The Obama Identity

by Edward Klein

  “There were dozens of politicians and businessmen with their wives,” she went on. “Everyone was dressed up. All this happened more than thirty years ago, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. Barry was a very quiet and polite boy. He always seemed distant and detached. He didn’t have many friends. Just one—a boy named Badung Sabang. But that day Barry acted very nervous, because the disgusting old creep said he wanted to test him in front of everyone.”

  “Test him? How?” I asked.

  “To see if he had learned his lessons. So the disturbed old creep gathered everyone around in the big living room on prayer mats. There were several visiting imams. And the muTahhir—he’s the man who does the Muslim circumcision—he was preparing his table in the back of the room. The warped old creep made Barry kneel on a prayer mat in front of everyone and answer questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Like, ‘Barry, who is responsible for the spread of imperialism?’”

  “How did he respond?”

  “Barry knew the answer right away. ‘The United States of America is responsible for the spread of imperialism,’ he said.”

  I wanted to shake her hand. “What else did the imam ask him?”

  “He asked, “Barry, what should a good American do about this?’”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Apologize for it.’ All the grown-ups applauded! Several of them praised the deviant old creep for being such a good tutor. The creepazoid and his wife were beaming. So he said, ‘Barry, as the final test please show our guests here how you, as an American, should properly greet a foreigner.’

  “Barry got up from his prayer mat, walked in front of the grown-ups, and slowly bowed—very, very deeply—and held the position for the longest time before standing back up straight. And the debauched old creep said, ‘Barry is the best bower I have ever coached!’

  “At this point the muTahhir took Barry to a table in the back of the room and had him lie on it,” Gema went on. “Everyone gathered around as he pulled Barry’s pants down and did a quick circumcision. He handed the foreskin to the pedophiliac old creep, who said to the group, ‘By this act, we have completed the Covenant with Abraham and we have cleansed Barry of his impure American ideas. We now welcome young Barry Soetero into the ranks of Allah’s children.’ “

  Gema began laughing.

  Vangie asked, “What’s so funny? I don’t see anything funny about that.”

  “As the nefarious old creep was holding up Barry’s foreskin and speaking,” Gema said, “Java, my dog, jumped up and grabbed it and ran off with it. Suddenly, thirty adults were knocking over tables and drinks as my dog ran around with Barry’s foreskin hanging from his mouth.”

  “Did your dog eat the foreskin?” I asked, fascinated.

  “No, my mother-in-law elbowed her way through the crowd, sending people flying in all directions, and tackled Java and pried the foreskin out of his mouth,” Gema said. “The unsavory old creep put it in a jar and labeled it. I think he still keeps it as a trophy in his office.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Did you believe Gema Darmadi about the foreskin?” Sydney Michael Green asked doubtfully the next day. “And how about the imam saving that foreskin all these years in his office?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It isn’t the CIA’s standard operating procedure to rely on a sawed-off piece of the human anatomy.”

  “Well,” Sydney Michael Green said, “there’s only one way to find out.”

  “What’s that?” I automatically distrusted any brilliant ideas of his.

  “Break into the imam’s office and find Barack Obama’s foreskin.”

  “O-kay.”

  I wasn’t eager to follow Sydney Michael Green’s advice about conducting a break-in. And for a good reason. Shortly after I joined the CIA, my father told me that he’d been up to his eyeballs in the botched CIA break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex back in the 1970s. Only the last-minute intervention of his old friend Bill Casey saved The Deuce from being indicted as a Watergate co-conspirator and sent to the Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama.

  “Higgy,” the Deuce had told me, “I learned an important lesson from Watergate and I want to pass it on to you. You can lie and cheat for the CIA—that’s fine. You can ruin other people’s reputations—okey-dokey. You can betray and double-cross your friends—all’s fair in love and war. You can terminate America’s adversaries with extreme prejudice—no sweat. But Higgy, listen to me: never, ever EVER! get involved in some two-bit break-in of an office building in the middle of the night.”

