A Colossal Wreck

by Alexander Cockburn

  It was under these circumstances that I had to consider the application for a visa for Basil Murray, son of Professor Gilbert Murray, whose family and connections were luminaries of the British liberal academic and political world. I was astonished, and more than a little suspicious, when Basil, in making his application, explained that having hitherto lived the life of a roustabout at Oxford and layabout in London, he had suddenly seen the light and wished to dedicate himself to the cause of the Republic. Specifically, he wanted to give radio talks from Valencia, where the government was now established.

  Knowing and liking Basil, but still not quite convinced of the strength of his new resolutions, I discussed his application with the Foreign Minister, who thought that I was mad even to consider rejecting the son of so distinguished a figure in Britain who was as well the cousin of the British Foreign Secretary. (This last was untrue, a detail invented by Basil to help in obtaining his visa.)

  Basil came to Valencia, and with much sweat and dedication produced several excellent broadcasts. Then he suddenly fell in love with a girl of whom one may say that had she had the words “I am a Nazi spy” printed on her hat, that could hardly have made her position clearer than it was. I reasoned with Basil, but found him besotted with love and convinced that, in some bigoted way, I was deliberately thinking ill of this splendid creature.

  Just as my arguments ran finally into a blind alley, the girl herself suddenly quit the Republic for Berlin in the company of a highranking officer of the International Brigade who proved also to be an agent of the enemy. Although I was naturally careful not to belabor Basil with I-told-you-sos, he fell into a deep melancholy both at the loss of the loved one and the disclosure of her political vileness.

  Soon after, wandering bitterly disconsolate along the quays of Valencia’s harbor, he saw a tiny street menagerie of the kind that in those days was a common form of popular entertainment in Spain. The little group included an ape. And this ape, Basil said, was the first living creature that—since the defection of the Nazi agent—had looked at him with friendly sympathy. He bought the ape and took it with him to the Victoria Hotel, which was the hotel housing all visiting VIPs.

  The next I knew, I received a call from the management of the Victoria, who said furiously that they had already strained themselves to the limit by putting up all the foreign visitors I had recommended, and that now, by God, my latest protégé was demanding a room for an ape. After I had pointed out that there were apes enough already living in the hotel, so that one more would hardly be noticed, it was agreed that Basil be moved to a room with a large bathroom, in which the ape might be accommodated.

  This arrangement worked well enough for a matter of forty-eight hours. Then Basil, still disconsolate despite the friendly eyes of the ape, drank heavily and fell asleep naked on his bed in the fierce humid heat of a Valencia afternoon. He had locked the ape in the bathroom, but the ingenious and friendly animal became bored with this isolation and longed for the company of its new master. Somehow it picked the lock of the bathroom door and came into the bedroom looking for a game or frolic. Finding the new master disappointingly unresponsive, the ape made vigorous efforts to rouse him, biting him over and over again and finally in frustration biting through his jugular vein.

  Apart from my personal regret at the loss of my old acquaintance, I was compelled to see that the situation would be politically damaging. One could surmise at once what a hostile British press would make of the news that a brilliant young Englishman of distinguished family had sought to work for the Red Republic, and had, within a very short time, been bitten to death by an ape. It was possible quickly to announce that Basil had died of pneumonia as a result of the treacherous Valencia climate.

  It was also arranged that the British government should send a light cruiser or frigate from its Mediterranean fleet for the purpose of carrying Basil back to Britain. A small cortege of suitable officials from the Republican Foreign Office accompanied the remains to the quayside. It was only when the remains were being moved to the cutter for transfer onto the frigate that a member of the cortege noticed that they had been joined by the ape. It sprang into the stern sheets of the cutter. Faithfully, it followed Basil up the companionway. It appeared on the spotless deck and there, in a gesture suitable for solemn occasions (learned, no doubt, from the owner of the menagerie), it raised its fist in the Red Front salute.

  A British warrant officer—having doubtless been warned of the dangerous and even bestial character of the Reds and of the necessity for vigilance while the ship was in a Red harbor—reacted swiftly, drew a pistol and shot the ape dead. Its body fell overboard and disappeared into the Mediterranean. Basil, I believe, had a fine funeral in England, and the episode was closed.

  But not really. For weeks afterwards I was pestered by the menagerie owner demanding compensation and heart-balm for his grief at the demise of the ape. He said that when he had sold it to Basil he had not at all envisaged the possibility that the creature would be brutally murdered by the forces of British imperialism, shooting down that helpless animal as ruthlessly as they had shot down innumerable people throughout the Empire.

  In addition, the British diplomatic mission to Republican Spain immediately spread the story that we, the Republicans, meaning in this case me, had murdered Basil—poison in the wine, one of them said. Anarchists and others suspicious of the coalition government somehow spread a story that through the government’s carelessness or connivance, a British agent had been introduced, and then killed when on the verge of damaging exposure. Enemies of the Murray family, and those disgusted that Basil should have worked for the Republic, spread in England the story that Basil had had improper relations with the ape. They even, I found later, substituted a bear.

  As late as the 1950s a close and loving relative of Basil’s was delighted to hear from me the true story, which confirmed the genuineness of Basil’s determination to do something constructive with his life—however grotesque the actual outcome.

  April 15

  As one who regards Jerry Ford as our greatest President (least time served, least damage done, husband of Betty, plus Stevens as his contribution to the Supreme Court), I’d always imagined the man from Grand Rapids would never be surpassed in sheer slowness of thought.

  But I think Bush has Ford beat. Had he ever made a mistake, the reporter asked at that White House press conference. The President’s face remained composed, masking the turmoil and terror raging within, as neuro-electronic networks went into gridlock. It should have been easy for him. Broad avenues of homely humility beckoned him on. “John, no man can stand before his Creator as I do each day and say he is without error …” Reagan would have hit the ball out of the park. But the President froze. He said he’d have to think it over.

  August 10

  No alien penetration, or treachery of double agents, have ever done nearly as much damage to the CIA as the infighting consequent upon the arrival of each new director, charged by his White House master with cleaning house and settling accounts with the bad guys installed by the previous White House incumbent.

  Bush’s new director, former Republican Florida Rep. Porter Goss and his team of enforcers, now rampage through the corridors of CIA HQ at Langley. Goss was once an undercover CIA officer so there’s probably a personal edge to his mission of revenge, as he strikes back at the dolts who nixed his expense accounts or poured scorn on his heroic endeavors in the field.

  But Goss’s most pressing task is to exact retribution for the stories emanating from the CIA in the months before the election suggesting that the Agency’s measured assessments of the supposed WMD presence in Iraq were perverted by the war faction headed by (Vice) President Cheney.

  Goss and his hit team have acted swiftly. In early November the CIA’s number 2, John McLaughlin, resigned, followed days later by the Agency’s top man on the clandestine side, Stephen Kappes, and his number 2, Michael Sulick. And, no surprise, into retirement goes Mr. “Anonymous,�
� Michael Scheuer, leader of the CIA unit hunting Osama bin Laden. I’m with Goss on that one. Scheuer probably spent most of each day hunting down his next book advance and kibbitizing about royalties from Imperial Hubris with his true “Controls” at Brassey’s Inc., owned by shadowy Books International.

  So Goss will exact vengeance, spill blood, leak to favored journalists, and deliver Bush daily intelligence briefings tailored to meet the expectations of his patron.

  Of course there’s a portentous uproar and wringing of pious hands as the cry goes up that the abilities of the Agency to collect and analyze useful intelligence are being compromised by what Jason Vest in the Nation was pleased to call “unparalleled” political partisanship. “We need a director,” cries Jay Rockefeller, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, “who is not only knowledgeable and capable, but unquestionably independent.”

  There’s nothing new in all this. Permit me to take you on a brisk tour of CIA directors. Before Goss we had George Tenet, a former Congressional staffer so eager to please Bush that he uttered the imperishable words “slam dunk” about the supposed ease of making a case for Saddam’s WMD.

