The Hollow Men of Capitol Hill — Robert L. Skidmore

President Walter Coopersmith selects Richard Thatcher, a professional, as his Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In private, Coopersmith confides his dissatisfaction with Director James Stearne and his plan to replace him with Thatcher. This puts Thatcher in a very uncomfortable position. At Thatcher's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thatcher loses his temper and clashes with Senator Judy Gonzales. By nightfall, Gonzales is dead, the first victim of a serial killer. The President ignores the media's sensational linkage of Thatcher's committee appearance and Gonzales' murder and pushes Thatcher's confirmation through the Senate. Before the Bureau's investigators can identify the murderer, he strikes again, killing Senator Rashid Jones, one of Gonzales' closest collaborators in her futile campaign to force campaign finance reform on the Congress. Thatcher, chafing under the bureaucratic strictures that require him to delegate responsibility for the expanding investigation, arranges to have Barbara Collins, a long time friend and colleague, to be assigned to the case. Collins' assignment provides members of the Club, a loose clique of senior Bureau officers who resent Thatcher's elevation to command, the opportunity to challenge him. Barbara Collins and lead investigator Orson Dodrill concentrate their investigation on Gonzales's office. The Governor of California selects Gonzales' chief administrative assistant, Charles Stevens, to serve out Gonzales' term. Barbara identifies Stevens as the man with a motive, the one who benefited most from Gonzales' demise. Stevens frustrates the Bureau investigators, but not for long; he soon falls as the killer's third victim. The remaining member of the Gonzales triad, Senator Rae Campbell-Holden who shares the campaign reform issue, turns to the media. Fearing for her own safety, attributing nefarious political motives to the opposition, she demands that the Washington establishmen