  It crossed my mind that Sydney Michael Green might be setting me up—and that this two-bit break-in in Jakarta could be his way of discrediting me and taking over the Tchaikovsky Circle. Nevertheless, in the dead of night on January 3, 2005, the two of us broke into the top floor of the Wisma Tower, the tallest building in downtown Jakarta.

  My flashlight swept across the marble floor and polished walnut walls until it came to rest on a modern san serif logo:

  INTERNATIONAL ANIMAL RESCUE FOUNDATION

  “Higgy, this way!” Sydney Michael Green whispered.

  I followed him down a corridor adorned with photos of rescued animals until we came to Imam Selatin’s corner office. Inside, floor-to-ceiling windows framed a spectacular view of nighttime Jakarta.

  “Quick, over here!” Sydney Michael Green whispered. “Look!”

  He was standing in front of a huge cabinet made of the same polished walnut wood used in the entrance. The cabinet had twenty-six slots marked by modern san serif letters—one for each letter in the English alphabet. And each of the slots held one or more jars containing foreskins preserved in formaldehyde.

  “Here’s a jar under the letter ‘A’ with a French name—‘Jean-Louis Auteuil,’ “ Sydney Michael Green said. “There’s a German name under ‘B’—‘Hans Bruhl.’ “

  “Look under’ O’ for ‘Obama,’ “ I said.

  “Sydney Michael Green checked and said, Nothing’s under ‘O.’”

  “How about ‘S’ for ‘Soetero’? “

  “Nothing,” he said. “Hey, wait a minute. I see something! There’s a stain.”

  “What kind of stain?” I asked.

  “The kind of stain that a glass leaves on a wood table.”

  “Let me see,” I said.

  And sure enough, there was a stain.

  “Hand me a jar,” I told Sydney Michael Green.

  I placed the jar over the mark in the empty slot for ‘S’.

  “It fits perfectly,” I said. “There was a jar here before. But now it’s missing because somebody has taken it.”

  Sydney Michael Green stepped back and whispered, “Jesus, Higgy, look at this!”

  He was staring at a framed photograph hanging on the wall above the counter. I shone my flashlight on it and saw a color picture of Imam Selatin and Yurik Maligin toasting each other with a vial just like the ones we were searching for. The signed, handwritten caption from Maligin to the Imam, read, “On to the Oval Office!”

  Sidney Michael Green turned to me with a shrewd smile. “It looks like you’ve been topped again.”

  “Drat it!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A week later, I was making French toast and Jimmy Dean sausages for my nine-year-old son, Vier. He was staying with me as per the every-other-weekend custody visitation plan that Taitsie and I had worked out in our separation agreement.

  When the French toast was ready, I called upstairs, “Vier, come on down, breakfast is ready.”

  As I piled the golden pieces of French toast on a chafing dish, a shaft of wintry sunlight fell through the kitchen window of my home on M Street in Georgetown. The old white clapboard house had once belonged to my mother, and when she died, she left it to my sisters and me. But both of them lived abroad—Faith in Neuilly, outside Paris, with her third Saudi husband, and Hope on her never-ending—and
very expensive—obsessive search for the remains of Amelia Earhart. The last I had heard, Hope was encamped on a small atoll near Palau in the South Pacific, along with a hut filled with scuba-diving equipment. I had bought out my sisters’ shares in the family home and made this my base. This was where Taitsie and I had lived until she left me. Some of her clothes were still upstairs in her closet.

  “Breakfast!” I called again.

  Suddenly, Vier flew through the kitchen door and slid halfway across the black-and-white tiled floor. He was wearing a vintage 1950s flowered shirt, which he had bought with his allowance on rustyZipper.com, and his hair was combed in a mop that pointed straight at the ceiling. Two weeks before, he and I had watched an episode of Seinfeld, and this morning, Vier was doing his Cosmo Kramer imitation, complete with a pair of trousers that fell two inches short of his loafers.

  He leaned over the chafing dish and took a melodramatic sniff.

