Just a brief note that my son Mike and I have embarked on a joint reading project, The Killing of Crazy Horse, by Thomas Powers.
Mike had been planning to read it, and it caught my interest because Powers is a crack investigative reporter, who has specialized in digging into the intelligence community, among other things. He has written frequently in the New York Review of Books, and as I recall was the first to get the goods on the collusion between George Bush and Tony Blair over the phony claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Good man, Powers.
We’re barely into the book, but Powers’s general plan is already clear, which is to cover the Sioux Wars and then resolve an ancient murder mystery—why Crazy Horse was killed, apparently with little or no provocation, after giving himself up to the Army.
He has unearthed a Witness—William Garnett, a half-breed interpreter, who seems to have been present at all the significant moments of Powers’s story. Garnett certainly has been known and written about before, but Powers uses him uniquely to focus his story.
Stayed tuned for further reports.
