Maggie came home from the office early. She needed time alone to clear her mind. She knew John would be out most of day, having gone fishing on the peninsula with a friend. Detective Jones (who preferred the title to his given name despite the fact that he had retired years ago) had become one of his few confidants. John enjoyed calling him “Myron” just to goad him. The detective had three great loves: Shakespeare, his wife and fishing.
So once every two weeks John and the good detective crossed the sound to find their way to some obscure location that the detective uncovered from old fishing magazines. They hardly ever seemed to catch any fish judging from the fact that John would pick up the catch of the day at Fisherman’s Market on his way home. Their expeditions were not really about fishing. They were an opportunity to discuss the affairs of the world and Maggie knew exactly what the topic was today.
His plans were on hold. He would not take action until Maggie gave her final word. She was aware of this and sometimes wished it was not so. It made them seem like a married couple. They had made a choice not to marry though it did not reflect their commitment to one another. Marriage was an institution that preserved the order of a patriarchal society. It did not matter how the vows were altered, the act itself was a cultural and legal claim of possession that they did not wish to sanctify.
They were both financially secure so they needed no legal guarantees and had no desire for societal approval. Their love did not require a formal bond. They were more than married; they were soul mates. Yes, it is a phrase that strikes the ear with an awkward clang yet there were no other words that better defined what they were to each other. It was a distinct distance from the values of their parents and that was as it should be. Having gone to great lengths not to define their relationship, they had defined it in a way few of their friends or family members could understand yet they embraced it with their love. They responded to each other’s needs and desires in a way that required little thought or planning. It evolved as they did – as unique beings in a world gone mad.
Paramount in their relationship was the need for individual expression. They maintained two residences, one geared to John’s need for solitude on the rocky coast of Vancouver Island, the other geared to Maggie’s need for social interaction atop a high rise overlooking Puget Sound.
Depending on his mood and the status of his projects, John would spend days or even weeks alone on the island where the waves ran high, where the winds whipped across the sound and where the kingfishers and gulls were a constant reminder of nature’s power. It was a simple three-room cabin made of old weathered logs. The cabin satisfied his need for solitude far from the voices of media, technology and modern life. The wind and the sea spoke to him in a language he could understand. If not for his social consciousness, his obsessive need for a cause to benefit all of humankind, he might have been content to live a quiet life in the mystic wilderness.
Maggie also loved the sound and the wind and the sea but she was by nature a social creature. She thrived on the challenges that only humans could provide. She possessed a gift for understanding other points of view. She drew people in, gained their trust, formed friendships and alliances and gathered influence. She was loved by those knew her well and liked by those who knew her only casually.
Maggie’s place was in the heart of the city. She was most at home in the comfort of their spacious suite overlooking the sound. It was clean and stylish with straight lines and prominent works of art featuring an eclectic view from Edward Hopper’s modern American realism to Van Gogh’s abstractions. Maggie’s support of the art community was central to her identity. To her there was nothing more natural and fulfilling that living in an artistic environment. To John it was a little like living in a museum. He loved art as much as Maggie did but he had a problem with order. If not for Maggie and the intoxicating view of the sound and, on a clear day, the mountains of Olympus, this was not a place he would choose to live for any length of time. It was however a good balance to the natural chaos that sometimes overwhelmed him at the cabin.
Maggie was drawn to order. She was as constant as the sun and forgiving as the earth. Where John’s was scattered, her mind was geared to organizing, seeking out patterns and using them to optimize function and efficiency. Her aesthetic sense reflected order from works of art to the natural beauty of sunset on the northern Pacific. John preferred the anarchy of the unexpected, the jazz of Coltrane to Louie Armstrong, Picasso to Monet, Burroughs to Shakespeare, and Bukowski to Byron. The terrible beauty of a violent storm was worth a thousand calm sunsets.
They shared a love of jazz. It was a part of Maggie that enabled her to understand her man beneath the skin. His moods were as wild and unpredictable as the music that captured him. When he soared he was the mercurial eagle riding the winds of unbounded imagination and when he dove he dove deep like Dante on his descent to the lowest level of hell.
Maggie grew to understand his mood swings, his eccentricities and his retreats into isolation. She gave him the time he needed before she reached out to pull him back from the depths. To anyone else it might have been the burden that would break them apart but Maggie understood that it was a part of him. When he was giving he gave far more than he took. He respected her needs as she respected his. It was not a sacrifice. It was the natural flow of their lives together. It was a unique relationship that operated on a level most cannot begin to comprehend. They were blessed.
Maggie was reading in the living room when John arrived. He discarded his fishing gear in the laundry room. It was early evening. He tossed her a greeting on his way to cleaning up. She smiled and wrinkled her nose at the smell of fresh cod wrapped in brown paper, which he discarded on the kitchen counter. He took a little extra time in the bathroom, sensing that something was amiss and wondering what it might be.
She handed him a glass of wine and asked how his trip had gone.
“Great, Maggie. What’s on your mind?”
She could count on him to be direct. It was an acquired trait for her sake. Maggie was direct and honest to a fault.
She held a printed copy of his latest chronicle on the web. It was an impassioned attack on the two-party system in the name of the founding fathers and a summons to an independent movement.
“I don’t know what you plan to do. I don’t know if anything can be done but I do know that you don’t address a problem unless you’re prepared to act on it. So what’s your plan?”
“There is no plan.”
“Are you waiting on me?”
“We’re partners, Maggie. I’d like you to be a part of this but we’re moving ahead with you or without you.”
“Then there is a plan.”
“More like an idea.”
Maggie watched him sit in a chair opposite her as she tossed it around in her mind. A storm was approaching and they could see the workings of a strong wind outside their windows. Normally John would comment on the nature of climate change brought on by global warming. For a time she thought it would become his new cause but that was before the last election. Now everything was politics and everything from business to baseball was cast in political terms.
“I’m sorry but I think you’re being a little disingenuous. I sense that you’re waiting for something and I thought it might be me. Have you consulted anyone?”
“Yes.”
“And they convinced you that I should run for office?”
“That was my idea.”
“Do you have other options?”
John walked over to the windows where he stared at a dark sky over the dark waters of the sound. The sound seemed to awaken at night, waves crashing on rocky shores, reminding us that the earth was still a force to be reckoned in this technologically crazed world, a world that too often forgot its dependency on the forces of nature.
“Another storm.”
She joined him at the windows as the first bolt of lightning struck with a shiver of rolling thunder in its wake. She cradled him from behind and took comfort.
“Are you ready to hear this?”
“I know you, John. I could no more stop you from doing what you intend to do than you could stop yourself. But there’s one thing I think you should know from the beginning. It’s not the founding fathers that concern you so much as it is your own father.”
His father had been something of a hopeless idealist. Hopeless because he had never acted beyond voting or choosing not to vote. Hopeless because he never believed that anything could be done.
John remembered an occasion when his father had concluded a familiar rant on the plight of the working class and the failures of democracy with the question: How can any one person make a difference in this world? His mother replied: One step at a time.
“Well, Maggie, we can’t do much about our parents but maybe we can do something about the world.”
“What does Myron say?”
“The same thing everyone else says: It’s impossible. Then we talked.”
“You’ve consulted experts?”
“Pundits, consultants, operatives, advisers and gurus. They all say the same thing: I’m certifiable.”
“I’ve known that for a long time.”
“I’m about to confirm it.”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
“The goal is the utter and absolute destruction of the two-party system.”
A clap of thunder rumbled through the walls as if to punctuate his pronouncement. It was undeniable that these violent storms were becoming more frequent and all of Seattle (if not the world) was becoming a harder and colder place. People on the streets were harsher. Clients were more cynical. Clerks and waiters were less friendly. Even those in her circle of friends were less patient and less thoughtful. Was it the weather? Was there an epidemic of ill will and foreboding? Or was it the cold, relentless winds of conservative politics? The politics of privilege and exploitation had widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Had it spilled over in the form of resentment on both sides of the gap?
“You are certifiable.”
“I know.”
“Everyone says it’s impossible but you don’t believe them.”
“Yes. No.”
“What do you believe?”
He walked over to the fireplace where he turned a knob that switched on artificial flames. No one responsible burned wood anymore unless they were poor or hadn’t heard the news. Burning wood added deadly toxins to an atmosphere already filled with industrial waste. He missed the flames of a real fire but these would do.
“I believe in wine and music.”
She joined him on the sofa where she saw the forces of destiny at work on his face. It was a constant struggle for John, a battle he felt compelled to fight though its conclusion was always the same. She came to understand that both the struggle and its effect were equally important to his sense of purpose.
“I’ve been talking to the wrong people, Maggie. They know the numbers but they lack a sense of imagination. I should have been talking to jazz musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, poets and dreamers. If you can imagine it, it can be done.”
She held back the urge to comment. It was a process that would unfold on its own time. She knew already there was no turning back. It was his cause and it would become hers. It would surround and dominate their lives. She settled in his arms, flames dancing and a storm raging outside their windows.
“What will it take?”
“A miracle. An alignment of the stars, a million acts of faith, a convergence of events, and a desperate plan carefully orchestrated against all odds … a miracle. What could be simpler?”
