Robert Hargrove

I was sitting at Under Sec of Defense John Young’s Tri-Annual Offsite last Friday listening to a presentation and was a bit mind-numb from hearing so many Department of Defense acronyms I didn’t understand.

Sitting next to me was Young’s bright and personable speechwriter who used to work at the White House. She was thumbing through her Blackberry, perhaps also a bit mind numb from the acronyms, thought she confided “I look them up on Google.”

Suddenly she turned to me and showed me a news story on her Blackberry. NBC Washington correspondent Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, had died of a heart attack in the studio.

Like most Americans I was saddened and shocked by this news. Tim Russert was immensely likeable, not only because of the work that he did, but he was a great human being in many respects. Russert had written a book that was a touching tribute to his father, a former garbage man, called “Big Russ and Me.”

It’s fair to say that almost everyone in America admired Russert because his questions to the high and mighty politicians were both tough and fair. At the same time, they lacked any trace of meanness.

I remember one Sunday morning he asked President Bush if the War on Iraq was “a war of choice or a war of necessity,” The President said it was an interesting question and then asked to “elaborate” on it a bit before starting to stammer.

On the way to the airport that day, it hit me. I was brought back to a prediction I had made many years earlier that Tim Russert would die an early death either due to an accident or heart attack.

How did I know this? In my early years, I studied Oriental physiognomy with the great teacher, Michio Kushi. This study allows people to assess an individual’s original constitution, as well as their present biological condition.

Tim Russert had two signs on his face that spelled an early demise. The first was that he was very badly sanpaku—(three whites)–with whites showing between the bottom of his iris and eyelid.

According to my studies, this was a sign of an imbalance of the nervous system, one that could lead to physical and mental disorders even attracting accidents. I must add that no scientific evidence validates this, though JFK was also badly sanpaku.

The second sign was that Russert had a somewhat bulbous, swollen nose, which indicates a weak heart. It was this aspect of Tim Russert’s physiognomy that signaled to me that he would meet the demise that he did, sooner rather than later. I only wish that I had written to him about it.