Nathan Cook

[Nathan Cook]

My name is Nathan Cook, and I am currently employed by a public library in the southeast of the United States. My education is primarily in English and Communications, but in my early twenties I developed a love of history. I am, by nature, an inquisitive person who likes to know more and more about anything I read, a trait that sometimes borders on obsession. As an avid nonfiction reader with varies interests, I scour any new nonfiction that comes into the library. In the wake of 9/11, I became obsessed with trying to understand the failure of intelligence that preceded the event and began what would become a multi-year hobby of reading anything I could find about CIA, starting with Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars". More recently, I stumbled across a book by Tennent Bagley called "Spy Wars". The book absorbed me - regardless of my opinion of its conclusions - and launched me on a quest to read as much as possible about James Jesus Angleton & the legacy of CIA's counter-intelligence. This tied in with my pre-existing skepticism toward the Warren Commission and my belief in the possibility of a conspiracy in the death of JFK. While I got somewhat sidetracked from trying to learn about intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, I have instead found myself reading endlessly about CIA operations from the 1950s up through the 1980s. I annoy everyone who knows me when I begin talking about these things. While I do not presume to know for sure one way or other who was (or wasn't) involved with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I do believe that it is unlikely that we know the whole story and I do not believe the Warren Commission was the full truth. I have also read (for better or worse) more about Richard M. Nixon than anyone I know. This actually preceded my obsession with CIA, and was the result of my father who was an admirer of Nixon's. My father died when I was young, and my attempts to read about Nixon have, in part, been a personal quest to understand my father. (I must confess I do not share my father's admiration for Nixon, and I do not understand it.) Whether I will ever draw all of these fasciantions into a useful thread or not remains to be scene, but it is an ongoing learning experience for me, and I welcome the opportunity to engage in discussions relating to these topics with other interested parties. I enjoy reading, writing, and discussing both modern politics and 20th Century history. In addition to reading about CIA and conspiracy theories, I also enjoy reading about science and physics, and am an avid fan of SETI.org's podcasts."