Hong Kong and Beijing.

At that meeting, the officials concluded that the Hong Kong authorities and the local police could eventually restore order on their own, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

There are hints of divisions in the Chinese leadership and stirrings of discontent about Mr. Xi’s policies.

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University and an expert on Chinese politics, said it appeared that there was debate during the annual informal leaders’ retreat in Beidaihe, a seaside resort not far from Beijing.

Some party leaders called for concessions, while others urged action to bring Hong Kong more directly under the mainland’s control, he said. Mr. Cabestan said he believed that “the Chinese leadership is divided on Hong Kong and how to solve the crisis.”

Wu Qiang, a political analyst in Beijing, said Mr. Xi’s government had in effect adopted a strategy to procrastinate in the absence of any better ideas for resolving the crisis. “It is not willing to intervene directly or to propose a solution,” he said. “The idea is to wait things out until there is a change.”

The upshot is that instead of defusing or containing the crisis, Mr. Xi’s government has helped to widen the political chasm between the central government and many of the seven million residents in a city that is an important hub of international trade and finance, critics say.

Another sign of the disarray within the government was the reaction to Mrs. Lam’s withdrawal of the bill. On Tuesday, officials in Beijing declared there could be no concessions to the protesters’ demands. A day later, when Mrs. Lam pulled the bill back, she claimed to have Beijing’s blessing to do so. The same officials were silent.

On Friday, China’s premier, Li Keqiang, said during a news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who was visiting China, that the government supported Hong Kong in “halting the violence and disorder in accordance with the law.”

Mr. Xi, who is 66 and in his seventh year of his now unlimited tenure as the country’s paramount leader, has cast himself as an essential commander for a challenging time. He has been lionized in the state news media as no other Chinese leader has been since Mao.

This has made political solutions to the Hong Kong situation harder to find, because even senior officials are reluctant to make the case for compromise or concessions for fear of contradicting or angering Mr. Xi, according to numerous officials and analysts in Hong Kong and Beijing.

“Beijing has overreached, overestimating its capacity to control events and underestimating the complexity of Hong Kong,” said Brian Fong Chi-hang, an associate professor at the Academy of Hong Kong Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong.

The tumult in Hong Kong could pose a risk to Mr. Xi, especially if it exacerbates discontent and discord within the Chinese leadership over other issues.

“I think the danger is not that his standing will collapse, but that there is a whole series of slowly unfolding trends that will gradually corrode his position,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney and author of “Xi Jinping: The Backlash.”

“Hong Kong is one, as the protests look set to carry on despite the concessions,” Mr. McGregor said. “The trade war is adding to the pain,” he added, referring to the current standoff with the United States.

Mr. Xi returned on Tuesday to the same venue as his speech in January — the Communist Party’s Central Party School — and reprised the warnings he raised in January without suggesting they were in fact worsening.

“Faced with the grim conditions and tasks of struggle looming down on us, we must be tough-boned, daring to go on the attack and daring to battle for victory,” he said.

While he warned of “a whole range” of internal and external threats — economic, military and environmental — he mentioned Hong Kong only once, and then only in passing.

“By painting a dark picture of hostile foreign forces or even unrelenting internal challenges the Communist Party faces in retaining power, it helps justify his continuing strong hand,” said Christopher K. Johnson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Some analysts see a parallel between Mr. Xi’s handling of Hong Kong and the trade war with the United States, which, like the economy more broadly, seems to be the greatest worry for his government at the moment.

In Hong Kong, Mr. Xi’s government unwaveringly supported the extradition bill. And it stuck by that position, refusing to allow Mrs. Lam to withdraw it formally, even as the protesters’ demands grew broader. Her pledge to withdraw it now has been dismissed as too little, too late.

In the trade talks, China also balked at accepting President Trump’s initial demands for concessions. When the two sides came close to an agreement in the spring, outlined in a 150-page document, Mr. Xi appeared to balk, scuttling the process.

