50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time is ©1995 by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen.

"Michael Scott's father, Winston, had been chief of the CIA's Mexico City station from 1956 until his retirement in 1969, so in 1985 when Scott dropped in at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, he was greeted more cordially than one might expect from the not-entirely-inviting spy agency.

Scott's father, a career secret agent, died in 1971 apparently from complications of a household accident. At the time of his passing he had just put the finishing touches on a memoir of his career in cloak and dagger. He planned a trip to Washington to voluntarily (even enthusiastically) vet the text by his former boss, Director of Central Intelligence Richard "Man Who Kept the Secrets" Helms. But due his demise, th elder Scott's travel plans were cancelled. Within hours after Mrs. Scott wife found her husband's body drooping over the breakfast table, the CIA's legendary and consummately creepy counterintelligence chief James Angleton showed up on the Scott family doorstep in Mexico City, searching for the manuscript.

A curious Michael Scott, by 1985 making a living as a Hollywood producer, wanted to see his father's book. He hoped it would help him better understand his father's mysterious life. An inquiry to the CIA prompted the invitation to Langley. As he told the story to reporter Dick Russell, Scott was introduced to a "high-ranking officer who had obviously read the manuscript" who told him that "they had been forced to delete portions of the manuscript for national security."