During all the time since I returned from Poland, I was concerned about the damned war in Vietnam, but there was very little I could do about it. Janet, however, soon found that she could devote herself intensively to antiwar efforts. She returned to her former employers, Vi and John Gunther, for whom she had once been secretary, but now as a full-fledged and experienced lawyer. They had just the job for her: She became the staff – the total staff – of a committee they set up to fight Mr. Nixon and his war. It was a Herculean task. She, of course, had no subpoena or any other powers to make any sort of inquiry other than to report what was already in the newspapers but not widely known, or known only to people associated with Capitol Hill or otherwise knowledgeable. She spent lots of time at the Congress, and became well acquainted with any number of knowledgeable people. And she used that knowledge advantageously. It was a very exciting life. But it was her life, not mine, except insofar as it imperiled my position as a government employee. But that was a risk that I was willing to take. I knew I could easily get another job.

Then one day, an extraordinary thing happened. I went to the immense National Institutes of Health (NIH) cafeteria, where, at a well-situated spot in the middle of the room, a well-known and much admired woman, one of the scientific stars of that institution, had set up a bridge table, and was busily soliciting signatures for a petition against the war. But she was not alone. She was being manhandled by a cigar-smoking NIH cop, who was trying to muscle her into closing shop. She resisted. I rushed in and intervened. He turned on me, and we were immediately in a scuffle, my one concern being that damned cigar, which he kept pushing closer to my eyes. But I was a pretty good boxer. My father, who had as a young man been a semiprofessional prize fighter, had bought me child-sized boxing gloves when I was a young kid. I had been beaten up by a gang of Irish kids on my way home from a Cub Scouts meeting at a local synagogue.