Now Mr. Xi faces an even bigger trade war, with much higher tariffs and greater tensions. The government appears to be hewing to a strategy of waiting out Mr. Trump, possibly through his 2020 re-election campaign, even as the dispute has become a drag on the economy.

It remains unclear how Mr. Xi’s government conveyed its approval for Mrs. Lam’s decision — or whether it did. Mrs. Lam’s sudden shift evolved in a matter of days after last weekend’s clashes between protesters and the police, several officials said.

Mrs. Lam said the decision to withdraw the extradition bill was hers, but she also asserted that she had Beijing’s full support for doing so, suggesting more coordination than either side has publicly acknowledged.

The silence from officials and in the state news media about Mrs. Lam’s concession suggested that if Mr. Xi’s government did approve of the sudden shift, it wanted to stifle public discussion of it in the mainland.

Mrs. Lam herself described the tightrope she must walk during recent remarks to a group of business leaders that were leaked and published by Reuters.

“The political room for the chief executive who, unfortunately, has to serve two masters by constitution, that is, the central people’s government and the people of Hong Kong, that political room for maneuvering is very, very, very limited,” she said.

She also offered a candid assessment of Beijing’s views, even if one she did not intend to make public. She said Beijing had no plan to send in the People’s Liberation Army to restore order because “they’re just quite scared now.”

“Because they know that the price would be too huge to pay,” she went on. “Maybe they don’t care about Hong Kong, but they care about ‘one country, two systems.’ They care about the country’s international profile. It has taken China a long time to build up to that sort of international profile.”

Hong Kong’s unique status, with its own laws and freedoms, has long created a political dilemma for China’s leaders, especially for Mr. Xi, who has made China’s rising economic and political might a central pillar of his public appeals.

China’s recovery of sovereignty over the former British colony is a matter of national pride that reversed a century and a half of colonial humiliation. But the mainland maintains what amounts to an international border with Hong Kong.

The government’s deepest fear now appears to be that the demands for greater political accountability and even universal suffrage heard on the streets in Hong Kong could spread like a contagion through the mainland. So far, there have been few signs of that.

As the crisis has grown, the government has sent thousands of troops from the People’s Armed Police to Shenzhen, the mainland city adjacent to Hong Kong, but the exercise was hastily organized and used an outdated plan drawn up after the protests in 2014, according to one official in Hong Kong.

Beijing also stepped up its propaganda, launching an information — and disinformation — campaign against the protesters and opposition leaders in Hong Kong.

Mr. Xi continues to barely mention Hong Kong. He has said nothing about the protests, even in his passing reference on Tuesday. He has not visited since 2017, when he marked the 20th anniversary of the handover from Britain.

After the traditional August holiday break, Mr. Xi’s public calendar of events has since betrayed no hint of political upheaval or threats to his standing. The media’s portrayal of him, already verging on hagiography, has become even more fawning. State television and the party’s newspapers now refer to him as “the People’s Leader,” an honorific once bestowed only on Mao.

“The People’s Leader loves the people,” The People’s Daily wrote after Mr. Xi toured Gansu, a province in western China.

Mr. Xi’s calculation might be simply to remain patient, as he has been in the case of Mr. Trump’s erratic shifts in the trade war. In his remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Xi also gave a possible hint of the government’s pragmatism.

“On matters of principle, not an inch will be yielded,” he said, “but on matters of tactics there can be flexibility.”

Javier C. Hernández contributed reporting. Claire Fu and Amber Wang contributed research.

#democracy #china news #china #bejing #xi jinping #world news #worldpolitics #u.s. news #uknews #hong kong protests #hongkong #hong kong

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dailydaveeddiggs · 7 years ago

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Today, thanks to “Hamilton,” Diggs, 35, may be the more established half of the “Blindspotting” duo, but that wasn’t the case when he moved back to Oakland after earning his theater degree from Brown. Though four years younger, Casal had already made a name for himself on the Bay Area spoken-word scene, from which he was plucked to appear on HBO’s “Def Poetry.”

Casal had set up a recording studio with the aim of finding other musicians to collaborate with, reaching out to Diggs on the strength of a demo CD the rapper had recorded in his college dorm room. The friendship took hold almost immediately: That first night, they created a few songs, which led to albums, live performances (with a group they dubbed the Getback) and countless sketches and online videos.

“Rafael was the most famous person I knew,” Diggs recalls. “He had really tapped into the YouTube audience pretty early.”

Casal’s videos caught the attention of Jess Calder (then Jess Wu). The young producer, partnered in Snoot with her husband, Keith Calder, had seen a couple of his spoken-word performances and was struck by both Casal’s charisma and the fact that he appeared to be a natural-born storyteller.

“In my mind, anyone who can tell a great story can definitely translate that to film,” explains the producer, who contacted Casal and proposed they meet for coffee. She asked if he’d ever thought about writing a screenplay.

“I’d thought about theater a lot, [but at that age] you’re trying to get $5 for something at McDonald’s. A movie is millions of dollars away,” says Casal. But he was definitely intrigued, and began fleshing out a character that was loosely autobiographical. Things started to click about a year and a half later, when the Snoot duo asked Casal to perform at a screening of their documentary “Thunder Soul” at a January 2009 presidential inauguration event in Washington, D.C. Casal couldn’t make it but suggested they book Diggs in his place.

“Daveed came and did like 15 minutes of freestyle at the event and kind of blew our minds,” recalls Keith Calder. “We were immediately like, ‘Rafael, the movie’s gotta be about the two of you!’”

And from that moment forward, “Blindspotting” became the story of two friends of different races forced to consider the world from one another’s viewpoints, all set against the rapidly changing Bay Area backdrop.

Casal hails from Berkeley, the city directly north of Diggs’ Oakland. But they both attended Berkeley High School and later split a four-bedroom house with two other friends for $1,200. “I can’t even imagine what that place would cost now,” Casal says.

Gentrification, fueled by the tech boom, has transformed the neighborhoods they once knew. “Seventh Street is just a BART station and a post office now, but in the ’30s and ’40s, that was one of the jazz and blues centers of the world,” Diggs says. The last of the local music venues, Esther’s Orbit Room (where Diggs’ brother had been a bartender), finally shut down in 2010. His mother and father (also born in Oakland) both had to move, priced out by the newcomers.

Though not a musical in the conventional sense, “Blindspotting” was born out of a desire to translate spoken-word poetry into cinema. “There are versions where it was damn near a poem the whole time,” Diggs says.

From 2009 onward, he and Casal worked on the script together, huddling over the same laptop since they had only a single licensed copy of Final Draft between them.

“We were trying to find a recipe for a world where verse could exist without it feeling like there’s a deliberate shift every time it goes into a number,” Casal explains. “The Bay Area is known for slang and for turn of phrase. It’s the evolution of pimp culture, so heightened language is already very prevalent in the way people relate to each other.”

For the next several years, Diggs and Casal spent their time driving up and down Interstate 5 between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, parking out front of wherever Snoot headquarters happened to be at the time and sleeping in their car if needed. They wrote draft after draft of “Blindspotting,” pitching the changes to the Calders while using Snoot’s facilities to work on music videos and other projects.

“I’ve always felt like our offices were a place where they should feel safe to create art,” says Jess Calder.

Before Diggs and Casal could complete a shooting version of the script, they were pulled away by other professional opportunities. Casal went off to teach verse-driven theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for three years. And, for Diggs, “Hamilton” happened.

“The thing about this business is you never know if something’s a break,” says Diggs. “I met Lin-Manuel Miranda because of a clerical error.” Diggs showed up for the same substitute teaching job as one of Miranda’s friends, Anthony Veneziale, who was also a rapper. They hit it off, and Veneziale invited Diggs to freestyle with his group, of which Miranda was a member. Later, when it came time to do an early reading of “Hamilton,” Miranda remembered Diggs and his rapid-fire delivery. “I was invited because I have this particular skill set that allows me to learn a lot of things very quickly,” recalls Diggs, who had just five days to memorize the show’s most demanding part. “I assumed they would replace me because they had plenty of Broadway performers to choose from.”

