The publicly low-key Finkelstein is credited with pioneering the use of aggressive ad campaigns, political action committees and turning the word "liberal" into a political pejorative.
Whatever actual impact previous foreign entanglements may have had, the stories persist — if only because they feed such powerful thoughts of "what might have been."
American presidents began surreptitious recordings in the White House in 1940 under Roosevelt, unbeknownst to Congress or the public. After Nixon, they were believed to stop, but did they?
NPR's Nina Totenberg explains how the idea that the Constitution is "not living but dead" transformed the Supreme Court during Antonin Scalia's tenure as a justice.