Thread by @davidfrum

I've been reading the galleys for @jkirchick 's forthcoming book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. It's as if Jamie flipped a switch to reveal a room of the house that had never before been seen in full light. Beautifully written too us.macmillan.com/books/97816277…

@jkirchick .@jkirchick Secret City seems destined to become both a standard text of US history - and a hugely popular bestseller.

Thing I learned today from @jkirchick "Secret City": the Eisenhower administration National Security Adviser who codified the 1953 ban on employing homosexuals in any federal agency - including eg the National Zoo - was himself gay according to his own later discovered diary

@jkirchick "All told, an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 federal employees lost their jobs owing to homosexuality in the 1950s alone ..." Kirchick, Secret City, p. 184.

Thing I learned today from @jkirchick "Secret City": that the first and most important of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories - devised by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison - was a wild fantasy that Kennedy had fallen victim to a murderous homosexual cabal.

@jkirchick More by @jkirchick on how Garrison's anti-gay fantasia became the basis for Oliver Stone's "JFK" conspiracy movie airmail.news/issues/2022-1-…

Thing I learned today from @jkirchick "Secret City": the gay Vietnam vet who lunged for the gun and saved President Ford from an assassin in 1975 ... was inadvertently outed by his own heroism. His father banned him from his mother's funeral, and he then drank himself to death

Thing I already knew, but was reminded of by @jkirchick “Secret City”: first president to host a same-sex couple overnight in the White House? Ronald Reagan (p 525)

When an appointee came out as gay to Reagan , he replied “So are half my friends - and all of Nancy’s” (526)