by Edward Klein
What a shame, I thought. The file contained four years’ worth of work by a team of crack CIA agents whom I had dispatched all over the world. Resting there on McCain’s lap was political dynamite—the truth about Barack Obama’s birth; the secret of his Muslim faith; the real story behind his relationship with “God-damn America” Reverend Jeremiah Wright and “let’s blow up the Pentagon” William Ayres; and Obama’s plan to weaken our country’s military-industrial complex.
Any of the material, if made public, would automatically sink Obama and guarantee that this little man with the short arms and beady eyes sitting across the room from me in Sedona, Arizona, would become the forty-fourth President of the United States. I couldn’t be prouder of my stealthy undercover talents. But after just ten minutes, McCain slammed the cover shut, stood up, and handed the file back to me.
“I don’t ever want to see this again,” he snarled. “Or hear about it, or what’s in it. This meeting never happened. My staff will take you back to Phoenix. Good-bye, Mr. Higginbothem.”
And with that, McCain was gone.
After I caught my breath, I looked out the window and watched McCain double-timing down the front path of his bungalow. Waiting for him at the curb was the woman I had seen earlier walking around with an upswept hair-do and a Remington shotgun—Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin. She was introducing McCain to her pregnant daughter, Bristol, and a young man with a redneck mullet hairstyle—short at the front and sides and long in the back.
I couldn’t hear what McCain was saying, but I saw him motion to Palin to follow him to a small U-Haul truck parked a few yards away. A McCain aide opened the back door of the truck, lowered a ramp, and wheeled out two large garment racks with a wardrobe of expensive women’s clothing. Palin examined the clothes, jumped up and down with delight, threw her arms around McCain, and gave him a big hug.
I didn’t feel so charitably minded. All my good work, dismissed with a flick of his hand. The lot of a spy was truly a thankless one.
As I headed back to Phoenix, I stared out the window at Scenic Route 89A, and went over in my mind the meeting with McCain. Okay, I thought, he doesn’t want to use the information I’ve collected about Obama. Okay, I thought, he doesn’t want the American people to know what the real Obama is like. Well, there was nothing surprising about that. After all, McCain always had an odd sense of honor about attacking Democrats. He had no qualms whatsoever about savaging his fellow Republicans, but for some reason he refused to lower the boom on Democrats….
Then it hit me.
Why worry about John McCain? I had a higher calling. It was my duty as a career intelligence officer to tell the American people all I had learned about Barack Obama. Whether they knew it or not, their taxes had paid for this investigation, and they might very well have to pay in a different kind of way for electing Obama as their next president. I owed it to the American people to reveal The Obama Identity.
CHAPTER ONE
I was born with a silver pistol in my mouth.
As a baby, I spent countless hours sucking the barrel of that Beretta, until I wore off its silver plate and started chipping my milk teeth on its hard edges and my nanny took the gun away. Some amateur psychiatrists might regard this pistol as my secret “Rosebud.” Strangely, my oral fixation with the Beretta didn’t leave me with a taste for Italian firearms. As an adult, I prefer the semi-automatic German Glock, even though it doesn’t have the fruity flavor of the Beretta.
The pistol of my contented childhood belonged to my father, the mastermind of the CIA coup that returned the Shah of Iran to the Peacock Throne and toppled Iran’s democratically elected government. Actually, my father’s real claim to fame in the CIA came after he engineered the 1953 Iranian coup. He was something of a clotheshorse (a trait I inherited), and he imported a group of Bulgarian tailors to design a new uniform for the Shah to wear on state occasions. They came up with a design for a long white double-breasted worsted jacket with oversized gold-encrusted epaulets. I thought the uniform made the Shah look like a character in the Marx Brother’s movie Duck Soup.
But the Shah loved his new uniform. He pinned a large gold nameplate to its right breast—it read Shahanshah (King of Kings)—and he found an excuse to wear it on every possible occasion. He even asked the Bulgarians to make a wet-suit version of the uniform, replete with waterproof gold-encrusted epaulets, so he could wear it while waterskiing in Biarritz with his second wife, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari, who was known, according to her nameplate, as the Shahanbabu.
As proud as my father was of his achievements on the sartorial front, he was even prouder of his creation of SAVAK, the Shah’s dreaded domestic intelligence service. He recruited all of the original members of SAVAK and trained them to torture the Shah’s opponents by pulling out their nails, shoving electric cattle prods up their rectums, and dripping acid into their nostrils. I learned how to do Pilates on the wooden torture rack in the basement of the Sa’adabaad Palace. And it was there, in that dank basement, that one of the torturers taught me the hand-to-hand combat techniques of Krav Maga, the lethal Israeli martial art, with which you can disarm an opponent with a single swift blow.
All of this naturally made my father, Theodore J. Higginbothem II, a hero in the CIA. He was known affectionately as The Deuce, which was a kind of CIA code, because “The Deuce” could mean either “the second,” or “the devil,” as in “what the deuce are you trying to do?” Devil or not, I was proud to be named Theodore J. Higginbothem III, even if people ignored the three sticks after my name. They call me Higgy.
My father was away a lot, polishing his CIA cover as a successful trader in Middle East crude-oil futures. And although I lived under the same roof as my mother in the Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan, the ancient capital of Iran, I rarely saw her. She preferred to stay in bed all day, guzzling gin, which was illegal in Muslim Iran, but which my father stored in huge quantities to keep her out of his hair. At times I would listen at the bedroom door. She rhapsodized so often about Gordon that for years I thought I had a missing brother.
During the first dozen or so years of my life I was brought up and cared for by a staff of bowing, scraping, sniveling servants in Chehel Sotoun Palace. I guess that’s where I developed my lifelong desire to be treated in a princely fashion.
The palace was known as “The Pavilion of Forty Columns,” because the twenty slender wooden columns supporting its entrance were reflected in the water of a large lily pond, which appeared to double their number. I learned to add, subtract, and multiply at the knee of my tutor, Pourushaspa Spitama, a bent and twisted old man with a bad lisp and a pair of bug eyes that looked off in opposite directions.
Spitama (whom I secretly nicknamed “Spit-on-Me”) taught me to speak Farsi, the language of Iran. As part of his teachings, he introduced me to the esoteric philosophy of Iran’s most famous ancient prophet and philosopher, Zarathustra, a name I could never pronounce properly.
“Dear little Higgy,” Spit-on-Me would lisp, spraying spittle on my black velvet suit and white collar, “please pay attention! Zarathustra teaches us that the purpose of humankind is to apply constructive thoughts, words, and deeds to life. If we see something that appears to be unfortunate or evil, it’s only because of our lack of constructive thoughts.”
Old Spit-on-Me had a beautiful young wife by the name of Maidhyoimangha and by the time I was thirteen years old, I began to have constructive thoughts about her. Naturally, I did not give free rein to these prohibited thoughts. But Maidhyoimangha seemed able to read my mind, for one day she took me by the hand and led me to the reflecting pond of Chehel Sotoun Palace, and there she stripped off her shalwar kameeze, a long tunic and pants, and threw me into the pond and jumped in after me. This odd cleansing ritual happened on several occasions, and things were getting pretty constructive when one day Spit-on-Me suddenly appeared and found us rutting under the water lilies.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Higgy?” my father demanded to
know when he confronted me with my offense.
“Dad, Spit-on-Me—I mean, Mr. Spitama—says that Sara Truth teaches us that when something appears to be wrong, it’s only because of our lack of constructive thoughts.”
“Higgy,” my father said, “Spit-on-Me has been selling you a bill of Zarathustrian goods.”
“Wow, you really know how to pronounce that guy’s name,” I said, impressed.
“Shut up!” he said. “Higgy, I know what your natural bent is. You want to dominate. It’s natural, son. The world is full of people struggling against each other for one thing—power. That’s how democracy got started. Democracy gives the poor, weak, sick and pathetic mob the illusion that they have power and that they’re running things. Whereas in fact the mob has to be ruled by wealthy, strong, healthy and powerful men. Men like me! Men who make up the CIA!”
