Mr. Walsh's obituary, in The New York Times, concludes with a compelling quote:
In
his book, Mr. Walsh said that he had found a model for his time as
independent counsel in the Iran-contra case in Ernest Hemingway’s “Old
Man and the Sea,” in which a fisherman labors long and hard to catch a
marlin. When he does, he lashes it to the side of his skiff, only to
have sharks strip the flesh before he gets to shore.
“As the independent counsel, I sometimes felt like the old man,” he wrote. “More often I felt like the marlin.”