Except that Miranda didn’t replace Diggs, who spent nearly a year and a half with the production. “Before leaving ‘Hamilton,’ I made this comment to one of my agents,” Diggs recalls. “I was ready to go, but scared that I wouldn’t make any money again, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that,’ and promptly booked my life with all these things.”

The day after his last “Hamilton” performance in mid-2016, Diggs found himself shooting the movie “Wonder,” starring Julia Roberts. The following week, he began working on ABC’s “Black-ish.” That was swiftly followed by a recurring role on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” which had to be juggled amid a long-planned national tour with his experimental rap group, Clipping.

Into the midst of this whirlwind came the moment for which Diggs and Casal had long been waiting. Last March, the Snoot producers told them they had the greenlight to make “Blindspotting,” provided the duo could get their script in shape to shoot in June.

“What if I move to L.A. in two days and I write it for a month?” Casal recalls asking — and that’s exactly what he did, undertaking a page-one overhaul while Diggs’ fledgling screen career kept him busy.

“I was on airplanes every other day,” says Diggs, “so really the only through line were these midnight phone calls from Rafael to talk about this thing we’d been talking about for a decade.”

Excited about the prospect of finally making the movie, Diggs kept a rare 25-day window open in June for the shoot. Casal managed to get the rewrite done in four weeks. Reaching out to another old friend, they brought in director López Estrada, who immediately began pre-production.

The project’s Oakland focus attracted some production talent whom the producers normally couldn’t afford, including DP Robby Baumgartner, who had worked in the lighting department for Spike Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and who brought the lighting crew from “Moonlight” aboard.

“We suddenly had this amazing team of people from the Bay Area,” says Diggs. “Doing something with your friends at a high level, that’s a dream.”

After production wrapped, Snoot submitted a rough cut to Sundance, which recommended the music-driven film for a Dolby Family Sound Fellowship. “Blindspotting” is one of two 2018 Sundance selections to have earned the generous post-production grant, making it possible for the filmmakers to upgrade their mix in time for its festival debut. (Past recipients of the grant include “Mudbound” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”)

Thanks to the grant, Diggs, Casal and other members of the production team — including López Estrada and the Calders — spent late December camped out on the Paramount Pictures lot on the same Technicolor stage where Michael Bay mixes his “Transformers” films.

On the same day of Variety’s visit, Diggs and Casal wrote a short piece of original music to replace a few seconds of temp score. Since they came up with the cue themselves, that means they can later expand it into a full-blown song for the soundtrack.

It’s the kind of on-the-fly challenge that has fueled the duo’s creative partnership for more than a decade — though “Blindspotting” is the first time they’ve been able to combine their writing, performance and musical talents to such a degree.

“As an artist, the only thing you ever want to do is something that requires every part of yourself,” Diggs says. “And it is so rare when that happens.” (x)

LOVE the insight as to how this all came together.

#daveed diggs #rafael casal #blindspotting #sundance #sundance film festival #2018 sundance film festival #variety #jess calder

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schemesanddreams · 8 years ago

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Part Two – The Imposter

As the calendar rolled to 2004, Lee and I became quick friends, or so I thought. It’s funny now, how nervous I was the first time I called her, considering the relationship we eventually developed.

With bi-weekly phone conversations, letters and e-mails abounding, one can imagine we discussed more than just Dorothy’s death - and one would be correct. Lee regaled me with tales of her lunching at Sardi’s and indulging in one too many gin and tonics; something I would quickly discover her penchant for. It was more than her stories which tuned me in to her alcoholism. Nonsensical, rambling voicemails about her cats, parcel with addresses written sloppily and postage affixed upside down and one particular e-mail going on about penguins were only a few instances in which her troublesome relationship with alcohol became glaringly obvious.