  “French toast and sausages!” he said. “Giddy-up!”

  “Vier,” I said, checking my watch, “we’re going to be late for your art class. Eat your breakfast.”

  Vier shoved a huge piece of French toast into his mouth. As a dollop of maple syrup coursed down his chin, I suppressed the urge to criticize my son’s bad manners. Instead, as a distraction, I clicked on the old thirteen-inch kitchen TV set, and after a few seconds, Katie Couric appeared on the screen. She was interviewing Senator-elect Barack Obama as they walked in front of the Capitol.

  Katie was wearing black high heels and a short skirt cut on the bias to mid-thigh, which showed off her short, stubby legs. Her tight sleeveless white blouse emphasized her substantial bosom. Her hair was dyed blonde and cut pixie short. But Obama’s eyes were focused on one thing—her fleshy upper arms.

  “Dad,” Vier said, “look at her high beams!”

  My son was right: Katie’s erect nipples were clearly visible through her blouse. She was in full swoon over Barack Obama.

  “Senator,” Katie said, “you’ve been quoted as saying that you won’t run for president in 2008. But what if I told you that we in the media need you to save this country? Could we convince you to run?”

  Obama flashed a toothy smile but didn’t say a word.

  “Senator,” Katie pressed on, “there are times in American history when one man comes along and rescues us all. Lincoln did it. FDR did it. And now it’s your turn. Only you can rescue us from the ravages of the greedy Republicans and the crazy, racist conservatives. Only you can rescue my evening news show from its declining Nielsen ratings.”

  Obama was still smiling—and still staring at Katie’s arms. Finally, he spoke up.

  “Katie,” he said, “do you want to know what I really think?”

  “By all means,” she said, leaning forward.

  “Everything’s George W. Bush’s fault. Everything, that is, except your ratings.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  My BlackBerry started vibrating like a Mexican jumping bean, rousing me from a deep sleep.

  For more than two years now, I had been traveling the world searching for the truth about Barack Obama, and in the early morning darkness of yet another hotel room, it took me a moment to orient myself. Where was I? Then I remembered: I was in Chicago’s Ambassador East, where Joe Kennedy had conspired with Sam Giancana to make JFK president of the United States. I fumbled around the bedside table and caught the phone on its fourth ring.

  “Hello,” I croaked, still half asleep.

  “Higgy, you’ve got no business sleeping. You think James Bond sleeps? You think Jack Bauer sleeps? You think the Pink Panther sleeps?”

  There was no mistaking the voice of Vangie Roll’s mother.

  “What time is it?”

  “After midnight,” she said.

  “Elvira, for Christ’s sakes, what do you want at this hour?”

  “Listen, today’s Friday. Tomorrow, Obama’s going to make a formal announcement that he’s running for president. At the Old State Capitol in Springfield, where Abe Lincoln did his thing. Vangie just got a call from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright telling her that he’s going to give the public invocation. He invited Vangie and me as his personal guests. And he asked if you—you being Alfie Douglas, who controls all that CLIT money—if you’d care to come along. Of course, if you think your beauty sleep’s more important….”

  The next day, the Reverend Wright’s chauffeur, Malcolm, picked us up at Vangie’s house in the Hyde Park section on the South Side of Chicago. And three hours later, as Malcolm maneuvered his limo into a reserved parking space near the Old State Capitol Building in Springfield, Illinois, I could hear the chant of the crowd:

  “Obama! Obama! Obama!”

  It was Saturday morning, February 10, 2007, a teeth-chattering seven degrees, and yet nearly twenty thousand people were packed into the town square. There was enough media on hand to cover the Normandy invasion.

  Malcolm and I helped Elvira into her wheelchair. Then the four of us skirted the edge of the crowd and ducked into an elevator that carried us down to an underground command center outfitted with high-tech equipment. All the members of Barack Obama’s brain trust were there: the Reverend Wright; Valerie Jarrett, who was Michelle and Barack Obama’s closest friend; the former Weatherman William Ayres and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn; and Van Jones, who thought that 9/11 was a put-up job by the United States government. Nothing seemed to have changed in all this time. At least I thought nothing had changed until I saw the purplish flush on the Reverend Wright’s face. He was absolutely livid.

