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His stance on God and religion has gone a long way in distracting us from his more damaging work ...

Hitchens sold out with his decision to become a guest expert on FOX to push the the "evil Saddam" narrative ... but Hitchens was at his best in a 2001 interview on C-SPAN, "The Case Against Henry Kissinger" ... and in '87 he broke a story while writing for THE NATION that now stands as my very first shocking political revelation ... in the midst of the IRAN-CONTRA scandal, he identified Oliver North as THE key figure in a covert "GIDO" arrangement with the Contras ... G-I-D-O: "Guns in Drugs out" ... Sen. John Kerry's report later documented an entry in North's diary on July 12, 1985 in which Gen Richard Secord told him "14m to finance arms came from drugs" ... and if not a FOX commentator in the strict sense, he was a regular contributor ... I was not a fly on the wall during his backroom negotiations with FOX but his decision to push the story that Saddam actually posed a material threat to the U.S. was so contrary to his reason-based perspectives, that money had to be an incentive ... it was during this period that he also pushed a false story that tended to minimize the Abu Ghraid abuses, suggesting they were not related to interrogations ... I believe he was corrupted and in this regard, was a real pioneer and ground-breaker ... arguably the first far-left intellectual to sell his thoughts for consumption by TV viewers who preferred to be spoon-fed news and opinion rather than read books and newspapers ... I now tend to compare Hitchens to his modern-day counterpart, Chris Hedges ... Hitchens took the money to push a theory that was eventually discredited ... and by furthering the "evil Saddam" narrative, he essentially did the bidding of the DS by bolstering the case for endless war in the middle east ... and once the lockdowns were declared in 2020, Hedges broke his many implicit promises to be there for the working class and allowed himself to be coerced into selective silence ... he has still not publicly commented on the vax mandates, vax passports or the Canadian and U.S. trucker convoys ... all of which severely impacted or sought redress for the working class ... I have more on Hedges' duplicity, much more ... but I'll spare you.

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Danielle -- As the first son of a Canadian mother, as a long-time libertarian newspaper guy.... As someone who interviewed hundreds of smart celebrity newsworthy pundit people like some guy named Frum while toiling at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and later Mr. Richard Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune Review... As a friend of the Terzians ... I too, despite our ideological differences, had the great pleasure of meeting -- and falling for the charms of -- the great Hitchens when he came to Pittsburgh around the same you were getting drunk with him in DC. Here among the reprints of my many Q&As and feature stories I've archived on Substack is my mid-1990s encounter with him. https://clips.substack.com/p/christopher-hitchens-and-the-lie Here is a later story about the fun I had crashing a Kissinger lecture with Hitchens and that Bernard Henri Levi troublemaker from France -- with photos. https://clips.substack.com/publish/post/32241315

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Correction: Sorry, I seem to have lied in my attempt to get your attention. I did not interview Mr. Frum after all. Can't find any record of it.

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No matter. What a lovely comment and links. Thank you! I can only say you are the lesser for not interviewing Mr. Frum but perhaps that can be rectified. Either way very much appreciate your comments!

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You're welcome. Hitchens made a lot of great memories for a lot of people across the political spectrum who thought they didn't like him until they met him in person.

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