Conversations with a Masked Man (Arcade Publishing, 2016)

For forty years John Hadden and his father of the same name fought at the dinner table over politics, art, and various issues concerning America. One was haunted by what he had witnessed during his long CIA career, from Berlin to Tel Aviv; the other retreated to the Vermont woods to direct Shakespeare, and finally confronted his father at the table one last time with a tape recorder.

Father and son talk about John senior’s early life as a kid in Manhattan, his training at West Point, the stench of bodies in Dresden after the war, Berlin and Vienna in the late forties and fifties at the height of the Cold War, the follies of the Cuban missile crisis, how he disobeyed orders to bomb Cairo while he was CIA Station Chief in Israel during the Six-Day War, and treacherous office politics in Washington. The story unfolds in dialogue alternating with the writer’s own memories and reflections. What emerges is darkly hilarious, unexpectedly candid, and deeply personal.

For the political junkie, the psychologist, the art lover, or anybody who wonders who their father really is.

ENDORSEMENTS

A poignant encounter between father and son - across the gap of generations and the moral abyss of the Cold War. John Hadden shows how the wounds of the past refuse to heal, and how acknowledging that truth can open into hard won wisdom - and even love.

— James Carroll, author of An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us

This lovely biography/memoir is about a story of father, son, and the fabric of the espionage craft. It was written with love, care, and curiosity of a son who tries to figure out who his father was. A fascinating tale.

— Avner Cohen, author of The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb

Family espionage at its finest. Rebellious son interrogates his spook father about the glory days of CIA, yielding disturbing truths of secrets, familial and political.

— Jefferson Morley, journalist and author of Our Man In Mexico, and The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton

The real story-telling in Conversations with a Masked Man takes place over a dining room table in Maine. Is there life after espionage? The  tape is playing. The inquisition begins.

— Erica Funkhouser, poet and author of Imaginary Friends, Day Work, Earthly, Pursuit, The actual world, Sure Shot and Other Poems, and Natural Affinities

By turns a paternal biography, personal memoir, family saga, CIA history, and Cold War spy thriller — all folded into a psychologically penetrating work of literature.

— Eric Darton, author of Divided We Stand: A Biography of the World Trade Center

How spies work. How spies think. And how an American spy struggled to be a decent father. All of that, and more, in this eloquent book by a CIA officer's son.

— Dan Raviv, author of Spies Against Armageddon and Every Spy a Prince

Father. Spy. Equally mysterious. John Hadden pursues this elusive, irascible patriarch and finds him to be as difficult to decode as this age’s fortress of adult masculinity. With his back turned on the world, the elder Hadden finally reveals the inner logic of the Cold War CIA and his own curious way of expressing love. How do we make sense of the epic relationship between father and son? Beautifully written, captivating, disturbing…

— Karen Hansen, sociologist and author of Encounter on the Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and the Dispossession of Dakota Indians

 We grow up under the spell and influence of our parents, but we know so little of who they are, beyond their role as our parents. We all wonder, but most of us never ask. Conversations With A Masked Man is a beautifully written look into the frightening world of covert espionage, and a tenacious, heartfelt attempt by a son to infiltrate his father's secrecy and silence, and find whatever common ground exists between them.

— Cindy Kleine, documentary film-maker, Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner

Conversations With a Masked Man is not just one book, it is several marvelous books … All of this serves as the basis for perceptive observations by the author on the behavior of a whole nation… By the end of the book a portrait has emerged of a man who could initially have been mistaken for little more than a caricature of James Bond but has been transformed into a deeper version of that persona — say, a real-life George Smiley — but, even more, into the tragic embodiment of the moral complexity and confusion of the leaders (the "fathers") of our entire nation, during the time in which he was serving them as a secret agent. A fascinating and important book which is also unique — I know of nothing quite like it."

— James Gilligan, psychiatrist and author of the Violence series

OTHER WRITING

PLAYS

Hard Rain is about love and torn loyalties during the 9/11/73 military take-over in Chile. Victor Jara, an activist songwriter and champion of indigenous music, befriends a young American boy (son of a CIA officer) who has been herded with thousands of other people into a soccer stadium. Events at the stadium and flashbacks of Victor with his family converge on the morning of his death.

King Fool: A ninety-minute adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, in which the refracted text shows a dying old man, having wandered away from his caretakers, discovered and nursed by his daughter. They revisit scenes from their lives, playing familiar games, but sometimes the father doesn't recognize his daughter as he falls into the chasms of his dementia. The play is followed by a "second act" in which audience members are encouraged to share their own stories about their end-of-life experiences.

stray dogs: A game of power, ambition, sex and death. A penniless young man, looking half dead, knocks on a door in the middle of a Vermont winter in 1972. The house belongs to a wealthy woman farmer. She takes him in and keeps him on as a farm hand, against the wishes of her husband, a famous, failing novelist.

The End: Sex, drugs, and the end of the world, in 1968, at John DeLorean’s Malibu beach house. A magician, a corporate couple, a starlet, and Don Ankle, carpenter to the stars, await their host’s arrival. When he does arrive, with his new side-kick, a two-thousand year-old man, violence over a rigged strip poker game erupts, a cop comes to collect some (planted) cocaine, and the world softly explodes.

Travels with a Masked Man: a retired CIA station chief goes to bat for life, espionage and art in a difficult encounter with his middle-aged son. A solo show based on the book, accompanying a book tour. As with King Fool, a "second act" invites audience members to share difficult parent stories.

A Thing for Talia (screenplay): A screwball whodunit-love story. Ex-celebrity Talia teaches jazz at a New England high school. Surrounded by would-be lovers, one of whom is murdered, she struggles to clear her name, find love, and save her son—in the face of a checkered past and the aroused citizens of Great Worthington, Massachusetts.

The Long Run, a commissioned play adapted from the story by Edith Wharton, for The Wharton Salon, Lenox, MA.

One-act plays include The Quincy and Antoinette Kraczlic Variety Show, which appeared in the online journal, The Good Ear Review.

— Selected excerpts below

Conversations with a Masked Man (Arcade Publishing, 2016)

ENDORSEMENTS

BUY THE BOOK

Order directly from the author—

—or click one of the buttons below

MEDIA

Intelligence Studies Project, February 19, 2016: ISP Director Steve Slick Shares Thoughts on

“Conversations with a Masked Man” for The Cipher Brief

OTHER WRITING

PLAYS

Downloads

Conversations with a Masked Man (Arcade Publishing, 2016)

ENDORSEMENTS

BUY THE BOOK

Order directly from the author—

—or click one of the buttons below

MEDIA

Intelligence Studies Project, February 19, 2016: ISP Director Steve Slick Shares Thoughts on

“Conversations with a Masked Man” for The Cipher Brief

OTHER WRITING

PLAYS

Downloads

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