Sometimes a wade, more often a slog, the 449 pages of the McCarrick Report do not tell us much that we did not already know. The Report, however, is a trove of detail. Were this spectacle, rather than life imitating cruel farce, one could safely say the kernels and nuggets and anecdotes with which both the body and the supporting apparatus are peppered are altogether worth the price of admission. Footnote 127 recounts how a KGB agent operating under diplomatic cover at the UN in New York approached McCarrick in the early 1980s and tried to cultivate him. The Federal Bureau of Investigation already had their eyes on the Soviet fellow, and contacted McCarrick to see whether he mightn’t be willing to let himself be cultivated, then relay what he could glean from his conversations with the KGB agent to the FBI? “It is not clear, however, whether McCarrick ultimately accepted the FBI’s proposal,” the Report states, “and no record reflects further contact with the KGB agent.” Some of the details are salacious, such as the boozy evening in a catering hall at which McCarrick – by accounts well in his cups – allegedly pounded the table and declared: “I deserve New York!” then refused to stand for the toast to the evening’s celebres, Bishop John Mortimer Smith (auxiliary of Newark) and Bishop James Thomas McHugh of Camden, whose episcopal consecration anniversaries the party ostensibly gathered to celebrate. Also present were a young cleric – unnamed – and Mgr Dominic Bottino, who witnessed McCarrick move his right hand to grope the young cleric’s “crotch area” as the report states. Bottino says Bishop McHugh noticed the same and they noticed each other noticing the behaviour. “McCarrick,” Bottino observed, “mov[ed] his fingers up and down on [the cleric’s] crotch,” for some time. “[P]lenty of time,” the Report quotes him as saying, “to see what he was doing.” The report says Bottino reported that the young cleric appeared “he was paralyzed,”  eyes “wide open” like “a deer in the headlights.” This story isn’t merely salacious, though. If Uncle Ted wasn’t a double agent, he’d nevertheless picked up some tradecraft. He knew that Bottino that afternoon had driven Bishop McHugh to a brief function in New York at the Holy See’s Permanent Observer mission, where Bottino had met then-Nuncio Renato Martino (later President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and a Cardinal). “Soon after Bishop McHugh and Monsignor Bottino sat down,” the Report states, “McCarrick turned to speak to Bottino, referring to him as the ‘new attaché at the Mission of the Holy See at the United Nations’: