"Mr. Valparaiso, I want you to listen to me carefully. I have about four more weeks—maybe three weeks—of political capital to expend. Then the honeymoon is over, and my office will be broken on the rack. I will have to face all the lawsuits, constitutional challenges, palace revolutions, outings, banking scandals, and Emergency machinations that have screwed every American President in the past twenty years. I want to survive all that. But I have no money, because the country is broke. I can’t trust the Congress. I certainly can’t trust the Emergency committees. I can’t trust my own party apparatus. I’m the nation’s Commander in Chief, but I can’t even trust the armed forces. That leaves me with one source of direct Presidential power. My spooks."