They kissed and kissed again. Lightning and thunder like a thousand angry drums, rain descending like waterfalls, their bodies pulled closer and he realized that Maggie would travel with him once more. He was not alone.
She pressed her lips against his and felt the passion of the cause, the power of renewal, the anticipation of battle against unbeatable forces and the irrational sense that somehow they would prevail or at least they would survive to fight again. She drew him in and he followed to a place where no worries or rational thoughts exist. He went inside where there was no storm, no lightning or thunder, no sheets of rain and no howling winds of change.
There was only Maggie. Maggie and John.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
CRY FATHER: Chapter Four: The Candidate
The candidate was impatient. This was supposed to be a publicity tour but the media had failed to show. As a first year congressman he had exerted some measure of independence and now he was paying the price. The Democratic Party abandoned him. In so doing they sent a message to all who wished to enter electoral politics: There is no place in the party for anyone who is not a team player. The party leaders gave him one last chance to play ball but when he failed to make amends they cut him loose.
Bob Johnson of Colorado’s seventh district chose to carry on. He was seeking a second term despite the party’s notice that they would actively support his opponent in the primary. He could not afford to squander time or money on a tour that would only be covered by his own home movies on public access television. After two weeks on the stump he was tired and ready to pack it in.
Yet here he was outside an old Anasazi pueblo where his senior advisor and the only man in politics he had ever fully trusted was trying to convince him that he should invest another hour in visiting the Navaho elders gathered in a cave of ancient rock paintings to honor their distinguished visitor. These were Indians for god’s sake. They didn’t even vote. For a moment he suspected his old friend was having him on but the expression on the old timer’s face conveyed an importance beyond what reason would allow.
Gardner McMahon, a short balding redheaded Irish American with an infectious smile and a story for every occasion, was a seasoned veteran in the game of politics and he rarely joked when it came to business. His integrity was unchallenged and he was hardly ever wrong. Of all the congressman’s former advisors and consultants, he alone chose to stay after the party’s declaration.
He explained: “In all my live I have known princes and kings, saints and scientists, poets and priests. In all that time I have met but two or three extraordinary people. I believe you are one of them, my friend, and another sits at a fire circle inside that cave. Believe me when I tell you it is a rare honor to be invited to her circle. Don’t disappoint me.”
So the honorable Robert Johnson, first term congressman from Colorado, walked down a red rock path bordered by tall stone walls toward the light of a distant fire and the chant of Navaho elders to receive their sacred blessing. He was beckoned to his place in the circle as a pipe was passed and his gaze came to rest on the elder woman directly across from him. Her dark probing eyes seem to question his very soul. Her expression seemed contorted, pushing forward, etching deep lines upon her face.
Congressman Johnson had not known such scrutiny since his great grandmother, a Cherokee spirit guide, had spoken to him of many things he did not understand. He was only a child and it was the day of her passing. This elderly woman, the tribe’s spiritual leader, possessed his great grandmother’s eyes and they struck him dumb.
The smell of sweet grass infused the air with mystery and the dancing light of the flames revealed in staggered motion the drawings of hands no longer present on the rich red rock walls. In signs, symbols and renderings the history of the Navaho and the tribes from which they descended were revealed on these walls.
“It is a good day for pilgrimage,” the elder said. “It is a holy day.”
It was in fact the anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre – an event as horrific as Wounded Knee. A priest turned military commander led his Colorado volunteers to a peaceful camp of Cheyenne where they slaughtered without warning men, women and children as if they were rabid dogs.
A quarter Cherokee and a quarter Navaho, Johnson was aware of native history. His native blood dominated his physical features but his skin color was light. He often reflected that it was the latter feature that enabled him to succeed in a society still dominated by whites. A dark skinned Indian would find too many doors closed to him. Johnson could walk in both worlds. He was not raised in Indian culture but he knew the suffering of the native tribes and carried their sorrow within him.
“It is the day of ending and the day of beginning,” the old woman said. “It is the day we honor the past and dedicate ourselves to the future. It is the day we plow the old crops under and plant new seeds.”
The elders began chanting in their native tongue, swaying as willows in a gentle breeze. The visitor soon joined them though he knew nothing of the language or the ritual in which he was engaged. His interest in his native ancestry had waned in recent years. He had lived the life of a white man, raised by liberal well-intentioned white people who thought it best that their adopted child know only one culture under one flag of loyalty and one version of the truth.
As he chanted the dancing flames took on human form transporting him in time and space to the place where dreams and reality merged. He saw his blood parents giving him up for adoption. His father, half Cherokee, was afflicted with the wind disease. He could not remain in one place. He wandered without direction like a man without roots, without tribe, family or history. He was a thief and a drunk, spending as much time in jail as out. His heart was heavy and clouded but he meant well. He always meant well but his wandering nature was a disease he could not overcome.
His mother, half Navaho, was also addicted to the white man’s firewater. Her heart was true but her sorrows ran too deep, too buried in her soul for her to conquer them. She had lost three children, two in childbirth, one in childhood, and she feared the Great Spirit would take her only surviving child if she did not give him away.
He saw the circumstances of their poverty, felt their hopelessness, and heard their prayers that their only son would find happiness and the means to return to the people to help. They prayed he would neither forsake nor forget the blood that fed his soul.
The elders in the sacred fire circle rejoiced that their lost son had come home. They did not seem to know or believe that he was only a politician on a publicity tour. To them he was a pilgrim and a man who held the promise of redemption. He was a man who could walk in two worlds.
Bob Johnson of Colorado’s seventh district chose to carry on. He was seeking a second term despite the party’s notice that they would actively support his opponent in the primary. He could not afford to squander time or money on a tour that would only be covered by his own home movies on public access television. After two weeks on the stump he was tired and ready to pack it in.
Yet here he was outside an old Anasazi pueblo where his senior advisor and the only man in politics he had ever fully trusted was trying to convince him that he should invest another hour in visiting the Navaho elders gathered in a cave of ancient rock paintings to honor their distinguished visitor. These were Indians for god’s sake. They didn’t even vote. For a moment he suspected his old friend was having him on but the expression on the old timer’s face conveyed an importance beyond what reason would allow.
Gardner McMahon, a short balding redheaded Irish American with an infectious smile and a story for every occasion, was a seasoned veteran in the game of politics and he rarely joked when it came to business. His integrity was unchallenged and he was hardly ever wrong. Of all the congressman’s former advisors and consultants, he alone chose to stay after the party’s declaration.
He explained: “In all my live I have known princes and kings, saints and scientists, poets and priests. In all that time I have met but two or three extraordinary people. I believe you are one of them, my friend, and another sits at a fire circle inside that cave. Believe me when I tell you it is a rare honor to be invited to her circle. Don’t disappoint me.”
So the honorable Robert Johnson, first term congressman from Colorado, walked down a red rock path bordered by tall stone walls toward the light of a distant fire and the chant of Navaho elders to receive their sacred blessing. He was beckoned to his place in the circle as a pipe was passed and his gaze came to rest on the elder woman directly across from him. Her dark probing eyes seem to question his very soul. Her expression seemed contorted, pushing forward, etching deep lines upon her face.
Congressman Johnson had not known such scrutiny since his great grandmother, a Cherokee spirit guide, had spoken to him of many things he did not understand. He was only a child and it was the day of her passing. This elderly woman, the tribe’s spiritual leader, possessed his great grandmother’s eyes and they struck him dumb.
The smell of sweet grass infused the air with mystery and the dancing light of the flames revealed in staggered motion the drawings of hands no longer present on the rich red rock walls. In signs, symbols and renderings the history of the Navaho and the tribes from which they descended were revealed on these walls.
“It is a good day for pilgrimage,” the elder said. “It is a holy day.”
It was in fact the anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre – an event as horrific as Wounded Knee. A priest turned military commander led his Colorado volunteers to a peaceful camp of Cheyenne where they slaughtered without warning men, women and children as if they were rabid dogs.
A quarter Cherokee and a quarter Navaho, Johnson was aware of native history. His native blood dominated his physical features but his skin color was light. He often reflected that it was the latter feature that enabled him to succeed in a society still dominated by whites. A dark skinned Indian would find too many doors closed to him. Johnson could walk in both worlds. He was not raised in Indian culture but he knew the suffering of the native tribes and carried their sorrow within him.
“It is the day of ending and the day of beginning,” the old woman said. “It is the day we honor the past and dedicate ourselves to the future. It is the day we plow the old crops under and plant new seeds.”
The elders began chanting in their native tongue, swaying as willows in a gentle breeze. The visitor soon joined them though he knew nothing of the language or the ritual in which he was engaged. His interest in his native ancestry had waned in recent years. He had lived the life of a white man, raised by liberal well-intentioned white people who thought it best that their adopted child know only one culture under one flag of loyalty and one version of the truth.
As he chanted the dancing flames took on human form transporting him in time and space to the place where dreams and reality merged. He saw his blood parents giving him up for adoption. His father, half Cherokee, was afflicted with the wind disease. He could not remain in one place. He wandered without direction like a man without roots, without tribe, family or history. He was a thief and a drunk, spending as much time in jail as out. His heart was heavy and clouded but he meant well. He always meant well but his wandering nature was a disease he could not overcome.
His mother, half Navaho, was also addicted to the white man’s firewater. Her heart was true but her sorrows ran too deep, too buried in her soul for her to conquer them. She had lost three children, two in childbirth, one in childhood, and she feared the Great Spirit would take her only surviving child if she did not give him away.
He saw the circumstances of their poverty, felt their hopelessness, and heard their prayers that their only son would find happiness and the means to return to the people to help. They prayed he would neither forsake nor forget the blood that fed his soul.
The elders in the sacred fire circle rejoiced that their lost son had come home. They did not seem to know or believe that he was only a politician on a publicity tour. To them he was a pilgrim and a man who held the promise of redemption. He was a man who could walk in two worlds.
Monday, July 12, 2010
CRY FATHER: Chapter Three: Maggie's Dilemma
Margaret Thomas was at a crossroads. After a four-year absence she had resumed a selective law practice that elevated her profile in the Seattle community above and beyond her substantial resources. Her sabbatical had been a disruption of the life to which she was accustomed and at some level she resented it. She had served a worthy cause with a devotion and competence that inspired those around her and she was proud of what they were able to accomplish for the Native American community but she resented that it was necessary.
Maggie believed that life should be simple. She believed in family and friends. She believed that if you were honest and good you were fulfilling your responsibility to society. She never wanted to be a leader but circumstances thrust that role upon her. She accepted that there were forces beyond control that shaped one’s destiny and those forces had shaped hers. She embraced and devoted all her efforts to the cause.
Now however that she had played her part, now that she had found her soul mate, she wanted nothing more than to return to a normal life. She wanted a family. She wanted children. She wanted to share the joys of life with those she loved most.
Her soul mate had another idea.
She chopped yellow squash and broccoli with a little more force than the task required. John noticed. Tending the pasta in a pot of boiling water, he knew what was bothering her. His writings had turned from the familiar rants on the rights of Native Americans to a scathing indictment of American politics. She knew what he intended.
He poured her a glass of wine and studied her silence from across the dinner table. He felt sympathy and love. She was the constant in his life. She kept him grounded and saved him from his inevitable descents into the lower depths of despair. She alone could reach through the darkness to take his hand. She alone could soothe his unsettled soul. He needed her and in some strange incomprehensible way she needed him.
As he admired her honey brown eyes he felt a familiar twinge of guilt. He was being selfish again. He had no right to ask anything more of Maggie. She had given enough. She had served the cause at his urging. He would not ask her to do so again.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She lifted her glass and flashed a wry grin in her trademark sign of resignation.
“Don’t be.”
It was Maggie being Maggie and it gave him comfort. She had the power. If she chose to use it she could mold him like soft clay but she chose restraint.
“No one knows you better than I do, John. Without a cause you have no life. If I resist now and then it’s only to remind you that I am my own person. I won’t be taken for granted but I know better than to stand in the way.”
John shifted in his chair and sipped his wine, suddenly aware of Maggie’s watchful eyes, studying his silence as he had studied hers only moments ago. She felt that she had disarmed the tension between them but now she realized there was something else. She had given her blessings but it was not enough. Was there a misunderstanding?
“You missed the punch line,” said John.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not the one to lead this cause, Maggie. You are.”
She looked straight through him as she had so often done before. It was the kind of surprise she was accustomed to in her lover but it did not dampen the impact. She sighed and braced for whatever followed.
“I’ve been having dreams,” he said.
She might have known. John was an active dreamer. He walked and talked and acted in his dreams. It was not something he could control. It came and went as it pleased but he believed in his dreams as a Catholic believes in the Holy Trinity or as a Lakota medicine woman believes in the Great Spirit. He believed his dreams were celestial messages meant to shape his destiny and Maggie shared that belief.
“Vivid, recurring and unambiguous dreams,” he continued. “It’s you I see behind the podium. It’s your face on the television screen and your name on the ballot. You’re the candidate.”
She sifted through the memories of all their conversations and discussions regarding politics. The common thread was mutual disgust. Politicians were corrupt, unscrupulous and conniving creatures who fed on the misfortunes of others, who allowed focus groups and pollsters to set their moral compasses, who profited by betraying the people who elected them to office. Even those who began their careers with virtuous intent were swept into the web of corruption. Those who thrived did so by embracing a system that disdained virtue.
Maggie’s distaste for politicians and all things political went beyond abstraction. She blamed politicians for corrupting her father. It was nothing short of miraculous that he had been able to extricate himself from their tangled web to go on with his life.
“Why would I become the very thing I most despise?”
“To prove it’s possible.”
John twirled his pasta in his fork, drank his cabernet and continued consuming his meal as if the topic of conversation was no more complicated than the weather or the next movie they planned to see. Maggie saw through the façade and he knew it. Without passion he was not himself. When he assumed this demeanor there was a purpose. It meant the opposite of what it appeared. If he pretended not to care it was because he cared too much.
“There’s Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and Bernie Sanders,” she replied. “That’s proof enough.”
“They’re Democrats,” he sneered. If anything he despised Democrats even more than Republicans. Republicans were pretty much straightforward about representing the elite with their tax cuts and deregulation and trickle down theories. Democrats pretended to represent the working people but they fed from the same trough of corporate contributions.
“Sanders is an independent,” she corrected him.
“In name only,” he replied.
She smiled and his demeanor shattered. She had him and he knew it. They both admired the congressman from Vermont. A self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, he was an enigma in American politics. There were rumors he would run for the Senate and they would support him if he did. He had taken some criticism from the left but neither John nor Maggie questioned his integrity. The same was true for Kucinich, the diminutive congressman from Ohio, though he was a loyal Democrat, and Barbara Lee, the congresswoman from California who was the only member of congress to vote against the Gulf War, the Afghan War and the War in Iraq. She was an heroic exception to the rule.
“You’re right,” said John after a moment’s reflection. “We don’t need another symbol. We need a movement and we need you to lead it.”
“Why me? This is your cause, your dream, your bliss. Why not follow it yourself?”
“You know me, Maggie. I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher. I don’t have the name, the standing or the reputation. We don’t need a martyr any more than we need a symbol. We need a winner.”
It was fundamentally true. John was too direct, too outspoken, too driven by the waves of passion to be an effective candidate. He had created a financial empire that rivaled all but Microsoft in the Pacific Northwest but he had gone to great lengths to protect his privacy. Outside his small circle of friends and associates he was unknown. Those who did know him considered him an uncompromised radical.
“Just think about it, Maggie. You know I’m right.”
She felt a surge of anger rising to expression and fought to suppress it. There was truth in what he said but it was not the whole truth. It was the kind of truth that rationalized resignation. It was a quitter’s truth.
“No, I don’t know that you’re right. I know that if you set your mind to it there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. You have to pay the price. You have to take the risk. You have to be willing to compromise and god knows you’re not accustomed to that.”
He threw up his hands in protest and resignation, shaking his head in wonder at the twists and turns in this discussion. It hadn’t gone as he had hoped.
“Alright, Maggie, you win!”
“It’s not about winning!”
“You’re right, you’re right.”
Wine in hand, he walked over to the plate glass windows and gazed out at the Sound. Maggie joined him. It was a calming influence, the waves rolling in from the sea. It was why they had chosen this apartment and they relied on it often.
“But in a way,” he said softly, “it illustrates my point. I sat down to dinner this evening fully prepared to make my case and you tore it to shreds. You’re better at this than I am.”
Maggie smiled and the tension floated away with the Sound. John placed his arm around her shoulders and reflected on his life. It was something like a disease: his causes, his social conscience, his obsessions. Life would be easier if he could only embrace Maggie’s simple values – family, friends and a normal life – but he could not. Still, he would never lose the feeling that he was not worthy of the woman he loved.
“Just think about it,” he mumbled.
“I will.”
They allowed their thoughts and cares to drift away as the jazz station on the radio struck a gentle chord. They sat back down and finished dinner, talking about friends, books, vacations, music, and art – anything but politics. Finally, they settled on a bundle of pillows and blankets before the glow of an open fire and leaned upon their love.
John counted his blessings in the warmth of Maggie’s embrace. She was an exquisitely beautiful woman, the kind men fawned over, the kind that gathered all eyes as she walked into a room. He brushed her hair aside, kissed her gently on the forehead and vowed not to push any further. She was the woman of his dreams and he had no doubt the only companion who could endure his eccentricities.
Maggie guided his lips to hers and returned his affection. She never doubted that they were made for each other no matter the trials they would face. They would face them together. Life was not meant to be easy and with John it never would be. Yet they understood each other as well as any two humans could. Their arms entwined, their lips caressing, their bodies came together in the harmony of slow jazz and they knew that their love would conquer all worries.
Maggie believed that life should be simple. She believed in family and friends. She believed that if you were honest and good you were fulfilling your responsibility to society. She never wanted to be a leader but circumstances thrust that role upon her. She accepted that there were forces beyond control that shaped one’s destiny and those forces had shaped hers. She embraced and devoted all her efforts to the cause.
Now however that she had played her part, now that she had found her soul mate, she wanted nothing more than to return to a normal life. She wanted a family. She wanted children. She wanted to share the joys of life with those she loved most.
Her soul mate had another idea.
She chopped yellow squash and broccoli with a little more force than the task required. John noticed. Tending the pasta in a pot of boiling water, he knew what was bothering her. His writings had turned from the familiar rants on the rights of Native Americans to a scathing indictment of American politics. She knew what he intended.
He poured her a glass of wine and studied her silence from across the dinner table. He felt sympathy and love. She was the constant in his life. She kept him grounded and saved him from his inevitable descents into the lower depths of despair. She alone could reach through the darkness to take his hand. She alone could soothe his unsettled soul. He needed her and in some strange incomprehensible way she needed him.
As he admired her honey brown eyes he felt a familiar twinge of guilt. He was being selfish again. He had no right to ask anything more of Maggie. She had given enough. She had served the cause at his urging. He would not ask her to do so again.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She lifted her glass and flashed a wry grin in her trademark sign of resignation.
“Don’t be.”
It was Maggie being Maggie and it gave him comfort. She had the power. If she chose to use it she could mold him like soft clay but she chose restraint.
“No one knows you better than I do, John. Without a cause you have no life. If I resist now and then it’s only to remind you that I am my own person. I won’t be taken for granted but I know better than to stand in the way.”
John shifted in his chair and sipped his wine, suddenly aware of Maggie’s watchful eyes, studying his silence as he had studied hers only moments ago. She felt that she had disarmed the tension between them but now she realized there was something else. She had given her blessings but it was not enough. Was there a misunderstanding?
“You missed the punch line,” said John.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not the one to lead this cause, Maggie. You are.”
She looked straight through him as she had so often done before. It was the kind of surprise she was accustomed to in her lover but it did not dampen the impact. She sighed and braced for whatever followed.
“I’ve been having dreams,” he said.
She might have known. John was an active dreamer. He walked and talked and acted in his dreams. It was not something he could control. It came and went as it pleased but he believed in his dreams as a Catholic believes in the Holy Trinity or as a Lakota medicine woman believes in the Great Spirit. He believed his dreams were celestial messages meant to shape his destiny and Maggie shared that belief.
“Vivid, recurring and unambiguous dreams,” he continued. “It’s you I see behind the podium. It’s your face on the television screen and your name on the ballot. You’re the candidate.”
She sifted through the memories of all their conversations and discussions regarding politics. The common thread was mutual disgust. Politicians were corrupt, unscrupulous and conniving creatures who fed on the misfortunes of others, who allowed focus groups and pollsters to set their moral compasses, who profited by betraying the people who elected them to office. Even those who began their careers with virtuous intent were swept into the web of corruption. Those who thrived did so by embracing a system that disdained virtue.
Maggie’s distaste for politicians and all things political went beyond abstraction. She blamed politicians for corrupting her father. It was nothing short of miraculous that he had been able to extricate himself from their tangled web to go on with his life.
“Why would I become the very thing I most despise?”
“To prove it’s possible.”
John twirled his pasta in his fork, drank his cabernet and continued consuming his meal as if the topic of conversation was no more complicated than the weather or the next movie they planned to see. Maggie saw through the façade and he knew it. Without passion he was not himself. When he assumed this demeanor there was a purpose. It meant the opposite of what it appeared. If he pretended not to care it was because he cared too much.
“There’s Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and Bernie Sanders,” she replied. “That’s proof enough.”
“They’re Democrats,” he sneered. If anything he despised Democrats even more than Republicans. Republicans were pretty much straightforward about representing the elite with their tax cuts and deregulation and trickle down theories. Democrats pretended to represent the working people but they fed from the same trough of corporate contributions.
“Sanders is an independent,” she corrected him.
“In name only,” he replied.
She smiled and his demeanor shattered. She had him and he knew it. They both admired the congressman from Vermont. A self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, he was an enigma in American politics. There were rumors he would run for the Senate and they would support him if he did. He had taken some criticism from the left but neither John nor Maggie questioned his integrity. The same was true for Kucinich, the diminutive congressman from Ohio, though he was a loyal Democrat, and Barbara Lee, the congresswoman from California who was the only member of congress to vote against the Gulf War, the Afghan War and the War in Iraq. She was an heroic exception to the rule.
“You’re right,” said John after a moment’s reflection. “We don’t need another symbol. We need a movement and we need you to lead it.”
“Why me? This is your cause, your dream, your bliss. Why not follow it yourself?”
“You know me, Maggie. I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher. I don’t have the name, the standing or the reputation. We don’t need a martyr any more than we need a symbol. We need a winner.”
It was fundamentally true. John was too direct, too outspoken, too driven by the waves of passion to be an effective candidate. He had created a financial empire that rivaled all but Microsoft in the Pacific Northwest but he had gone to great lengths to protect his privacy. Outside his small circle of friends and associates he was unknown. Those who did know him considered him an uncompromised radical.
“Just think about it, Maggie. You know I’m right.”
She felt a surge of anger rising to expression and fought to suppress it. There was truth in what he said but it was not the whole truth. It was the kind of truth that rationalized resignation. It was a quitter’s truth.
“No, I don’t know that you’re right. I know that if you set your mind to it there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. You have to pay the price. You have to take the risk. You have to be willing to compromise and god knows you’re not accustomed to that.”
He threw up his hands in protest and resignation, shaking his head in wonder at the twists and turns in this discussion. It hadn’t gone as he had hoped.
“Alright, Maggie, you win!”
“It’s not about winning!”
“You’re right, you’re right.”
Wine in hand, he walked over to the plate glass windows and gazed out at the Sound. Maggie joined him. It was a calming influence, the waves rolling in from the sea. It was why they had chosen this apartment and they relied on it often.
“But in a way,” he said softly, “it illustrates my point. I sat down to dinner this evening fully prepared to make my case and you tore it to shreds. You’re better at this than I am.”
Maggie smiled and the tension floated away with the Sound. John placed his arm around her shoulders and reflected on his life. It was something like a disease: his causes, his social conscience, his obsessions. Life would be easier if he could only embrace Maggie’s simple values – family, friends and a normal life – but he could not. Still, he would never lose the feeling that he was not worthy of the woman he loved.
“Just think about it,” he mumbled.
“I will.”
They allowed their thoughts and cares to drift away as the jazz station on the radio struck a gentle chord. They sat back down and finished dinner, talking about friends, books, vacations, music, and art – anything but politics. Finally, they settled on a bundle of pillows and blankets before the glow of an open fire and leaned upon their love.
John counted his blessings in the warmth of Maggie’s embrace. She was an exquisitely beautiful woman, the kind men fawned over, the kind that gathered all eyes as she walked into a room. He brushed her hair aside, kissed her gently on the forehead and vowed not to push any further. She was the woman of his dreams and he had no doubt the only companion who could endure his eccentricities.
Maggie guided his lips to hers and returned his affection. She never doubted that they were made for each other no matter the trials they would face. They would face them together. Life was not meant to be easy and with John it never would be. Yet they understood each other as well as any two humans could. Their arms entwined, their lips caressing, their bodies came together in the harmony of slow jazz and they knew that their love would conquer all worries.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
CRY FATHER: Chapter Two: Reflections
It was another gray Seattle day. John leaned on the sink and looked hard at the man in the mirror. He peeled away years of perception to see himself as he really was. For the first time in months perhaps years he saw the man he had become. He saw the man standing before him without the filter of who he had been: a confident, fit and fine looking man with a drive in his eyes and motive in his step.
Who was this imposter? He glared into the mirror until he saw the naked truth. He saw himself as Maggie must have. He saw himself through Maggie’s eyes.
Maggie was his life partner, mate of his soul, and the only being on a lonely planet with whom he could share his inner self. What did Maggie see in him now? Pools of darkness shrouded his swollen eyes. His dark shoulder-length hair stood up and scattered like a poor impression of Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde.
When was the last time he shaved and showered? He knew exactly how long: Election Day. How long was it? Two weeks? Three? He had planted himself in the living room of their high-rise apartment overlooking the Sound, yelling and cursing at the endless parade of political hacks and self-serving analysts none of whom could claim objectivity. No one in the nation’s media was capable of cutting through the smokescreen of partisan politics when the entire world could see what had happened: Deception, fraud, betrayal!
He was enraged to the point that it haunted him. When he retired each night the rage followed him. He was unable to sleep. The rage would give way to depression and return again undiminished. He stayed in bed later and later each morning until mornings became afternoons and still the rage stayed with him.
“Forgive me,” he said. But he was not speaking to the man in the mirror. He was speaking to Maggie though she was not there. She left for the office hours ago. She was getting on with her life. That’s what we do. We go on. It was not the first time the world had disappointed and it would not be the last. Maggie was a fighter and a survivor. She did what she needed to do. She moved on and it was time he did the same.
He splashed cold water over his eyes, turned on the shower and soaped the stubble on his chin. It wasn’t much but it was a beginning. There had to be a beginning.
John Christianson was a man in need of a cause. Some would say it was an obsession, a failing, a character flaw, a curse of perpetual discontent, but he could find no meaning or fulfillment in strictly personal expression. It was only by serving some greater purpose that he could justify his place on earth. His adult life was a series of causes in which he had always been a warrior. He had fought many battles, great and small, lost and won, but he had always seen the cause to its conclusion.
For years his cause had been that of the American Indians. He was convinced that America could never fulfill her destiny until its citizens had come to terms with the nation’s original sin. For nations have souls and wounded souls are capable of great evil. This nation was born with the greatest ideals in the history of humankind yet its reality was one of horrifying hypocrisy.
The founders spoke of freedom and equality but they failed to consider women, the landless or racial minorities. They neglected the institution of slavery and failed to even acknowledge the right of indigenous peoples to exist. The ultimate truth that remained hidden behind the flag of destiny and patriotism was that America was born on soil made fertile with the sweat of slaves and the blood of its natives. More than liberty, justice and equality, the legacy of our forefathers is genocide.
True healing cannot begin until true history is accepted. Once accepted, reciprocity will follow as summer follows spring. We as a nation must make amends.
For years he had devoted his efforts and considerable resources to this cause and this cause alone. He helped to bring about changes in school curricula so that children would learn the terrifying truth underlying Manifest Destiny. He helped to raise awareness of the quality of life on the reservations. He pushed to return artifacts and sacred lands to their rightful owners. He raised funds for legal battles to release Leonard Peltier and to protect native sovereignty.
It was not enough. It could never be enough but at last he was compelled to realize that the cause, however dear and heartfelt, was not his own. The last thing the Indian nations wanted or needed was a white man’s crusade. He could go so far and no further. The rest was up to the tribes. He would always be aware and he would always contribute but his active role came to an end. It had reached a logical conclusion.
He became a man in search of a new cause. He began by consuming knowledge as if it were manna, as if it was the only thing that could sustain him in his time of need. He read newspapers from cover to cover. He studied history, philosophy, science and religion. He formed connections and followed his intellectual curiosity wherever it led. He read fiction, biography, memoirs and poetry for whatever truths they could reveal.
He was fortunate in the sense that his business interests no longer required his direct engagement. He was free to feed his hunger for knowledge, to search for inspiration, to seek out some sign that would lead to a new path, a new journey, a new cause.
He read and he meditated, read and listened to jazz, read and watched the waves of the northern Pacific. He read and let his mind drift with the wind as it coursed through the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. He read and sought inspiration in the stars. He read and he found the answer. It was there all along. It was hiding in plain view. It was there when he picked up the morning paper or turned on the television news. It was the election. It stirred his outrage and aroused his indignation. It cried out for change.
The words of Joseph Campbell rang like the bells of a thousand cathedrals: Follow your bliss. For whatever reason this was his passion, his bliss and his destiny.
He began to write.
To the world at large John Christianson was just another man of independent wealth. He remained unknown though his actions had touched the lives of many in large and small ways. The world knew nothing of his personal battles. It was as he wanted it to be. There was the public face and the mythical hero behind it. He was a man with a mask and the mask was all they were allowed to see.
To the world within the web he was known as the Jazzman. The Jazzman was a commentator on the human condition. After a period of silence, a period of sporadic communications from the edge, the Jazzman was back and he was back with a vengeance. To his followers in an alternative universe of bits and algorithms, where imagination reigned and dreams took on all the qualities of life, the Jazzman announced his cause for a new era: an end to the two-party system of American politics.
What lies beyond survival? What lies beyond personal fulfillment? A system of government that ensures the former and enhances the latter. It is the government we were promised over two centuries ago, a government where the people are sovereign, a government that embraces diversity and extends the arms of justice and opportunity to all.
It was long past time to answer the cry of our founding fathers. It was time for true democracy to take root on American soil. The age of promise was over. The age of deliverance was at hand.
Jazz.
Who was this imposter? He glared into the mirror until he saw the naked truth. He saw himself as Maggie must have. He saw himself through Maggie’s eyes.
Maggie was his life partner, mate of his soul, and the only being on a lonely planet with whom he could share his inner self. What did Maggie see in him now? Pools of darkness shrouded his swollen eyes. His dark shoulder-length hair stood up and scattered like a poor impression of Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde.
When was the last time he shaved and showered? He knew exactly how long: Election Day. How long was it? Two weeks? Three? He had planted himself in the living room of their high-rise apartment overlooking the Sound, yelling and cursing at the endless parade of political hacks and self-serving analysts none of whom could claim objectivity. No one in the nation’s media was capable of cutting through the smokescreen of partisan politics when the entire world could see what had happened: Deception, fraud, betrayal!
He was enraged to the point that it haunted him. When he retired each night the rage followed him. He was unable to sleep. The rage would give way to depression and return again undiminished. He stayed in bed later and later each morning until mornings became afternoons and still the rage stayed with him.
“Forgive me,” he said. But he was not speaking to the man in the mirror. He was speaking to Maggie though she was not there. She left for the office hours ago. She was getting on with her life. That’s what we do. We go on. It was not the first time the world had disappointed and it would not be the last. Maggie was a fighter and a survivor. She did what she needed to do. She moved on and it was time he did the same.
He splashed cold water over his eyes, turned on the shower and soaped the stubble on his chin. It wasn’t much but it was a beginning. There had to be a beginning.
John Christianson was a man in need of a cause. Some would say it was an obsession, a failing, a character flaw, a curse of perpetual discontent, but he could find no meaning or fulfillment in strictly personal expression. It was only by serving some greater purpose that he could justify his place on earth. His adult life was a series of causes in which he had always been a warrior. He had fought many battles, great and small, lost and won, but he had always seen the cause to its conclusion.
For years his cause had been that of the American Indians. He was convinced that America could never fulfill her destiny until its citizens had come to terms with the nation’s original sin. For nations have souls and wounded souls are capable of great evil. This nation was born with the greatest ideals in the history of humankind yet its reality was one of horrifying hypocrisy.
The founders spoke of freedom and equality but they failed to consider women, the landless or racial minorities. They neglected the institution of slavery and failed to even acknowledge the right of indigenous peoples to exist. The ultimate truth that remained hidden behind the flag of destiny and patriotism was that America was born on soil made fertile with the sweat of slaves and the blood of its natives. More than liberty, justice and equality, the legacy of our forefathers is genocide.
True healing cannot begin until true history is accepted. Once accepted, reciprocity will follow as summer follows spring. We as a nation must make amends.
For years he had devoted his efforts and considerable resources to this cause and this cause alone. He helped to bring about changes in school curricula so that children would learn the terrifying truth underlying Manifest Destiny. He helped to raise awareness of the quality of life on the reservations. He pushed to return artifacts and sacred lands to their rightful owners. He raised funds for legal battles to release Leonard Peltier and to protect native sovereignty.
It was not enough. It could never be enough but at last he was compelled to realize that the cause, however dear and heartfelt, was not his own. The last thing the Indian nations wanted or needed was a white man’s crusade. He could go so far and no further. The rest was up to the tribes. He would always be aware and he would always contribute but his active role came to an end. It had reached a logical conclusion.
He became a man in search of a new cause. He began by consuming knowledge as if it were manna, as if it was the only thing that could sustain him in his time of need. He read newspapers from cover to cover. He studied history, philosophy, science and religion. He formed connections and followed his intellectual curiosity wherever it led. He read fiction, biography, memoirs and poetry for whatever truths they could reveal.
He was fortunate in the sense that his business interests no longer required his direct engagement. He was free to feed his hunger for knowledge, to search for inspiration, to seek out some sign that would lead to a new path, a new journey, a new cause.
He read and he meditated, read and listened to jazz, read and watched the waves of the northern Pacific. He read and let his mind drift with the wind as it coursed through the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. He read and sought inspiration in the stars. He read and he found the answer. It was there all along. It was hiding in plain view. It was there when he picked up the morning paper or turned on the television news. It was the election. It stirred his outrage and aroused his indignation. It cried out for change.
The words of Joseph Campbell rang like the bells of a thousand cathedrals: Follow your bliss. For whatever reason this was his passion, his bliss and his destiny.
He began to write.
To the world at large John Christianson was just another man of independent wealth. He remained unknown though his actions had touched the lives of many in large and small ways. The world knew nothing of his personal battles. It was as he wanted it to be. There was the public face and the mythical hero behind it. He was a man with a mask and the mask was all they were allowed to see.
To the world within the web he was known as the Jazzman. The Jazzman was a commentator on the human condition. After a period of silence, a period of sporadic communications from the edge, the Jazzman was back and he was back with a vengeance. To his followers in an alternative universe of bits and algorithms, where imagination reigned and dreams took on all the qualities of life, the Jazzman announced his cause for a new era: an end to the two-party system of American politics.
What lies beyond survival? What lies beyond personal fulfillment? A system of government that ensures the former and enhances the latter. It is the government we were promised over two centuries ago, a government where the people are sovereign, a government that embraces diversity and extends the arms of justice and opportunity to all.
It was long past time to answer the cry of our founding fathers. It was time for true democracy to take root on American soil. The age of promise was over. The age of deliverance was at hand.
Jazz.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
CRY OF THE FATHERS: Chapter One: The Conscience of Simon Juneau
CRY OF THE FATHERS
A Jazzman Novel by Jack Random
Copyright Ray Miller 2010
CHAPTER ONE
THE CONSCIENCE OF SIMON JUNEAU
Hands trembling, tears welling in tired eyes, a veteran of four decades in political warfare, a little man with thinning snow white hair and glasses so thick they resembled the base of water a bottle, crouched over the keyboard of an unfamiliar technology, pecking one key at a time.