  “What’s the matter, pastor?” I asked. “You look like somebody stole the collection plate.”

  “Barack pulled the invitation for me to give the public invocation,” he said. “Fifteen minutes before Shabbos—that’s sundown Friday night—I got a call from Barack. Some pussies on his staff talked him into uninviting me because of the things I’ve been saying.”

  “What things?” Elvira said.

  “Like, racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run,” he replied. “Like, we in this country believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.” He was working himself up, as though he was delivering a pulpit-thumping sermon. “Like, we care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means. Like, God has got to be sick of this shit!”

  “Oh, those things,” Elvira said. “Lordy, I can’t imagine why a brother running for president of the United States would want to distance himself from such cheerful and heartwarming sentiments.”

  Just then Valerie Jarrett approached.

  “Jerry,” she said, putting her arm around the Reverend Wright’s shoulder, “I know how bad you must feel about not being able to give the benediction. But you’ve got to put aside your hurts because frankly things aren’t going well for our boy. Just look at him.”

  Valerie Jarrett pointed through a doorway leading to an adjoining room. There, standing at a replica of the outdoor stage above us, complete with a podium and TelePrompTer, was Senator Barack Obama, practicing his announcement speech. Was it my imagination, or had he grown a beard? A beard just like….

  “I don’t feel any energy coming from him,” Valerie Jarrett told the Reverend Wright. “There’s no spark. He’s remote. An ethereal presence. One minute he’s there, the next he’s not. Jerry, I’m telling you—you’ve got to do something!”

  The Reverend Wright smiled broadly. Finally, something to do. “Okay, I know how to fix this,” he said, ducking into the next room.

  The Reverend Wright stopped Obama in mid-sentence. “Barack, take off that beard!”

  The younger man looked reluctant but gave in. With one swipe, the uncanny resemblance to Abe Lincoln was gone.

  Then the Reverend Wright turned to the floor director. “Sammy,” he said, “start the metronome! And give me a nice slow fifteen beats a minute—one every four seconds.”

  Suddenly, the room was filled with the tick…tick…tick beat of a metrono
me.

  “Barack,” the Reverend said, “on each beat you switch from the left TelePrompTer screen to the right screen. That way you look like you’re not reading but you’re speaking directly to the audience.”

  Obama nodded.

  “Not just to hold an office, but…” Obama read, looking at the left TelePrompTer. Then, on the beat of four, he turned, rather stiffly, and continued from the right TelePrompTer: “… but to gather with you to transform a nation.”

  He read it calmly. Dispassionately. And he followed the beat of the metronome. He said, “Not just to hold an office, but to transform a nation” over and over again—all to the tick… tick…tick beat of the metronome—while he shifted his head left and then right and then back to the left again.

  The metronomic Obama was an improvement over the stiff and stilted Obama. But I could see that the Reverend Wright was still unhappy with the performance.

  “Barack,” Wright said, approaching the podium, “where’s your passion? We’re going to take care of this—this passion problem right now. Sammy,” he called to the floor director, “bring in the backup group!”

  A moment later, three black men dressed in tuxedos and three black women in shiny silver mini-dresses entered the room. They took positions at microphones behind Obama. One of the men looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him.

  “Barack,” the Reverend said, “behind you is Boogie Booker and some backup singers that I brought over from Motown Records to help us out. They’re going to sing the speech as you speak it. That way you’re going to get some lilt in your delivery. Boogie Booker here is going to sing the lead—right along with you—and you just read it.”

  Now I suddenly recalled that Boogie Booker had played Muddy Waters songs at Lee’s Unleaded Blues on the night Vangie and I had gone out drinking with Jeremiah Wright.

  “Okay,” the Reverend said, “let’s take it from the top…on three. And one and two and three….”