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When told of the enthusiastic dedication that the George Washington Memorial Parkway rangers have brought to their search – and will bring to his interview – Kohn smiles an ornery grin that stretches all the way from one bat-like ear to the other. “I’d believe about one-third of what they’re told,” he says, mimicking their subjects: “ ‘I got that secret out of him!’ ”

This is Kohn’s personal style of informed irreverence – the style that carries his memoirs, that dances in his eyes as he tells his favorite stories, that his native humility barely keeps in check. It’s also the style that defines what he facetiously calls his “Educational Newsletter,” which he circulates to a close group of friends and family. In recent missives, his irreverence is informed by post-Fort Hunt assignments, which included testing the success of the Chinese so-called “brainwashing” of American soldiers, coordinating spies in Korea, and researching the reliability of information obtained by forced interrogation.

He called his most recent offering, which went out July 27, a “Special Patriotic Newsletter,” with the sub headline “4 God and Country and Cold Cash.”

“Mr. George W. Bush has just announced a brand new set of rules for the interrogation of men who have been captured alive and put in prison. The CIA is not to torture them in the future. That would be wrong. They may be coaxed, tricked, threatened, frightened, manipulated and forced to answer questions (even if they may not know the answers, and must make one up) but keep it secret. And the taking of photographs of any prisoners being made ‘uncomfortable’ is strictly forbidden.”

He had this to write in the aftermath of media reports this spring about the British sailors captured by the Iranians: “We do not know what prompted Iran’s restraint. Whether it comes from that county’s strong religious beliefs, their strict moral codes, their civil laws or their culture. But it appears that the Evil Axis Iranians did not have anyone urinating on their Christian Bible, have them strip and wear a dog leash or have any of them ‘water-boarded.’”

Sitting at his computer sorting through online news sites, the old intelligence officer is still watching and listening, with his sense of humor intact. His irreverence speaks to a strategy he deployed as a sanity-protecting practice throughout his long military career. His daughter, who is among those who look forward to receiving his newsletter every four or five weeks, gently chides her father: “Remember what you told me?” she says. “ ‘The best survival technique is a sense of humor’?”

“No,” Kohn says. But then he smiles knowingly, and kisses his daughter on the head moments later as she walks past him through the living room.