“But Dad…”
“Don’t interrupt!” he raved. “Do you know what we call the CIA among ourselves when we’re kicking back with a few brews? We call it Control-Influence-Authority.”
“But Dad….”
Yet he was only warming up. “Higgy, consider yourself like Adam after the Fall. Like Yahweh, I’m expelling you from this Garden of Eden-like place and I’m sending you where they’ll teach you how to rule the mob. How to exert control, influence, and authority. Pack your bags, Higgy. I’m shipping you off to the only prep school worth a lick of salt. You’re going to Groton!”
CHAPTER TWO
I was always big for my age, and no sooner had I arrived on Groton’s four-hundred-acre campus in Massachusetts than I was selected from a group of new boys to participate in the school’s annual boxing tournament. On the chosen day, I climbed into the boxing ring and found myself staring across sixteen feet of blue canvas at my opponent, a glowering six-foot-five Goliath by the name of Brooks Biddle Peabody VIII. Brooks was the senior prefect, as the school’s head boy was called, and he ruled the mob of three hundred Grotonians with the kind of authority that would have made my father proud.
Before the bell for the first round sounded, my roommate, Fatty Dickens, who was serving as my corner man, smeared some Vaseline over my eyebrows and whispered into my ear.
“Higgy,” he said, “use your jab and stay as far away from this guy as possible. He’s dangerous.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“In last year’s boxing tournament, Brooks picked a kid to fight him and the kid refused. Said he had a bad knee. But the truth was he was scared shitless to get into the ring with Brooks. So the night before the fight, Brooks went to the kid’s room, dragged him out of bed, and said, ‘Your knee hurts? Which knee?’ When the kid hesitated, Brooks said, ‘I’ll make sure they both hurt!’ And he stomped on both knees, sending the kid to Mass General.”
Just then the bell rang. Brooks bolted out of his corner and swung a haymaker at my head. I ducked. But then Brooks, who was twice my size, shoved me into a neutral corner and began working my body with both fists like I was a big slab of cookie dough.
He didn’t know I was trained by the best. Recalling my close-combat Krav Maga, I slipped to the side and slapped both of my gloves simultaneously against Brooks’ ears.
In an instant, his arms dropped to his sides. Like a giant redwood, he slowly toppled forward and crashed face down on the canvas. In less than twenty seconds, I had won the fight.
I heard an upper classman mutter, “The little prick must be another CIA son.”
The next day was Founder’s Day, and at the closing ceremony, Brooks Biddle Peabody VIII pulled me aside.
“Listen, dipshit,” he said, “you got in a lucky punch yesterday. But as a new boy, you still have to do what I order you.”
“Sure, Brooks,” I said. “No hard feelings.”
“Not much,” he said with a vengeful sneer. “Listen, I want you to put on your trench coat with nothing underneath. Not even your underwear. Just your birthday suit. Then I want you to go up to Mrs. Piddlehonor, the Headmaster’s wife and when you have her full attention, say your name and introduce yourself—and flash her. Understand?”
“Whatever you say, Brooks,” I said. “I’m a firm believer in doing the constructive thing.”
An hour later, in front of the whole school, including the masters and their wives and dozens of distinguished alumni, I did as Brooks had instructed me. I walked up to Mrs. Piddlehonor and said, “Hi, I’m Theodore J. Higginbothem III and I am here to introduce myself.” I whipped open my trench coat and exposed my considerable endowments.
A look of febrile interest entered her eyes, but a deafening silence fell over the Founder’s Day crowd. Then I heard the angry voice of Mr. Piddlehonor, the Headmaster.
“Higginbothem,” he bellowed, “you’re expelled!”
CHAPTER THREE
Things were looking pretty grim for me until The Deuce came to the rescue. The CIA was packed to the gills with Old Grotonians, and The Deuce called in his chits with these big fish. He called his modus operandi “fish and chits.”
The big fish phoned Mr. Piddlehonor, the indignant Headmaster, and told him to get over it.
“That’s all fine and good,” the Headmaster said, “but what about my wife?”
“It’s unfortunate that she was submitted to such a public embarrassment,” the Old Grotonian said.
