Book excerpt: As great battles are often fought on little-known fields, so do great events often focus in the lives of little-known men. Otto Otepka was one such man. He stood at a crossroad of history. In recounting his ordeal, William J. Gill plumbs dark secrets behind the agony of a whole nation. Exhaustively developed from original sources, many of them unpublished or deliberately hidden from public view, here is the sensational record of blundering, deceit, ruthlessness and possibly distorted loyalty, reaching into the high councils of the Kennedy-Johnson administrations: a record that in less than a decade has left America weakened before her enemies. - Jacket flap.