Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader

by Michael Brunsfeld

  The interview did not go as the FBI had hoped. Kelley didn’t crack—he even offered to answer questions without his lawyer present and to take another polygraph test. The agents turned him down: if Kelley could fake one lie detector test, he could fake two.

  After questioning him for more than seven hours, the agents gave up. Kelley was stripped of his CIA badge and security clearances, placed on paid administrative leave, and escorted out of CIA headquarters. But he wasn’t arrested or charged with spying—there still wasn’t enough evidence. He spent the next 18 months on leave while the FBI built a case against him. The mole hunters confronted his daughter, also a CIA employee, and told her that her father was a spy. She claimed to know nothing about her father’s spying. Neither did Kelley’s other children when they were confronted, nor did his colleagues and close friends when they were interviewed. No one had suspected a thing. Kelley was that good.

  SHOPPING

  By the spring of 2000 the FBI had compiled a 70-page report recommending that the Justice Department charge Kelley with espionage, which is punishable by death.

  While the Justice Department considered the matter, the FBI expanded its search for evidence against Kelley to the former Soviet Union. They tracked down a retired KGB officer who they thought might have some knowledge of the case and lured him to the United States for a “business meeting.” Then, when the officer arrived in the United States, the FBI made its pitch—it was willing to pay him a fortune in cash if he would reveal the identity of the mole. The ex-KGB officer made a counteroffer: he had the mole’s entire case file in his possession and was willing to sell it outright to the FBI. He added that the file even contained a tape recording of a 1986 telephone conversation of the mole talking to his Russian handlers, so there was no question that the FBI would have the evidence it needed to win a conviction.

  Q: What was the first record album to go gold in the U.S.? A: Oklahoma! in 1958.

  VOICE RECOGNITION

  The FBI eventually agreed to buy the file for $7 million. It also agreed to help the KGB officer and his family to relocate to the United States under assumed names. The money changed hands, and in November 2000 the file slipped out of Russia and arrived at FBI headquarters. There was enough material in it to fill a small suitcase—hundreds of documents, dozens of computer disks, a cassette tape, and an envelope with the words “Don’t Open This” written on it.

  The FBI was convinced it finally had the evidence it needed to convict Brian Kelley on spying charges and to put him to death. All the agents had to do was read the files, listen to the recorded conversation on the tape, and build their case. They put the cassette in a tape recorder, pushed PLAY, and waited to hear Kelley’s voice. Their long campaign to bring him to justice was at an end.

  AN UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT

  Or was it? It quickly became obvious that the voice the FBI heard talking to the KGB agent wasn’t Brian Kelley’s. Once again, the FBI agents were in awe of Kelley’s abilities as a spy. Even when talking to his KGB handlers, he had had the good sense to protect his identity by having an intermediary—a “cut out,” as they’re known—make his call for him.

  One of the FBI agents, Michael Waguespack, recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it. Meanwhile another agent, Bob King, had started reading through some of the spy’s correspondence with his Russian handlers and had come across an unusual expression that sounded familiar: in two different places, the spy quoted World War II General George S. Patton telling his troops, “Let’s get this over with so we can kick the $#%@ out of the purple-pissing Japanese.” Bob King remembered his supervisor in the Russian analytical unit, an agent named Robert Hanssen, repeatedly using the same quote in conversation.

  Who cut the tofu? Soybeans produce more flatulence than any other bean.

  Huh?

  “I think that’s Bob Hanssen,” he told the other agents. Waguespack knew Hanssen, too, and he went back to listen to the tape again. Sure enough—the voice was Robert Hanssen’s.

  OFF THE HOOK

  It took a minute for the mole hunters to realize it (and probably longer than that for them to admit it), but they had been on the trail of the wrong man, an employee of the wrong intelligence agency, for more than three years.

  Brian Kelley wasn’t a master spy at all—he was an innocent man. The searches and electronic surveillance hadn’t found anything because there wasn’t anything to find. He passed the polygraph test because he was telling the truth. He reported the “false flag” sting to his superiors because he had nothing to hide. His jogging map really was a jogging map. The “dry cleaning” at Niagara Falls? He was there on official CIA business and the mole hunters tailing him happened to lose him in traffic. Shopping at the same mall as the SVR? A coincidence—everybody shops somewhere.

  With his time in the Air Force and the CIA, Kelley had served his country with honor and distinction for 38 years; yet all he had to show for it was a 70-page FBI report to the Department of Justice recommending that he be tried for espionage and executed.

  BAD LUCK, GOOD LUCK

  What are the odds that a retiring KGB officer would have taken Robert Hanssen’s file with him when he retired, and that the FBI would have been successful in tracking him down? Or that they would have been willing to cough up $7 million for the file? To this day, Kelley, his family, and his friends all wonder what would have become of him had the FBI been unable to get (or unwilling to pay for) Hanssen’s KGB file.

  Now that the FBI had Hanssen’s file, how would they catch this elusive master of espionage? Part III of the story is on page 459.

  Some air fresheners contain numbing agents, which anesthetize the nose.

  ANGELS & HONEY TRAPS

  Here’s some more spy lingo to practice before you make your next brush pass.

  • Confidential: The classification for secret documents whose disclosure would result in “damage” to U.S. national security. If disclosure would result in “serious damage,” it’s classified Secret. If disclosure would result in “exceptionally grave damage,” it’s Top Secret.

  • Angel: Member of an enemy intelligence service.

  • Talent spotter: Someone on the lookout for foreign nationals who might be recruited as spies.

  • Nightcrawler: A talent spotter who hangs out in bars, strip clubs, or other seedy places looking for military or government employees who can be plied with booze, drugs, sex, or blackmailed into becoming spies.

  • The Firm: The CIA; also known as the Company.

  • Blowback: False information that is planted in the foreign news media in the hope that it will blow back and be reported as legitimate news in the United States.

  • Honey trap: Using sex to entrap an existing spy or to blackmail someone into becoming a spy.

  • Brush pass/contact pass: Passing information to or from a spy as you brush past him on the street or in a crowd.

  • Walk in: Someone who becomes a spy by walking into a foreign embassy or similar post and volunteering his services.

  • Raven: A male agent who uses sex to entrap females into becoming spies—a spy gigolo.

  • Blind date: When an intelligence officer meets with his spy at a time and place of the spy’s choosing. Blind dates are dangerous because the spy could be setting a trap.

  • Turn: To cause an agent to become a double agent, i.e., betray her own spy agency and begin working for another.

  • Re-doubled agent: A double agent who’s been caught and forced to feed misleading information to the enemy.

  Pigbird: A baby pelican eats about 150 pounds of fish in its first three months.

  BOOMERANG!

  Okay, let’s throw this history of the boomerang out there and see where it goes…OW!

  GET BACK

  It ranks right up there with the kangaroo and the koala as being a quintessential Australian icon: the simple and fascinating device known as the boomerang. Believed by aviation experts to be the earliest heavier-than-air flying devi
ce made by humans, it has been part of Australian Aboriginal culture for thousands of years. Its invention may very well have been an accident.

  Archaeological evidence suggests that Australian Aboriginals used “throwing sticks” for hunting at least as early as 15,000 years ago. They were long, thin, bladelike weapons specifically designed to fly as far and as straight as possible. So how did they end up with one that returned to the thrower? One theory is that some ancient hunter made a throwing stick that was shorter and lighter than usual and from a piece of wood with a pronounced curve in it, features that caused it to fly in a circular path back toward the point of origin. That made it relatively useless as a weapon, being difficult to throw accurately and too light to do serious damage to an animal. So why are they still around? Probably because they were simply fun to throw and catch. Whatever the reason, the boomerang was invented in southeastern Australia at least 10,000 years ago, and over the centuries became an integral part of aboriginal cultures throughout the southern part of the continent.

  EARLY AEROSPACE ENGINEERS

  What makes a boomerang return to its thrower? The laws of aerodynamics—applied sideways. A boomerang, with its V-shape, is basically two small wings joined together. They are shaped like airplane wings, with one flat side and one curved side. On an airplane the curved side is the top of the wing. As it moves through the air, the laws of aerodynamics cause air pressure to build up on the flat side, creating lift that pushes up on the bottom of the wing. The faster the wing moves through the air, the more lift it generates.

  Can ewe believe this? The first dice were made from sheep ankle bones.

  Because a boomerang spins like a propeller while it flies forward, at any given moment one of the two wings is moving in the direction of the flight. That means it’s moving through the air faster than the other wing and, therefore, creating more lift. Since a boomerang is thrown to fly vertically, rather than horizontally like an airplane, the lift pushes it to the side rather than up. It keeps pushing as it continues to fly, sending it on a curved trajectory which—if you know how to throw it correctly—will send it all the way back to you.

  BOOMERANG FACTS

  • Throwing sticks weren’t unique to Australia—ancient examples have been found all around the world. Several were even discovered in the tomb of King Tut. Evidence shows, however, that only in Australia was one developed that actually returned to the thrower.

  • There were more than 500 languages spoken by different tribal groups in Australia when Europeans arrived, and there were many different names for the returning throwing stick. Boomerang comes from a word in the Dharuk language of the Turuwal people, from the area around what is now Sydney.

  • Joe Timbery, an Aboriginal designer, thrower, and boomerang champion, was world-renowned among boomerang fans. In 1954 he even demonstrated his skills for Queen Elizabeth. Among his feats that day: having 10 boomerangs in the air simultaneously, and catching every one.

  • In the 1960s boomerangs found their way into the world of competitive sports. Every two years, international teams compete for the Boomerang World Cup. (2004 winner: Germany.)

  • Manual Schultz of Switzerland holds the world record for the longest throw with a full return: 780 feet.

  • In 1993 John Gorski of Avon, Ohio, threw a boomerang that caught a thermal updraft—and flew up to an elevation of 600 feet. It stayed aloft for 17 minutes…before Gorski caught it again.

  • Traditional warning to new boomerangers: “Remember—you are the target!”

  The village of Josefsberg, Italy, is in complete shadow 91 days of the year.

  BRUSHSTROKES

  Painters don’t always paint with paints; sometimes they paint with words.

  “When I judge art, I put my painting next to a God-made object, like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.”

  —Marc Chagall

  “Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.”

  —Rembrandt

  “There was a reviewer who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was.”

  —Jackson Pollock

  “Painting is stronger than I am. It can make me do whatever it wants.”

  —Pablo Picasso

  “Painting is one thing but art is another. You can teach an elephant to paint, but you can’t teach it to be an artist.”

  —Warren Criswell

  “I paint because I need to. I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.”

  —Frida Kahlo

  “I shut my eyes in order to see.”

  —Paul Gauguin

  “People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.”

  —Claude Monet

  “I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway.”

  —Francis Bacon

  “Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and color, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions.”

  —Paul Cézanne

  “I hate flowers—I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.”

  —Georgia O’Keeffe

  “Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.”

  —Henri Matisse

  “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”

  —Edgar Degas

  “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

  —Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Take our word for it: It takes a Twinkie about 45 seconds to explode in the microwave.

  ANIMALS IN THE NEWS

  Some news stories that will make you go wild.

  PET PROJECT

  “A Chinese man pretending to be a hunchback tried to smuggle his pet turtle on to a plane. Wu, who is in his 60s, strapped the turtle to his back before boarding the plane to Chongqing. He got through security but was then stopped by a guard who thought his hump looked odd. A quick search uncovered an eight-inch diameter turtle weighing about 11 pounds. Wu, who was flying home after eight years in Guangzhou, said he knew he wasn’t allowed to take live animals on board but was very attached to his turtle. Finally, he changed planes and checked the pet as baggage.”

  —Ananova

  JUST THE FAX

  “A kitten picked the wrong place to relieve herself when she peed on a fax machine, sparking a fire in her Japanese owner’s house. Investigators concluded that the blaze was caused by a spark generated when the cat urine soaked the machine’s electrical printing mechanism. The fire damaged the kitchen and living room before it was put out by the homeowner, who was treated for mild smoke inhalation, said Masahito Oyabu, a fireman at the Nagata fire station in central Kobe. ‘If you have a cat or a dog,’ added Oyabu, ‘be careful where they urinate.’”

  —Reuters

  RUN AWAY!

  “Firemen in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk fled a burning sauna in panic after mistaking a three-meter boa constrictor for a fire hose, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. The reptile, named Yasha by its owner, had succumbed to smoke and lost consciousness on the floor before the emergency workers arrived to tackle the blaze. A member of the startled fire crew eventually heeded pleas by the sauna staff to save the snake and dragged it to safety.”

  —Mail & Guardian (U.K.)

  In Ventura County, California, it’s illegal for cats or dogs to mate without a permit.

  BIRDIE

  “Two storks in Germany are in something of a muddle, having stolen a mass of golf balls from a course, and filled their nest with them. The pair of bird-brains have now built two nests in the middle of the green in order to house their expanding collection. It is thought that they are collecting the balls because they think the little white spheres are eggs, and are trying to hatch them. Bird expert Georg Fiedler said their choice of location is nothing sh
ort of a ‘biological sensation,’ because usually storks nest exclusively in trees and buildings. ‘Between 1894 and 1997,’ he said, ‘only 16 stork couples have ever been reported to have had their nests on the ground.’”

  —New Telegraph (U.K.)

  WEIRDY WOODPECKER

  “Car owners in Sullivan, New York, are covering their mirrors in an attempt to outsmart a territorial woodpecker who apparently believes his reflection is an enemy. Tim Taylor, owner of Thruway Auto Glass, said he replaced 30 smashed mirrors last year and 18 this year, all from cars of people who live in this area east of Syracuse. ‘People come in pretty mad. One guy’s been here three times already because he keeps forgetting to cover the mirrors,’ Taylor said. Anne Miller has had two mirrors on her Pontiac Grand Prix smashed and watched the bird attack her neighbor’s Malibu. ‘I told him to shoo,’ she said. ‘But instead of flying off, he walked across the windshield and did the passenger mirror. I was flabbergasted.’”

  —The Post-Standard

  * * *

  AS THE WORM TURNS

  Most Canadians are probably unaware of it, but according to scientists, there are virtually no native earthworms in Canada. There once were, but the last ice age, during which nearly all of Canada was covered by ice sheets and which ended approximately 14,000 years ago, wiped them out. They never recovered. When Europeans settled Canada, the soils of imported plants and the hooves of animals carried European earthworms, which, with no competition, soon took over the country’s soil.

  More blonde hair dye is sold in Dallas, Texas, than any other U.S. city. (Insert blonde joke here.)

  HAIR IN CANADA…

  Hair’s the news from Canada. (Remember: you heard it hair first.)

  MONSTER HAIR

  Nine people from Teslin, Yukon Territory, reported seeing “a large hairy man” in July 2005. Chucka Choumant and Trent Smarch, two men who saw the creature, said it was more than nine feet tall and completely covered in hair. They believed it to be the legendary Sasquatch and pointed to some evidence it left behind: a tuft of reddish-brown hair they found in some branches. The hair was sent to a conservation officer in Whitehorse where, they hoped, DNA testing would determine just what the creature was. The results came back a few weeks later. It was bison hair.