Peck, peck…peck.
Outside the desert shimmered in a moonlit silver essence. Coyotes scrambled through the brush and fat bellied lizards slumbered in their hideouts. It was late summer or was it autumn? Time was an abstraction measured by the mechanical clicking of an antique clock, a gift from the ambassador to Spain at a time when such things still held intrinsic value. As if propelled by its own inertia, it clicked on as if time would never end.
It was the third of November 2004. Democrat John Kerry had just conceded Ohio and therefore the presidency despite compelling evidence of fraud and mass disenfranchisement. It was a replay of Florida 2000 and to those who understood the political process the exit polls told the story. It was unthinkable yet it had happened again.
Simon Juneau was old and as far removed as it was possible to be from the political world he once knew like a young man knows a lover. Wanting and expecting nothing more than to be able to spend his remaining days on earth seeking solace with the silent desert, he was called out of retirement to serve the cause of partisan politics one last time. It was the irresistible call of history in November of the millennial year 2000 when everyone who was anyone in contemporary American politics converged on the state of Florida where living history was in process.
What happened in Florida?
Was it as the Republicans claimed: A confirmation of the constitutional process and ultimate proof that the system, for all its flaws and conflagrations, works? Or was it as the Democrats claimed: An indictment of Republican ethics, a call to arms and a reason for turning to the Democratic alternative in the next election?
The truth would come out in time but far too late to make a difference. No one but political hacks would be paying attention. The truth was it was a bipartisan conspiracy to defraud the American electorate. It was a disgrace to the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy and an insult to those who served it. It was an insult to Simon Juneau. It was an affront to every man, woman and school child who still believed in the democratic ideal and the sanctity of the ballot box.
The Republicans played hardball, pulling in the old warhorse in former Secretary of State James Baker, who immediately served notice that their side would pursue a scorched earth policy unless their case was allowed to be played out in the courts on their own terms. They brought in low-level operatives by the busloads to simulate a popular uprising and disrupt an orderly process of counting votes as required by the state constitution. The Democrats countered with their own elder statesman, the soft-spoken and perpetually underestimated Warren Christopher, along with a small army of lawyers and political advisers.
That Christopher would take much of the blame for what happened was yet another crime against justice. It wasn’t Christopher who decided not to call for a full recount as the law prescribed. It wasn’t Christopher who decided to stake the election and the next four years of governance on the issue of hanging chads in selected precincts. The responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of Albert Gore. When he failed to demand a statewide recount he lost the moral high ground. Moreover, it was politically naïve to think that most of the fraud would occur in Democrat controlled precincts. As it turned out, it was fatally wrong.
When the case was thrown up to the most partisan rightwing Supreme Court in history it was already too late. The fix was in. So the case against Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a case of election fraud and disenfranchisement that harkened back to the Jim Crow era, was never heard before a court of law. The Democrats had their own skeletons in Illinois and Michigan so no one was willing to risk it all for one election or the quaint notion of democracy.
The real story was never written and hardly noticed by mainstream corporate media. As long as the river flows, the sun still shines and the politics of party continue to reign, the real story would never come to light. It would be consigned to the back pages of conspiracy theories that the talking heads of media would denigrate with laughter and contempt.
True history would not be recorded.
Only a handful of operatives knew the full extent of what happened in Florida and Simon Juneau was among them. When it happened again in Ohio he took it personally. He felt the sting of a betrayal so profound it bordered on treason. He felt the weight of guilt for the part he had played. He had arrived at the end of a long and successful career only to find doubt awaiting him and casting a shadow on everything he had accomplished. He let his long slumbering conscience guide him now.
The time had come to strike back as only an insider could. He was armed not only with knowledge but also with the codes to certain shadow accounts. They had come into being while the elder Bush was Director of Central Intelligence under Gerald Ford. Initially comprised of illicit funds to finance CIA operations, they were expanded in the Reagan years as deals were made with drug cartels from the Mexican border to the tip of the South American continent. Each succeeding president and DCI signed off on the arrangement. The drug wars were unofficially over. Only those drug lords who refused to pay or tried to shortchange the fund were targeted for elimination. Such cases were high profile and frequent enough to convince the public and the corporate media that the drug war was still engaged.
As the fund grew from millions to billions to trillions of American dollars, there was a need for political cover. A sizable portion of the fund was channeled to both the Republican and Democratic National Committees. There was no subterfuge or deception. The parties knew where the money came from. They made it available to any and all office holders or bona fide candidates on the condition that they sign a statement of acknowledgement. They were not privileged to any specific knowledge, only that the funds came from an anonymous source and it carried strings of party allegiance. It was a perfect insurance policy. Those who took the money were certifiably guilty of a crime and one that went to the highest levels of power. If anyone broke their promise of silence they could prove nothing but their own corruption and they would face ridicule as they kissed their political careers goodbye.
Juneau knew of the accounts from numerous sources over the years. It was one of those things everyone seemed to know about but no one touched. While in Florida he was approached by a retired CIA analyst with some background information on the CEO of the company that plotted the great disenfranchisement. It was the usual stuff: shady deals and possible criminal connections. It was enough to raise questions, not enough for an indictment, but tucked away in the back of the file there was a paper entitled “Agency Political Fund” with a series of 12-digit codes – maybe three dozen of them.
Juneau knew immediately what it was and the power it possessed. He asked no questions and sought no answers. He tucked it away and let it rest. Later he would learn that the former analyst had died of a rare disease. Juneau surmised that he knew he was dying when he passed the information on to him. He didn’t want to be a hero but neither did he want the evidence to vanish with his death. Why had he chosen Juneau? For some reason he trusted him and Juneau had no surviving family. He was old and alone. He had no one but himself to protect.
Ironically, had Ohio never happened the secret and the codes to unravel it would have died with him in the Arizona desert.
Beads of sweat swelled on his brow as he tapped the last keystrokes, saved and copied the file to disk. He sat back in his cluttered study, took a deep breath and gazed at the photographs of presidents, diplomats, senators and power brokers with whom he had shared a moment of history. He then removed the disk and sealed it in a padded envelope. He made another copy and placed it in a second envelope.
Suddenly the weight of his actions began to bear down on him. His hands were trembling, his throat was dry and the walls surrounding him were swaying as if their tethering had somehow loosened. He feared the end would come before he could commit this final act of redemption. It was foreign beyond words. Juneau had stood in battle for and against some of the most powerful figures in modern history. He had made and broken presidents. Yet now, at the twilight of this strange and distorted journey, he could not stop his hands from shaking.
He was tired. On any other day he would have retired for the evening but he was afraid that if he allowed himself to close his eyes he would lose his will to act. The conscience that had always been his friend and comfort, even in trying times, would become his nightmare, his shadow, a legacy of remorse and regret.
He gathered the envelopes in his still quivering hands, climbed in his car and made the short drive to the nearest postal drop in Bisbee. He was relatively new to computer technology but he knew better than to send a confidential file over the web. If anyone in the political establishment caught a glimpse of what he intended or what he possessed, his remaining days would be numbered.
What Juneau could not know was that his file, sans sweat and tears, was already in the hands of his adversaries. By the time he reached Bisbee, some thirty miles down a desert highway, his fate was already sealed.
A Jazzman Novel by Jack Random
Copyright Ray Miller 2010
CHAPTER ONE
THE CONSCIENCE OF SIMON JUNEAU
Hands trembling, tears welling in tired eyes, a veteran of four decades in political warfare, a little man with thinning snow white hair and glasses so thick they resembled the base of water a bottle, crouched over the keyboard of an unfamiliar technology, pecking one key at a time.
Peck, peck…peck.
Outside the desert shimmered in a moonlit silver essence. Coyotes scrambled through the brush and fat bellied lizards slumbered in their hideouts. It was late summer or was it autumn? Time was an abstraction measured by the mechanical clicking of an antique clock, a gift from the ambassador to Spain at a time when such things still held intrinsic value. As if propelled by its own inertia, it clicked on as if time would never end.
It was the third of November 2004. Democrat John Kerry had just conceded Ohio and therefore the presidency despite compelling evidence of fraud and mass disenfranchisement. It was a replay of Florida 2000 and to those who understood the political process the exit polls told the story. It was unthinkable yet it had happened again.
Simon Juneau was old and as far removed as it was possible to be from the political world he once knew like a young man knows a lover. Wanting and expecting nothing more than to be able to spend his remaining days on earth seeking solace with the silent desert, he was called out of retirement to serve the cause of partisan politics one last time. It was the irresistible call of history in November of the millennial year 2000 when everyone who was anyone in contemporary American politics converged on the state of Florida where living history was in process.
What happened in Florida?
Was it as the Republicans claimed: A confirmation of the constitutional process and ultimate proof that the system, for all its flaws and conflagrations, works? Or was it as the Democrats claimed: An indictment of Republican ethics, a call to arms and a reason for turning to the Democratic alternative in the next election?
The truth would come out in time but far too late to make a difference. No one but political hacks would be paying attention. The truth was it was a bipartisan conspiracy to defraud the American electorate. It was a disgrace to the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy and an insult to those who served it. It was an insult to Simon Juneau. It was an affront to every man, woman and school child who still believed in the democratic ideal and the sanctity of the ballot box.
The Republicans played hardball, pulling in the old warhorse in former Secretary of State James Baker, who immediately served notice that their side would pursue a scorched earth policy unless their case was allowed to be played out in the courts on their own terms. They brought in low-level operatives by the busloads to simulate a popular uprising and disrupt an orderly process of counting votes as required by the state constitution. The Democrats countered with their own elder statesman, the soft-spoken and perpetually underestimated Warren Christopher, along with a small army of lawyers and political advisers.
That Christopher would take much of the blame for what happened was yet another crime against justice. It wasn’t Christopher who decided not to call for a full recount as the law prescribed. It wasn’t Christopher who decided to stake the election and the next four years of governance on the issue of hanging chads in selected precincts. The responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of Albert Gore. When he failed to demand a statewide recount he lost the moral high ground. Moreover, it was politically naïve to think that most of the fraud would occur in Democrat controlled precincts. As it turned out, it was fatally wrong.
When the case was thrown up to the most partisan rightwing Supreme Court in history it was already too late. The fix was in. So the case against Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a case of election fraud and disenfranchisement that harkened back to the Jim Crow era, was never heard before a court of law. The Democrats had their own skeletons in Illinois and Michigan so no one was willing to risk it all for one election or the quaint notion of democracy.
The real story was never written and hardly noticed by mainstream corporate media. As long as the river flows, the sun still shines and the politics of party continue to reign, the real story would never come to light. It would be consigned to the back pages of conspiracy theories that the talking heads of media would denigrate with laughter and contempt.
True history would not be recorded.
Only a handful of operatives knew the full extent of what happened in Florida and Simon Juneau was among them. When it happened again in Ohio he took it personally. He felt the sting of a betrayal so profound it bordered on treason. He felt the weight of guilt for the part he had played. He had arrived at the end of a long and successful career only to find doubt awaiting him and casting a shadow on everything he had accomplished. He let his long slumbering conscience guide him now.
The time had come to strike back as only an insider could. He was armed not only with knowledge but also with the codes to certain shadow accounts. They had come into being while the elder Bush was Director of Central Intelligence under Gerald Ford. Initially comprised of illicit funds to finance CIA operations, they were expanded in the Reagan years as deals were made with drug cartels from the Mexican border to the tip of the South American continent. Each succeeding president and DCI signed off on the arrangement. The drug wars were unofficially over. Only those drug lords who refused to pay or tried to shortchange the fund were targeted for elimination. Such cases were high profile and frequent enough to convince the public and the corporate media that the drug war was still engaged.
As the fund grew from millions to billions to trillions of American dollars, there was a need for political cover. A sizable portion of the fund was channeled to both the Republican and Democratic National Committees. There was no subterfuge or deception. The parties knew where the money came from. They made it available to any and all office holders or bona fide candidates on the condition that they sign a statement of acknowledgement. They were not privileged to any specific knowledge, only that the funds came from an anonymous source and it carried strings of party allegiance. It was a perfect insurance policy. Those who took the money were certifiably guilty of a crime and one that went to the highest levels of power. If anyone broke their promise of silence they could prove nothing but their own corruption and they would face ridicule as they kissed their political careers goodbye.
Juneau knew of the accounts from numerous sources over the years. It was one of those things everyone seemed to know about but no one touched. While in Florida he was approached by a retired CIA analyst with some background information on the CEO of the company that plotted the great disenfranchisement. It was the usual stuff: shady deals and possible criminal connections. It was enough to raise questions, not enough for an indictment, but tucked away in the back of the file there was a paper entitled “Agency Political Fund” with a series of 12-digit codes – maybe three dozen of them.
Juneau knew immediately what it was and the power it possessed. He asked no questions and sought no answers. He tucked it away and let it rest. Later he would learn that the former analyst had died of a rare disease. Juneau surmised that he knew he was dying when he passed the information on to him. He didn’t want to be a hero but neither did he want the evidence to vanish with his death. Why had he chosen Juneau? For some reason he trusted him and Juneau had no surviving family. He was old and alone. He had no one but himself to protect.
Ironically, had Ohio never happened the secret and the codes to unravel it would have died with him in the Arizona desert.
Beads of sweat swelled on his brow as he tapped the last keystrokes, saved and copied the file to disk. He sat back in his cluttered study, took a deep breath and gazed at the photographs of presidents, diplomats, senators and power brokers with whom he had shared a moment of history. He then removed the disk and sealed it in a padded envelope. He made another copy and placed it in a second envelope.
Suddenly the weight of his actions began to bear down on him. His hands were trembling, his throat was dry and the walls surrounding him were swaying as if their tethering had somehow loosened. He feared the end would come before he could commit this final act of redemption. It was foreign beyond words. Juneau had stood in battle for and against some of the most powerful figures in modern history. He had made and broken presidents. Yet now, at the twilight of this strange and distorted journey, he could not stop his hands from shaking.
He was tired. On any other day he would have retired for the evening but he was afraid that if he allowed himself to close his eyes he would lose his will to act. The conscience that had always been his friend and comfort, even in trying times, would become his nightmare, his shadow, a legacy of remorse and regret.
He gathered the envelopes in his still quivering hands, climbed in his car and made the short drive to the nearest postal drop in Bisbee. He was relatively new to computer technology but he knew better than to send a confidential file over the web. If anyone in the political establishment caught a glimpse of what he intended or what he possessed, his remaining days would be numbered.
What Juneau could not know was that his file, sans sweat and tears, was already in the hands of his adversaries. By the time he reached Bisbee, some thirty miles down a desert highway, his fate was already sealed.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Scenario
RANDOM TALES: A journalist is offered the story of a lifetime by a rogue CIA agent: An alternative scenario for the September 11 terrorist attack.
THE SCENARIO
By Jack Random
PART ONE: THE INFORMANT
On the drive to the rendezvous, I tried to visualize what the informant looked like. I pictured an older man with checkered gray hair, full beard, close cut, slightly unkempt, a little fuzzy around the edges. I smiled, realizing I had painted a portrait of my now retired professor of International Studies at Columbia University.
If the informant was what he presented himself to be, it was an inept analogy. The professor had been a dissident voice, a defender of civil liberties, and an outspoken advocate of civil disobedience. Rumors persisted that he was forced into retirement in the second wave of antiterrorism legislation. I had wanted to contact him, to write his story, but I was advised against it. It was easy to rationalize that decision, then as now, but it left a deep impression of regret.
By contrast, this informant was anything but a dissident. He was an insider, a political operative at best and, quite possibly, a rogue agent, a turncoat to his colleagues and secret ally in the struggle for freedom.
In the space of a few minutes the informant had accomplished what he intended; he had established credibility. His cautionary tone, almost indifferent, an air of confidence, the sense that he was offering directives to be followed without question, a game of phone tag leading to a location on the wrong side of town, all combined to convince a skeptical reporter that he was what he claimed to be: the real deal.
I cursed myself for not having insisted on a name or at least some useful contact. What kind of reporter was I? I was operating on pure speculation and blind faith. It was the kind of situation that invited trouble – as it had before in my tenuous career as a journalist. I swore it would not happen again. It was always the same thing: my weakness, my need and hunger for the story.
I gazed out the window of a yellow cab as we drove past the brownstone towers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, monuments to generations of poverty and a reminder of our government’s failure to address it.
When was the last time a politician referred to the war on poverty? The problem of the poor had become the assault on middle class. Like Vietnam and the war on drugs, it was better to forget.
The idea had been to combat crime on the streets, create community pride, and thereby save the urban landscape, but concentrations of poverty in high-rise buildings did not have the desired effect. Crime was more rampant than ever and the towers became markers for urban blight. Like a domestic domino theory, the government pressed on with its grand experiment long after its obvious failure. What else could they do?
We drove past the pimps, hookers, junkies, and a cacophony of boom box rap before arriving at the appointed address. It was the basement of an abandoned storefront. I took note of an all night café on the corner across the street before paying the cabbie. At least there was a place I could use to get off the street while waiting for a cab to return me to the relative safety of my middle class apartment.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The informant was nothing like my former professor. He was an older man, clean shaven, white haired and crew cut, his dress informal but meticulous. The general impression was distinctly military. He claimed to be an analyst and spoke of “the agency” in tones bordering reverence. He said that for twenty year his job had been to run scenarios: What if scenarios.
“We took situations, real and hypothetical, and ran them through probability quotients. We analyzed the results and projected outcomes.”
Despite my protests, he insisted on beginning his story in Lebanon, Beirut, circa 1983. It was the year a group of Shiite Muslims attacked the American Embassy, killing dozens of CIA operatives and capturing the Agency’s station chief for Middle East operations. According to the informant, they ran a scenario that indicated any response had to be covert. They were unwilling to risk congressional inquiry.
“Our hands were everywhere,” he said. “We were supporting both sides in every conflict. We were sponsoring Islamic fundamentalists as a buffer against Soviet influence.”