I vividly remember her cackling over the receiver once, detailing her failure of burning a turkey for a dinner party she was hosting. Another time, she absolutely demanded that I read Pentimento, a book by Lillian Hellman. She urged me to read Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, as we had been discussing banned literature at the time. She confided in me that she was looking to write a screenplay about Dorothy and to “keep it under [my] hat.” Often times, she used antiquated phrasing – things such as something being “rotten in Denmark” and a “bee under one’s bonnet.” It didn’t take me long to become quite fond of her, with all of her quirks and eccentricities.

Still, I knew something was off about Lee Israel. I couldn’t put my finger on it but something didn’t feel right. I didn’t fully trust her but she was releasing crumbs of information to me that I was unable to find elsewhere. Having sent me copies of Dorothy’s handwritten autopsy report and several police reports I had requested from her, I knew that there was more Lee had yet to share with me. I had to keep her placated and happy in order to receive the information I wanted, despite how distrusting I was of her at the time. She only released the bare minimum to me, afraid that I would surpass her research and become the new “Queen of the Kilgallen Story” – the last bit of fame Lee clung to. I was competition, she realized. She was not dumb; she knew I was befriending her for information and she did her best to carefully keep me at bay. It was quite the twisted relationship, in retrospect.

With those realizations, paired with my instinct, I did some late-night digging and ended up uncovering an ancient notice to all New York Public Libraries that Ms. Israel was forever banned from them. Well, that’s curious, I thought…

It turns out that my somewhat-of-a-friend, confidant, theory-buddy and information provider had quite a dark secret. When I confronted her with what I had found, Lee’s tone turned icy.

“That is NONE of your business,” she hissed. “Keep your nose out of things that aren’t relevant to you,” she added. I was stunned at her sudden change in demeanor. In that moment, Lee was downright cold.

Funny, I thought. This woman who had written an exclusive and detailed biography about the life of a person that wasn’t relevant to her was lecturing me, a person who came to her with my nose already buried in things that weren’t relevant to me, on not digging into something that wasn’t relevant… I had struck a nerve and Lee made it obvious. I backed off but continued to dig – shocked at what I continued to uncover.

My New York Times Bestselling Author of a “friend” was a pathological liar. Additionally, she was a thief and a felon, to boot. In retrospect – and having befriended another of her ilk – I recognize her behavior and traits to be quite obviously sociopathic. The woman gave zero shits about anyone other than herself – and her past and present actions at the time made that perfectly clear.

Lee had major success with the biography of Dorothy Kilgallen. Similarly, she received tremendous praise for her biography of actress Tallulah Bankhead (who will become relevant later in this tale). Riding high on the success of her writing, Lee began yet another biography. Except, the subject of this one was very much alive and did not appreciate the unauthorized work. Estée Lauder and Israel ended up in a race to the presses, with Lauder trying to beat Lee to publication with her own autobiography.

Lee’s book was an abject failure. She was so ashamed of it, even so many years later, that she strictly forbade me from reading it. (Something I complied with until many years after our falling out; finally, out of spite, I read the book and it was indeed a complete piece of trash.)

Having fallen off the high horse of success, Lee was strapped and living in an exclusive apartment on Riverside Drive in New York City. She was in way over her head and struggling to make ends meet. While she blames her felonious misadventures on the sickness of a beloved pet cat and her financial inability to afford treatment, I not-so-secretly believe that her theft was a direct reflection of her own selfish greed.

Lee sneaked documents out of the highly-secure historical reading rooms of the New York Public Library system. Taking letters penned by very famous people, she would gently fold them, quietly slip them into her shoe, take them home and copy their signatures. Her brand of forgery was especially inventive, as she used the light from an upturned television set as a back-light to trace the signatures. Using a variety of typewriters which she later admitted to trashing in various cans around the city once the FBI was onto her, she fabricated letters by famous people, forged their signatures and sold the fake letters as authentic. She made a ton of money. That is, until she was caught.

