That is, they secretly recorded conversations with friends, staff, advisors and unsuspecting political visitors. Doyle achieved access to a great, hitherto-unheard archive of such tapes. And here they are, from FDR to LBJ. Some of the content of these conversations is amusing – but more of it is revealing and one or two items generate astonishment.

That can easily be said of the most actively litigious member of the Harvard Law faculty. Though as an old friend – we came from the same Brooklyn neighborhood – I can fault him for his participation in the defense of O.J. Simpson, he is always worth close attention. Whether telling tales from the courtroom or clarifying the politics of the Middle East or the U.S., his presentation is inevitably fascinating. Here he is in full form in a 2000 conversation.

Their former ambassador to the U.K. is now ensconced in a professorship in Washington and quite busy explaining his country – and the rest of the Muslim Middle East – to the west. Here, in a conversation from 2007, Akbad Ahmed sheds revealing light on the most unstable of all the nuclear powers and who in Pakistan is trying to do what, with which, and to whom.

Was it the worst week since 2009? Chris Robling and Charles Lipson do so aver as they examine:

• the new civil war in Iraq and how we helped bring it on;
• the flooding of the border with some 60,000 Latin American children;
• the dysfunctionality of Obamacare;
• the edging toward crime by the IRS;
• and the many other crises and regressions of prior weeks that are now obscured by those that hit the air-circulator this last week.

So says Michael Rubin in this conversation recorded just a few days before the one-for-five trade was announced and executed. Would that our side had heard this one before they went forward to unlock the Gitmo gates for the Taliban Big Five. Just published is Rubin’s valuable and wise new book, Dancing With the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes.