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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As legions of journalists can attest, interviewing Ed Hale is an experience like no other.

His cell phone rings incessantly. Or it beeps with a fresh text or email from business connections, attorneys, friends or family members. If you’re talking to him in his Rosedale office, his long-time secretary, Cindy Smith, might buzz to tell him about a call waiting on his land-line or a package that recently arrived. Or she’ll whisk silently into the room with budget figures for him to examine or papers to sign.

All of it commands his immediate attention, because Hale would rather drive a nail through his eyeball than miss a timely message that could lead to his next business deal or the next great adventure in his life.

Nevertheless, he was unfailingly gracious during these interruptions and extremely generous with his time throughout this project.

All told, we talked for nearly 75 hours about his life. We talked about everything from his modest upbringing in eastern Baltimore County, the ups and downs of his incredible business career and his hitherto-unrevealed service with the Central Intelligence Agency to the rocky periods of his two marriages, his relationships with his three children and the bevy of beautiful women he’d dated over the years.

We talked in restaurants, fast-food joints, bars and coffee shops. We talked at his home in Miller’s Island, with its spectacular views of the Back River, Middle River and Chesapeake Bay. We talked in a rain-soaked duck blind as he hunted with friends on his 186-acre farm in Talbot County.

(As a biographer, you haven’t lived until you’ve conducted an interview with shotguns blasting around you, hunters whooping deliriously, the smell of spent shells wafting through the air and waterfowl dropping from the skies like doomed warplanes in battle.)

We talked on a crowded MARC train returning to Baltimore from Washington D.C., where we had met with his former CIA handler, David Miller, and Steve Kappes, the former Deputy Director of the agency, to go over what we could include in the book about Ed’s years of service there.

We talked in his luxury automobiles as we zipped along the streets of Highlandtown, where he was born, and Sparrow’s Point and Edgemere, where he grew up. We talked outside Pot Spring House, the historic Timonium mansion in which he once lived, and on walking tours of Canton, where his vision helped transform a bleak landscape of toxic waste sites, coal ash and rotting piers into a vibrant slice of Baltimore waterfront.

We talked on several occasions in the Baltimore Blast locker room, once after a disheartening loss and right before coach Danny Kelly delivered a brilliantly profane and hilarious (well, if you weren’t a player) dressing-down of his team that threatened to peel paint off the walls and leave little old ladies in the hallway in shock.

This does not include the hundreds and hundreds of texts we exchanged from April of 2013 until the fall of 2014.

(A personal favorite: on a morning when I was whining about some family obligation I was dreading, Ed texted to let me know his day wasn’t shaping up so great, either: “Fucking beautiful! I’m goin’ to my tax accountant and then to get my prostate checked. Yeah, baby!!!”

(Thus confirming that for a biographer, there is no such thing as too much information.)

For all the candor Ed showed, all the cooperation he provided, all the access he gave to family members and friends, and all the contact information he provided about those who played a significant role in his life, both good and bad, I am deeply grateful.

Others who cheerfully offered their assistance and gave of their time in the making of this book include:

Bill Atkinson, Kevin Atticks, Marty Bass, Karen Bokram, Barry Bondroff, John Buren, Edie Brown, Dick Crane, Larry Crane, Scott Dorsey, Dr. James D’Orta, George Duncan, Mildred Edling, John Eisenberg, Salvatore “Soccer Sam” Fantuzzo, Ashley Elizabeth Flamholz, Jim Gast, Alexandra Hale, Bonnie Fleck, Barry Hale, Buddy Harrison, Kevin Healey, Henry Hopkins, Jennifer Gilbert, Carol Hale, Phil Jackman, Ken Jones, Melvin and Ruth Kabik, James Kallstrom, Michele Kearns, Blast coach Danny Kelly, Dan Kelly, Jim Kraft, Harvey Kroll, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, Drew Larkin, O. James Lighthizer, Harry Lipsitz, George Mantakos, Dickie McGee, Bob Meehan, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Judge Joe Murphy, Kevin O’Connor, Kevin O’Keefe, Dottie O’Neill, Gov. Martin O’Malley, Joe Poiter, Ty Pruit, Rep. C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the all-knowing Cindy Smith, Department of Transportation secretary James Smith, Shale Stiller, Douglas Schmidt, Tony Tranchitella, Sheila Thacker, Mark Wasserman, Mike Watson, Gregg Wilhelm and John Williams.

My thanks and eternal gratitude to all.

Kevin Cowherd

September 2014

Cockeysville, Md.