This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production.

Hi, I'm John Kariaku.

Welcome to this bonus episode of Dead Drop.

What Makes a Spy Tick?

Not a revelation.

America is a celebrity culture on steroids.

In L.A., you can gock at famous actors pumping their own gas or standing in the produce section at a grocery store.

In Washington, D.C., you can watch former Secretaries of State doing it.

Now, I'm not a starfucker by nature.

I've been in some pretty big rooms with some pretty big people, oval offices and presidents. It's hard not to be impressed by those

rooms while you're sitting or standing in my case in them. But of all the famous people I've

ever met or worked with, only one or two reduced me to pure fanboy.

In the case of folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger, he was always the most special to me.

Even when I was just six or seven years old and I saw Pete on Sesame Street, I knew that I wanted him to be a part of my life,

even if it was a very small one. When I was 18 years old, I said, I'm going to become friends

with Pete Seeger. And it took me years. And I did. I had such deep respect for Pete Seeger,

even when I was just a teenager, because I knew that he had refused to plead the fifth before the House on American Activities Committee. He pleaded the first, which just so threw them for a loop, they didn't know how to respond. And so they arrested him. He said, I have a constitutional right to associate with

whomever I want to associate, to read whatever I want to read, to say whatever I want to say.

He said, I will not plead the fifth because I have nothing to hide.

So they charged him with contempt of Congress, and he was convicted, and the conviction was upheld

in the Circuit Court of Appeals, but was upheld in the circuit court of appeals

but then overturned in the Supreme Court.

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