“She wasn’t embarrassed,” the Headmaster said. “She was confused.”
“Confused?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Piddlehonor, “she was confused about how one of my young, lower-form students could be better endowed than I am!”
I was readmitted and allowed to stay at Groton for the next four years. During that time I paid no visits—no unsolicited visits, that is—to the Headmaster’s house. And after graduation, I followed in The Deuce’s footsteps once again and enrolled at Harvard University.
At the time, the Vietnam War was still Topic A on campus. There was revolution in the streets, kids were strung out on drugs, and many people thought America was coming apart at the seams. A few years before I arrived at Harvard, anti-war students occupied the main administration hall, and Nathan Pusey, the starched-shirt president of the university, called in the police. Many students were injured in the ensuing melee, and in response, the students called a protest strike that paralyzed the university. Shortly thereafter, Nathan Pusey announced his retirement.
With Pusey out of the way, members of the Harvard Board of Overseers, the university’s senior governing board, instituted a new regime. They even gave it an official name. They called it the Harvard Anti-Everything Movement.
To start with, they abolished Parents Weekend, announcing “Parents are the root cause of fascist America.” Then the Overseers replaced the annual Columbus Day celebration with “Native American Day,” promulgating, “White men didn’t discover this nation; they raped it.” Then they canceled the football season, decreeing: “Violence begets violence.” They filled the Harvard Stadium field with bushy marijuana plants and gave each student “pot stamps,” which they could exchange for free marijuana cigarettes. And, of course, they expressly banned the CIA from recruiting on campus.
One day, The Deuce took me for drinks at his old club, The Porcellian, the most exclusive, blue-blooded club at Harvard. He was wearing his little golden pig pin, which symbolized “The Porc,” as the club was nicknamed.
“You know, Higgy,” he told me over gin martinis, “your grandfather, Theodore J. Higginbothem Sr., joined The Porc in 1915—the year before he joined the Lafayette Escadrille as a fighter pilot. He was shot down and killed on the German-French border with his Harvard pal and fellow Porcellian, Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of former President Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Dad, you’ve told me this story a hundred times,” I said.
“That’s why I want you join this club,” The Deuce said. “Every man at Harvard wants to get into Porcellian. If you want to become the kind of man I want you to be, you’ve got to be a Porc.”
“What
kind of man is that, Dad?”
“A porc! A pig!” he said. “A greedy, voracious, insatiable sonofabitch. A glutton for power. An acquisitive, covetous, avaricious bastard!” His shouting and wild gesticulations were drawing the eye of everyone in the place, and he caught himself. In a quieter voice he went on, “Remember what I told you when you were a kid in Iran? The world is full of evil people struggling against each other for one thing—power. The mob has to be ruled by wealthy, strong, healthy and powerful men. That’s why I joined the Porcellian. And that’s why I joined the CIA.”
That was the first time The Deuce admitted to me that he worked for the CIA. Sitting in that musty old clubhouse on
Massachusetts Avenue, under the club’s motto, Dum vivimus
vivamus (WHILE WE LIVE, LET’S LIVE), he proceeded to tell me everything about his espionage work—past and present.
After our third martini, he said in a somewhat muzzy voice:
“I suppose you’ve figured out by now why I’ve been telling you all this.”
“You want me to join the CIA,” I said.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I want you to do what we call ‘light work’ on the Harvard campus. Don’t ask me any questions now. A man is going to call you. His name is Ralph. Follow his instructions.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Ralph” called a week later. He asked me to meet him the following night, at two o’clock in the morning, on the northern outskirts of the Fresh Pond Reservoir, in the parking lot of a nursing home called the Neville Center. He’d be driving a two-door Oldsmobile Cutlass, he informed me.
At the appointed hour, I arrived on my twelve-speed bike and found Ralph’s Olds parked behind a dumpster in a remote corner of the nursing home lot. It was an overcast night with a light drizzle, pitch-black outside, and when I climbed into the car, I noticed that its overhead reading lamp didn’t automatically go on. I couldn’t make out Ralph’s features, but I had the distinct impression that he was too old to be doing this kind of clandestine work.