This was information which, at the time, really surprised me. I carefully suggested she monetize her story, afraid of the verbal backlash. After all, it was interesting, I reminded her. Instead of laying into me, she scoffed. Yet, several years before her death on Christmas Eve 2014, she published a slim memoir called “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” to much success and fanfare.

An aside that will make much more sense as my story progresses: I found out about Lee’s death through a google service that instantly reports to my e-mail any news featuring Dorothy Kilgallen. I was absolutely taken aback when I absentmindedly checked my e-mail on Christmas and found that headline.

“Keith,” I said, shocked, to my husband. “It’s over. She’s dead.”

We high-fived and I decided in that moment, that her death was the best Christmas present I had ever received. Before you cast me as a heartless, ruthless bitch, finish my series and then revisit that moment with the information you’ll receive... My joy, relief and happiness will appear far less cold-hearted and in fact, very justified...

With much retrospect, I see just how dastardly Lee Israel was. At the time, while I was certainly entertained by her, I knew that she merely kept me around for the attention. Lavishing me with over-the-top stories and acting as if she was wealthy beyond her means, she basked and reveled in having an audience in me. When I had planned a trip out to New York City to sightsee Dorothy’s house and haunts, as well as to do coffee with Lee, the façade crumbled and her lies came crashing down upon her.

There were no fancy luncheons at Sardi’s. Not surprisingly, Lee had lied. Sure, there was plenty of gin but I highly doubt they were expensive martinis, as she had suggested. Certainly, they were sad drinks from plastic, bottom-shelf bottles. There was no turkey dinner to be burnt. Lee had no friends to invite over.

“I’m penniless,” her e-mail read. “I’m ashamed,” she told me.

Lying about her whereabouts during my trip (she was most definitely holed up in her embarrassingly cluttered apartment on Riverside Drive), she claimed to be in California on business. Convenient.

Shortly after she so transparently stood me up, I experienced a major devastation by way of the death of a beloved family member. Having recently moved to a new area and not yet having my feet solidly on ground in the social department, I called her hoping that in her, I could find a sympathetic ear. She sent me to voicemail.

Not long after I left a very upset message, quickly filling her in on my situation, I received an e-mail.

“Due to our differences, I think it is best we no longer talk.”

What differences? Sure, we weren’t politically amicable but that was about the only thing that we didn’t have in common. I found it curious that she would dump me as a friend while I was in such a situation – after I had been there for her, for several years, during her tough times.

I was soon to surpass her on Kilgallen research, having spent a vacation talking with a forensic pathologist mooring next to the boat I was on. Having contacted Kerry, quick to learn that he and Lee had also had a falling out. Having received previously classified Kilgallen information from both the FBI and CIA.

I realized that she often had “falling outs” with people. Kerry and I weren’t the only ones. One person she blacklisted was crucial in the Kilgallen case. His name was Ron Pataky and he was Dorothy’s secret boyfriend, seen with her on the night of her death.

“Don’t ever contact him,” Lee had admonished. “He’s a violent alcoholic. He’s very dangerous,” she told me.

Telling me of a time that she had gone and visited him – implying quite transparently that the two had gotten drunk together – she told me that he had flipped out and scared her. No other details were given about the story but her warning was stern. I heeded the advice until 2011, when I was asked to be a guest on the syndicated radio program Coast to Coast. They wanted me to spend a segment talking about Dorothy on their annual Kennedy Assassination show and I didn’t feel right about going on the air without having talked to the one man who I strongly believed killed Dorothy.

It was Lee who had tried to keep me isolated, warning me about DK’s son, Kerry and about Dorothy’s boyfriend Ron, alike. It was Lee who made me promise to “never put any of this on the internet,” when she sent me the autopsy and toxicology reports. It was Lee who feared me surpassing her as the subject matter expert on Dorothy when I broke my promise, creating the most comprehensive Kilgallen website to date and it was Lee who ended up making my life a living hell…

#cc

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