Chapter 11 "Coup de Grace" Summary and Analysis

Chapter eleven presents a telephone conversation between William Cooper and Randall Terpstra; the chapter is presented as if it was a transcription from an audio tape but appears to be a semi-fictive re-creation of the conversation as remembered by Cooper. The conversation is dated as having occurred after mid 1989. In the conversation, Terpstra responds to Cooper's public allegations that the resignation of President Nixon had actually been a military coup d'ytat (Cooper erroneously refers to it as a coup de grace). Terpstra claims to be an ex-military man who had received communications in the military instructing him to disregard any orders issued from the White House during the tumultuous period of the Nixon resignation. As the chapter is Cooper's memory of Terpstra's memory of a long-past event, it is necessarily sketchy and not...