The mysterious father of the 'October surprise'

Introducing our new podcast on the tense final weeks before an election, and a deeper look at the man who coined the phrase

William J. Casey was one of the most powerful figures in 1980s Washington, but he didn’t look the part.

“He slurred his words, and his speech was like a shortwave broadcast, fading in and out,” Bob Woodward wrote of Casey.

“The few strands of wiry white hair on the edges of his bald head each embarked on its own stubborn course, further contributing to the appearance of the absentminded professor. His ears were overlarge, even flappy. Deep facial wrinkles shot down from each end of his flat nose, passing his mouth on either side to fall beyond his chin and lose themselves in prominent jowls. He seemed in disarray.”

Woodward was describing Casey through the eyes of his predecessor as CIA chief, Admiral Stansfield Turner. But the portrait of the mumbling campaign operative and spymaster comports with most other accounts of Casey’s appearance.

One of Casey’s legacies, as Princeton historian Julian Zelizer pointed out in the first episode of my new “Now It’s History” podcast, is his coining …