  Tenet, whose political agility is advertised in the fact that he was one of the longer serving DCIs, supplanted John Deutch, an MIT prof who divided his brief sojourn as Director between downloads of the Agency’s darkest secrets onto his personal laptop, business ventures with a revolving doorman from DoD, William Perry, and excursions to town meetings in Los Angeles, claiming to black audiences that the CIA had no role in funneling cocaine into the nation’s ghettoes. Among the few secret files Deutch apparently failed to download onto his laptop were materials later excavated by the CIA’s own inspector general, Fred Hitz, establishing CIA complicity in the cocaine trade.

  Deutch’s predecessor was Jim Woolsey, unusual for someone in the Clinton-Gore milieu in having no conspicuous record of marijuana consumption, hence a security clearance, thus qualifying him as the nation’s top spy. Clinton and Gore mostly liked Woolsey for political reasons, because he had street cred with the neocons (who used to sail under the flag of “Jackson Democrats”). Woolsey later became a prime lobbyist for attacking Iraq.

  DCI before Woolsey was Robert Gates, a cat torturer/drowner in his youth, creature of Bush Sr.’s administration, in trouble for lying to Congress; before him William Webster, brought in as air freshener after William Casey, one of the most consummate scoundrels ever to run any government agency in the entire history of the United States. Casey was Reagan’s campaign bag man, then given the CIA with the prime function of misrepresenting the threat posed by the Soviet Union and, nearer at hand, Nicaragua.

  Casey dislodged Jimmy Carter’s man, Admiral Stansfield Turner, a relatively honest fellow. Turner, roasted for firing many in the CIA “old guard” of that era, took over as CIA chief from Bush Sr., who, like JFK, sanctioned a Murder Inc. in the Caribbean, and who wilted under pressure from the Jackson Democrats, aka the Military Industrial Complex. It was Bush who appointed the notorious “Team B” to contradict previous in-house CIA analyses suggesting the Soviet threat was not as fearsome as that depicted on the cartoon (aka editorial) page of the Wall Street Journal.

  Bush’s predecessor as DCI was William Colby, a CIA careerman mostly famous for running the Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, battling with the CIA’s crazed counter-intelligence czar, James Angleton, and testifying with undue frankness in the Church congressional hearings into the CIA. In retirement Colby continued his career as a conspiracy buff, probing the suicide of Clinton’s counsel Vince Foster for his newsletter. Colby finally stepped into his canoe on Maryland’s eastern shore after a dinner of clams and white wine and turned up drowned a few days later.

  Colby replaced James Schlesinger who ran the Agency for a few months in the midst of the Watergate scandal. Ray McGovern, a twenty-seven-year career analyst with the CIA, now retired, remembers how he and his Agency colleagues were taken aback when Schlesinger announced on arrival, “I am here to see that you guys don’t screw Richard Nixon!” To underscore his point, McGovern recalls, Schlesinger “told us he would be reporting directly to White House political adviser Bob Haldeman and not to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.”

  We’ll stop with Schlesinger, but you get the idea. There’s nothing new about the “political” appointment of Porter Goss, who at least has the agreeable distinction of owning an organic farm in Virginia where tiny donkeys run herd alongside hairy sheep from Central Asia, and chickens lay green eggs, thus reduplicating the Agency’s most expensive op ever, the Afghan caper, where the CIA supervised the mujahedeen at a cost of $3.5 billion, and launched Osama bin Laden on his chosen path.

  Most intelligence is worthless, with the scant truthful stuff rapidly deep-sixed. Whatever makes its way onto the desks of presidents or congressional overseers is 100 percent “political.” Anyone who wants to find out what’s happening in the world would be better advised to ask a taxi driver.

  September 1

  Thanksgiving brought us the one-month anniversary of Bill O’Reilly’s disclosure on his show that “to protect my family” he had settled with Ms. Andrea Mackris and her lawyer Benedict Morelli, thus cutting off what millions of O’Reilly haters had hoped would be a protracted season of public humiliation for Fox’s apex bully. The settlement established that all parties agreed there had been no wrongdoing and as an earnest of good faith O’Reilly (if you believe the New York Daily News) had paid anywhere from $2 million to $10 million to Mackris—nice money if true, though not as nice as the $60 million Morelli had originally suggested to O’Reilly as a satisfactorily round figure.

  But there remains the mystery of the transmuted loofa, about which I had been hoping for some pleasing courtroom exchanges. Let’s pick up the thread in the court document lodged in Nassau County, NJ, by Morelli on behalf of Mackris.

  O’Reilly calls Mackris, a thirty-three-year-old innocent, working as a producer on the O’Reilly show. She, poor lamb, says she thought it was about business and told him she’d call him right back. At this point, we surmise Ms. Mackris may have activated a recording device and with the tape rolling, dialed the boss, who promptly got down to business, launching into what the complaint harshly stigmatizes as “a lewd and lascivious, unsolicited and disturbing sexually graphic talk,” about how he imagines he would handle personal relations with Ms. Mackris if they were in the West Indies.

  First he’d get two wines into Ms. Mackris, “maybe intravenously.” Then, “You would basically be in the shower and then I would come in and I’d join you and you would have your back to me and I would take the little loofa thing …”

  A loofa! This is no Motel 6, it’s not the Ritz either, where loofas would scarcely be “little,” though admittedly size doesn’t come up in the definition of loofa offered by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000:

  SYLLABICATION: loo·fa

  VARIANT FORMS: or loo·fah also luf·fa

  NOUN:

  1. Any of several Old World tropical vines of the genus Luffa, having cylindrical fruit with a fibrous, spongelike interior.

  2. The dried, fibrous part of the loofa fruit, used as a washing sponge or as a filter. Also called dishcloth gourd, vegetable sponge.

  ETYMOLOGY: Arabic loof singulative form of loofa.

  And what is O’Reilly, so strong, so masterful, planning to do with this thing of Arab origin? “I would take the little loofa thing and kinda’ soap your back and rub it all over you, get you to relax, hot water … and um … You know, you’d feel the tension drain out of you and um you still would be with your back to me then I would kinda’ put my arms—it’s one of those mitts, those loofa mitts you know, so I got my hands in it, and I would put it around front, kinda’ rub your tummy with it and then with my other hand I would start to massage your boobs, get your nipples really hard … ’cuz I like that and you have really spectacular boobs.”

  At this point, in the
document filed in the court house in Nassau County, which would indeed appear to be a transcript right down to the ums, there’s an ellipse.

  “… So anyway I’d be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda kissing your neck from behind … and then the other hand with the falafel thing …”

  NOUN: 1. Ground spiced chickpeas shaped into balls and fried.

  2. A sandwich filled with such a mixture.

  What happened to the loofa? Maybe Abe Foxman called him on the other line to warn about “going Arab on us.” And what is O’Reilly planning to do with the falafel?

  “… I would take the other hand with the falafel thing [sic] and I’d put it on your pussy, but you’d have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business.”

  According to the courtroom document available for inspection on Smoking Gun the quality of the conversation goes downhill from there on in. It may be that O’Reilly’s tour of Arab commodities was proleptic, as he began to shift gears through the vowel sounds.

  For an interesting discussion of the processes involved I recommend Sebastiano Timpanaro’s philological investigation, published in translation years ago by Verso, entitled The Freudian Slip. From loofa to falafel to what? Let Ms. Mackris and her lawyer tell it their way. O’Reilly “suggested he would perform oral sex” on Ms. Mackris and she would “perform fellatio on his ‘big cock’ but not complete the act,” maybe to conserve his energies for further deployment of the little loofa or the falafel, though the lifespan of a falafel in a shower is surely limited in duration. After the exciting fa-fel-fell monologue and what to Ms. Mackris’s “repulsed” ear sounded like the hum of a vibrator and acoustic intimations of satisfactory climax, O’Reilly launched into a discussion concerning how good he was during a recent appearance on The Today Show.