Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “And we sat there,” said Harlot. “It’s the only time in all these years that I saw so many brilliant, ambitious, resourceful men—just sitting there. Finally McCone said, ‘Who is this Oswald?’ And there was a World Series silence. The sort you hear when the visiting team has scored eight runs in the first inning.

  “Let us not try to measure the gloom. We could have been bank directors just informed that a time bomb was ticking away in the vault. Everybody’s safety box has to be emptied. But you don’t even know at this point how much you have to hide. I began to think of some of the very worst of our people. Bill Harvey over in Rome. Boardman Hubbard in Paris with AM/LASH. Suppose Fidel produces Cubela? The mind runs amok at such times. Everyone was inhaling everyone else’s ghosts. We were waiting for the little details concerning Oswald to commence belaboring our wits. My God, this man Oswald went to Russia after working at Atsugi Air Base in Japan. Isn’t that where they tested the U-2? Then this Oswald dares to come back from Russia! Who debriefed him? Which one of us has been into him? Does it even matter? Our common peril may be even more embracing than our individual complicity. Cannot, oh, cannot someone do something about Oswald? No one utters the thought aloud. We are too many. We break up our meeting. It has congealed, after all, into silence. We meet all night in twos and threes. Information keeps coming in. Worse and worse. Marina Oswald, the Russian wife—that’s how new it all was, we didn’t say ‘Marina’ but ‘Marina Oswald, the Russian wife’—has an uncle who is a Lieutenant Colonel in the MVD. Then we hear that George de Mohrenschildt, whom some of us happen to know, a most cultivated contract type, has been Oswald’s closest friend in Dallas. My God, George de Mohrenschildt could be earning French money, German money, Cuban money, maybe de Mohrenschildt is earning our money. Who is paying him? Where did Oswald hang his hat? None of us goes home for the weekend. We may be enjoying our last hours at Langley. Then comes Sunday afternoon. The news rings around the corridors. Blessed relief. Dead leaves waltz in the garden. A marvelous hoodlum by the gemlike name of Jack Ruby has just killed Oswald. Stocky Jack Ruby can’t bear the thought of Jacqueline Kennedy’s sufferings at a public trial. We haven’t encountered a man so chivalrous since the War of the Roses. The mood on the Seventh Floor is now like the last reel of a film by Lubitsch. We hardly keep back the twinkles. I’ve always said since: I like Jack Ruby. The fellow who paid his debts. The only matter not settled to my absolute satisfaction is whether it was Trafficante or Marcello or Hoffa or Giancana or Roselli who sent the bill.

  “In any event, we are home free. There will now be mess enough to smudge the record forever. I remember divining the outcome on that very Sunday night. I asked myself: Who has nothing to fear should the real story come out? That is a list to pursue. The Republicans have to be worried: Their right-wing Texas tycoons could be involved. The liberals must be close to primitive fright. Castro, even if he is innocent, cannot speak for all the elements in DGI. Helms has the Mafia to contemplate, plus rogue elephants, plus our malcontents at JM/WAVE. By definition, one cannot account for an enclave. Yes, CIA might have much to lose. So might the Pentagon. What if we discover that the Soviets were steering Oswald? One can’t have a nuclear war just because an Irish arriviste got bumped off by the Reds. And what if it is the anti-Castro Cubans in Miami? A damn good likelihood after all. That will bring us back to the Republicans, to Nixon, the lot. No, not quite the lot. A skilled Vietnamese gunman might be avenging his dead ruler, Diem. The Kennedy gang can’t afford exposure on that one, can they? Corrosion of the legend might work its way down to the martyr’s bier. And then there is the FBI. How can they allow any of these suppositions to be examined? Each one suggests a conspiracy. It is not to Buddha’s interest to advertise to the world that the FBI is singularly incompetent at detecting conspiracies they do not hatch themselves. No, none of this is in the interest of supposedly omniscient, wide-bottom Buddha. Oswald, as the sole killer, is, therefore, in everyone’s best service—KGB, FBI, CIA, DGI, Kennedys, Johnsons, Nixons, Mafia, Miami Cubans, Castro Cubans, even the Goldwater gang. What if a John Bircher did it? I can feel the furor in the veins of every conspirator who ever talked about killing Jack Kennedy. They can hardly trust themselves not to have done it even when they know they didn’t; after all, how can any one of them vouch for all their friends? A broth of disinformation has been on the stove ever since. I knew that we would enter upon a most prestigious investigation that would prove a model of sludge. So, I decided to save myself much untold watching of the pots, and moved right back to serious work where one can make a perceptible dent.”

  Whether Harlot was actually calling upon his powers of detachment that Sunday night sixty hours after the assassination, or summarizing what he had learned in the months that followed, I, in my turn, was not able to summarize the situation. I was mired in the death. If obsession is a species of mourning for all the fears we bury in unhallowed ground—the unhallowed ground, that is, of our psyche—then I was obsessed. The death of Marilyn Monroe would not leave my mind. If, according to my father, Hoffa could conceive of such a crime in order to leave an unstanchable political wound in both Kennedys, then how many people could I name who might be ready to kill Jack in order to ignite a war against Fidel Castro?

  Harlot might have recognized that no pattern can be pulled from such a porridge, but I did not. I lay captive to the velocity of my mind and it raced around the track on many a night. I thought often of Howard Hunt and his deep friendship with Manuel Artime. Hunt had the time, the opportunity—did he have the depth of rage? He might, by way of Artime, have a line into the most violent members of the Brigade. When my mind wore out from asking questions about Hunt, I moved on to brood about Bill Harvey. I went so far as to check on whether he had left Rome on that particular Friday in November. He had not. Then I realized it did not matter. One could run such an operation from Rome. Or could one? And where was Dix Butler? Was he already in Vietnam, or had he stopped over in Dallas? I could not determine that. I also wondered whether Castro, by way of Trafficante, had succeeded in one assassination where we had failed in many. There were hours in those sleepless nights when I could not keep from picturing Oswald and his narrow, tortured, working-class face. Oswald had been down to Mexico City in September. Cal showed me a memo. Headquarters at Langley had cabled Mexico Station for the names of all contacts of the two leading KGB men at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City. Station came back with their response. The taps on the Cuban Embassy and the Russian Embassy produced Oswald’s name and Rolando Cubela’s. Oswald had even made a phone call from the Cuban Embassy to the Soviet Embassy. In a harsh and highly ungrammatical Russian, the man who called himself Oswald had insisted on speaking to “Comrade Kostikov.”

  “That’s dubious,” said Cal. “We know that Oswald spoke Russian well.”

  “And Cubela?”

  “Ah, Cubela. He had talks with Comrade Kostikov. We don’t know what about. I expect he has contacts with everyone.”

  “We’ve dropped him, of course.”

  “Heavens, yes.” Cal shrugged. “In any event, it’s over. The FBI is going to tell us that Oswald acted alone.”

  Had J. Edgar Hoover done it?

  My thoughts did not rest. One day, during the hearings of the Warren Commission, Chief Justice Warren inquired of Allen Dulles, “The FBI and the CIA do employ undercover men who are of terrible character?” And Allen Dulles, in all the bonhomie of a good fellow who can summon up the services of a multitude of street ruffians, replied, “Yes, terribly bad characters.”

  “That has to be one of Allen’s better moments,” remarked Hugh Montague.

  I was at the point where I was ready to believe that Allen Dulles did it. Or Harlot. Or, in the great net of implication, Cal and I might be guilty as well. Thoughts raced. I had not yet approached my first piece of universal wisdom: There are no answers—there are only questions.

  Of course, some questions have to be better than others.

  2

  September
12, 1964

  Dearest Harry,

  Wasn’t it Fidel Castro who said that a revolution must be sealed in blood? I suppose that the equivalent—if on a personal scale—is in the way a married woman will certify her seriousness toward a lover by an act of treachery not necessarily carnal toward her mate. Today I wish to consummate such an act. The contents of this letter are going to offer you some exceptional material about Bill Harvey. This is, indeed, the most privileged stuff Hugh has ever imparted to me, and now that I share it with you, the circle of possession will be limited to Hugh and Harvey, and to you and me—no one else.

  Here, then, is one of Hugh’s special secrets. Four pages of transcript from a conversation he had with Harvey in Berlin. Since you know William the King in the real way of having worked for him, you will have much, doubtless, to recast in your mind, but I felt only the pride of new possession and the emptiness that can accompany such pride. My inner reaction was lamentable. I thought: A year of nagging, and now, what does it matter? I have learned a hard dark secret about that abysmally driven fellow, Bill Harvey. Yet, in truth, I abuse the gift by dismissing it so. I am more than fascinated.

  When I finished the four pages of the transcript (of which there is only one copy, and, I promise you, Hugh took that back from me on the instant I finished reading), I asked him who else had seen these pages, and he then coughed up the startling admission that he had given you a glimpse of the first two sheets more than eight years ago. “Of course,” said Hugh, “the first two pages count for little. The poor boy was half-destroyed with frustration.”

  Well, Harry, I will do my best to restore your ravaged half. Since I do not have the transcript, I will have to summarize what I recall. Right about the top of page three, Hugh mentions to Harvey that he has had a little chat with Bill’s first wife, Libby, and much devolved from that. Do you remember all the fuss about the conked-out car in the rain puddle? Remember? Libby called the FBI because her husband had not come home and she was worried. In the story Harvey gave to the Agency in 1947, he chose to resign from the FBI because Buddha was transferring him to Indianapolis as the precise punishment for sleeping all night in a stalled-out car and never phoning in to Bureau. Well, when Hugh spoke with Libby about all this some nine years later, she was still as bitter as only an ex-wife can be. She never called the Bureau, she said. Why would she? Bill was out every night until 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. Hugh checked her story with his own Bureau source who had access to the logs. Indeed, no phone call was made that morning in 1947 by Libby Harvey. Hugh’s conclusion: Harvey’s story had been a piece of theater designed by Buddha to get King Bill nicely installed in the Agency. Hugh told me that Hoover had managed by various means to slip a dozen of his best men in among us to serve as most special agents, did it neatly in those early days when, as Hugh says, “we were good, sweet, simple, and innocent.” Of them all, however, Harvey was the best. He had been giving Hoover invaluable Agency material for close to ten years.

  At the end of the four-page transcript, you can sense that Harvey is about as reduced as he is going to get. I do remember the following exchange literally.

  “You won’t believe it,” he said to Hugh, “but I really do hate Buddha.”

  “Yes,” Hugh tells him, “J. Edgar Hoover is no good, and you do love us la-de-da assholes, don’t you, even if you have been doing your best to deal Buddha our best cards all these years!”

  “I have more good friends over here than there,” Bill answers.

  “Well, what good double agent doesn’t?” Hugh replies. After which, he absolutely lays it out: “Here is the grim remainder, Bill. I am going to take you at your word: You do like us more than Buddha. So you are going to obtain top input from his special files. I don’t care how you do it. And if J. Edgar ever discovers what you are up to, and turns you back to himself, well, triple agents do go under quickly. I will bring on the giant baboons. Is this claro, hombre?”

  “Claro,” he replies.

  That is the exchange, Harry, to conclude the transcript. Of course, you can guess my first question to Hugh. “Have you,” I asked, “been running Bill ever since?”

  “Ever since my trip to Berlin in 1956. Yes. It was a most successful breakfast. Poor Bill. Living with two faces all these years, he has been obliged to drink for both.”

  As you see, Harry, much food for thought. Treachery gives me the shivers. I have just said farewell to one of my serious married vows. That should keep you for a while, greedy puss.

  Your Kittredge

  3

  FOR A TIME, I WROTE PASSIONATE LETTERS TO KITTREDGE BUT SHE DID NOT respond. Finally, she referred to the Talmud. “Here, Harry, is wisdom for the small part of you that is Jewish. When the old Babylonian Hebrews did not wish to indulge a powerful temptation, they built a fence around their desire. Since one fence is never strong enough to hold the impulse, they built a fence around the fence. Therefore, I do not see you, and I do not encourage love letters. Tell me, rather, what you are learning.”

  Reluctantly, I complied. The letter that follows can serve as a sample.

  September 12, 1965

  Dear Kittredge,

  I note that it is a year to the day since you sent me the special information pertaining to William Harvey, and I have not ceased thinking of him since. In fact, I hear about his doings from Cal, who is dreadfully upset at what a mess Harvey is making of Station in Rome. The more Cal thrives as Helms’ troubleshooter, the more he has to wonder whether Helms, when he becomes our next Director, will assign Cal to be his Deputy. So the power of the escalator has entered my father’s estimates, I fear. Cal is getting as authoritative as he used to be in my boyhood. We clash. I believe he’s furious because I won’t be his assistant any longer but have chosen to work for Hugh. But then, it was impossible for my father and me to keep together after Paris. There is no reason for it, but, do you know?—bad conscience lives between us. And Cal has a sense of doom again these days. I do not know if Harvey is the reason, but he is obsessed with him. You see, Helms, most reluctantly, is getting ready to pull Wild Bill back from Rome and send him out to pasture. Who, however, gets the assignment to tell the man he’s through? Helms wants Cal to go over and do it. “That will cushion the fall,” he tells my father. “One of us ought to be there to guide him down the steps.” Cal, however, is having what I am almost tempted to call a failure of nerve. “I can’t do it,” he has said to me more than once. “I would never forgive Bill Harvey if he came around to tell me that I was through. I would assume the man was gloating, and it might put me into a most untenable state.”

  “All the same,” I said, “if Helms wants you to do it, you can hardly refuse.”

  “Well, I can ask you to be my surrogate. If I send my son, that shows respect.”

  “I could end up in close quarters with Bill.”

  “Rick, I wouldn’t drop this plum on you if I didn’t believe you could carry it off. An uncomfortable hour or two, yes, but you are my son. When the time comes, you may have to do it. Let us hope he resigns at his own behest.”

  We left it at that, but I, for the first time in my life, do not trust my father. I think his fear is career-inspired. I think he is afraid Harvey will make some kind of mess that Boardman Hubbard, future DDP, does not wish to be associated with. I hope I am wrong. I keep hoping, yes, that Bill Harvey will resign, or take a turn for the better. The trouble resides, I think, in the way his job came about. The problem, if you recollect, was that Helms had to spirit Harvey out of McCone’s sight. Only Rome was open. To tempt the palate, Helms gave Harvey an ambitious bill of fare. “Look,” he said, “Rome is now a cream-puff shop. The intelligence we receive is spoon-fed to us by the Italian services. It’s a disgrace. We haven’t turned one KGB man there in ten years. The situation calls for your talents, Bill. Go in there, be yourself, rough as a cob, subtle as a Medici. You can turn that place upside down.”

  Helms, according to Cal, was just firing the guy up so that he wouldn’t have to see the jo
b as a demotion. But Harvey charged in. Now, while it is true that even our best people in Rome Station were hardly more than skilled adjuncts to State’s party circuit, and no real intelligence was being acquired, Harvey did play hell with everybody working there. After all, Rome had become a lovely place for old case officers. One could live at last in the lap of a few amenities. Harvey put them on stake-outs. He kept prodding these suave old hands: “Have you recruited your Russian today?” Of course, no Russians were recruited. For topping on the cake, Harvey violated Roman pride as well. He lobbied hard to get his own Italian in as head of one local intelligence service. When Bill finally managed to place this chosen person, the man was such a figure of ridicule to all his new Italian associates that he turned on Harvey. He actually began to obstruct him. Finally, he informed King Bill that no more American taps were going to be allowed on the phone lines of the Soviet and Eastern European embassies. Bill had stage-managed a disaster. A few episodes like that and Harvey grew famous for being bombed at lunch. He would snore until nudged awake.

  Then he had a heart attack. He recovered. He kept drinking. One morning, behind the closed door of his office, a gun went off. No one moved. No one dared to look in. Who could face the mess that William Harvey’s walls might offer? One brave secretary finally grew brave enough to push open the door. There was Harvey at his desk, cleaning his gun. It had gone off by accident. Harvey winked.

  Kittredge, I think it is getting close. The other day, Cal told me that Helms said, “I would like to take Harvey’s fat head and ram it through a wall.”

  Well, it looks like I am going to be the one to get the job. My chances for coming back alive have to be at least one hundred to one in my favor, but, Lord, that one is a live underdog, isn’t it?

  Love to you and to Christopher,