The Reagan Republicans had conspired with America’s most hated enemy, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, for the release of American hostages immediately after Reagan’s inauguration as president. The deal culminated in the delivery of weapons and spare parts in exchange for funds that, in turn, were used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua – expressly forbidden by an act of Congress.
“If ever there was a cause for impeachment,” the informant said, “this was it. Reagan consorted with the enemy to defraud an election, openly defied Congress, and lied to cover his tracks. What is the definition of treason if this was not?”
I began to suspect it was either a hoax or a trap. In my years as a reporter, I had seen it all. I once took a shot at the paper’s corporate owner, refusing to run stories that were obvious plants, and I had paid for my indiscretions. I was kicked out of the newsroom and given a desk in Metro. I was hoping that this story would give me the jump I needed to get my career back on line but I was losing faith.
“I just don’t believe you,” I confessed. “I don’t believe you were ever with the Agency. I think you’re just some radical looking for attention.”
“Did I say I was with the Agency?” he replied with a cynical smile.
Then he shrugged with an incredulity that was as biting as it was sincere.
“You’re right. You found me out.”
I was dumfounded. I wanted to be disappointed but what I felt was relief. The journalist within was dying. I had to consider the consequences. I had a wife and child. At least I still had a job. Many did not. At least I still had my freedom.
I clicked off my recorder, gathered my notes and stuffed them in my briefcase. Out of habit, I reached out to shake hands with the man who had just played me for a fool. The informant, with a sardonic pose, placed a business card in my hand: “William Sinclair, Consultant.”
“Same time tomorrow?” he asked.
I laughed but felt a rising anger that I knew was fear at its core.
“We’ll see,” I replied.
I left thinking I would toss his card in the first trashcan I saw.
PART TWO: GRAVITY
I knew someone who knew someone at the Agency. I had contacts at the Pentagon and the State Department. I could make a few calls and tap my sources – or not. I could play the part of a journalist or go back to Metro and be a good boy. Nothing was certain.
I struggled with it through the night, like a shadow at the dinner table, like a ghost in the bed I shared with my faithful wife. I did not confide in her. She would only support me as she had always done. I was a good husband and father. She was a good mother and wife. I did not want her support. I wanted a way out that would allow me to retain a sense of self-esteem. The only way was to see it through.
I made the calls and what I found was conclusive: William Sinclair was the real deal. His involvement with the Agency went back three decades. He had risen from a low level data processor to a prime analyst when suddenly, in 1996, he went AWOL. If the Agency knew why, they were not talking. They wanted Sinclair and the man who turned him in could expect a sizable reward. I could be the hero of my own story. I could get my desk back in the newsroom. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wanted a Pulitzer.
“I knew you’d come,” smiled Sinclair.
“The hell you did,” I replied.
A man like him leaves nothing to chance. In the vernacular of the intelligence community, he knew more about me than I knew about myself. I wondered: What did he know that made him think I was his boy? Was it a sting? Was it all a part of the domestic offensive in the perpetual war on terrorism? If so, I was vulnerable the moment I walked through the door.
I asked why he had chosen me. He replied that I was not his first choice. He had considered a number of reporters who had shown some backbone, some integrity, some degree of professional pride but none had passed the test.
I soon learned that the test involved enduring Sinclair’s lectures on the history of American foreign policy. One of his favorite themes was that Americans have no sense of history. In the world according to Sinclair, that was what distinguished America from everyone else.
“To America, Vietnam is ancient history. To the rest of the world, it was only yesterday.”
He rambled on about Operation Phoenix in the early stages of the war, when 20,000 South Vietnamese were allegedly rounded up and executed. They were supposed to be our allies. He talked about free fire zones and the commonality of My Lai. He claimed that three million Southeast Asians had lost their lives as the result of our actions.
“We don’t count enemy dead,” he said with a profound sadness. “There was a time when we did.”
He sat behind his naked desk in the sparsely furnished room and stared into space, as if he could still see their faces, their wide dark eyes, their contorted and charred bodies.
“The Vietnamese are the bravest people in world history. After fighting every empire from the Ottoman to the British and French, they turned back the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.”
I was moved by his account and wondered what role he had played in the war. It was not my purpose, however, to revisit Nam or to rewrite history according to one rogue agent. When I said as much, Sinclair poured a large glass of water and dropped it on the concrete floor, shards of glass scattering like shrapnel from an antipersonnel bomb.
“What is this?” he challenged.
“An irrational display of self righteous indignation,” I replied. He had already been through any number of reporters. I was confident he needed me as much as I needed him.
“Gravity,” he answered. “Come back when you have some sense of it.”
I went home and did some homework.
PART THREE: HISTORY
Sinclair’s history lesson resumed with Nicaragua in the early eighties. The Agency backed the Contras, a ruthless paramilitary force, against the Sandinistas, a coalition of working class and indigenous peoples. It was there that an infamous Agency Operations Manual was uncovered.
As Sinclair put it: “How to Subvert Popular Government by Terrorist Tactics.”
It openly advocated a nightmare scenario: Creating an atmosphere of constant fear with random looting, rape and murder, techniques of torture, hiring criminals to do the dirty work, assassination, and creating martyrs by killing your own leaders. He added that the Agency would not hesitate to use the same tactics within our own country if it believed it could get away with it. He connected the dots: Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-Contra, the Kennedy assassinations and Martin Luther King.
I was reluctant to consider such a wide brush for any story in the current political climate. The mere whisper of conspiracy, past, present or future, would never get past the editorial board of any major news organization, including mine.
Still, he left an impression, almost unthinkable thoughts, unspeakable possibilities that would transform my dreams to nightmares and darken my view of the world for years to come.
It was not the world I believed in. It was not the world I wanted to believe in. I was not prepared to accept such a radical transformation of reality.
Sinclair went on about our involvements throughout Latin America: El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Columbia, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. (In Argentina, 9-11 recalls the Agency sponsored coup that replaced Salvador Allende with the butcher Augusto Pinochet.) Everywhere it was the same story: Subversion of lawful democracies in favor of military despots. We allied ourselves with thugs, criminals and drug lords.
He lingered on the story of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the clergyman who stood up against oppression of the poor. It was hardly noted in the American press when nearly 200,000 peasants were slaughtered in Guatemala, but when six Jesuit priests, four American missionaries and the Archbishop Romero were tortured and executed, it was front-page news.
“Why do they hate us?” he asked with a twisted grin.
“They hate us for Suharto, America’s bloody gift to Indonesia. They hate us for the massacre of East Timor, where the price of opposition was one quarter of their population.
“Why do they hate us?”
He was pacing the room, gaining momentum, as he moved on to the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The first Gulf War was fought over the issues of cross-drilling and Kuwaiti belligerence. Saddam Hussein cleared the invasion with the American consulate but he could not have been surprised by America’s betrayal. It was an opportunity to establish dominance in a critical region. Our objective was accomplished when we refused to leave as promised after the war.
“Why do they hate us?”
“We financed Islamic fundamentalists throughout the world but especially in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded. After the Russians pulled out, we asked the ‘freedom fighters’ to return our more sophisticated weaponry. They politely declined.”
If it was an argument, Sinclair was winning. My mind was opening to the possibility that our government was guilty of massive crimes against humanity. I was beginning to believe that we – our government, our intelligence forces, and our military – were the real terrorists but my mind stopped short, unable to make that leap.
I wondered why he left the Agency. He had known these things for years. Why would he continue to work for an agency that was at least partly responsible for so much suffering and death?
It was not something he wanted to address. His eyes grew cold; his entire body seemed to shrivel like an old man in a storm. Finally, he produced an obituary and quietly sat down while I read:
“William Randolph Sinclair, Jr., 27, of Arlington, VA, died at St. Jude’s Medical Center. He was a veteran of Desert Storm. He is survived by…”
The pieces started falling into place. His son, following the example of his father, lost his life in consequence.
“You wrote a story,” said Sinclair, “about the Gulf War Syndrome.”
I had indeed. As many as half of the soldiers who served in the first war later contracted the sickness. It began with a mild rash, headaches, nausea, but developed into a neurological disorder resembling Parkinson Disease. Whatever the cause – depleted uranium munitions, experimental vaccines – the military chose to deny its existence rather than investigate. When they were forced to investigate, their findings were always inconclusive.
“Billy walked over to the high school football field,” continued Sinclair. “He was a star athlete, you know. He walked out into the center of the field, knelt as if in prayer, and put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth…”
His face grew ever darker and a shadow seemed to come over him. His gaze went inward as he summoned the image of his child.
“Before Billy died it was just a game. Not any more.”
The history lessons were over. It was not that I had won his trust. It was just that he no longer seemed to care. If his story had merit and I had the courage to run with it, it was mine.
PART FOUR: THE SCENARIO
Sinclair came up with the terrorist attack scenario in January 1996, ten months before his son ended his own life. It proposed a simultaneous attack by an Islamic fundamentalist group on several cities within the United States. It was an attack on both civilian and government targets – the Washington Monument, Disney World, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon – using commercial airlines as missiles. His superiors were intrigued and asked him to give the enemy a name. He did so. The name had been around for years and his face was that of the perfect enemy: Usama bin Laden.
He emphasized that none of this was the product of his imagination.
“I have no imagination,” he said. “I wasn’t a fiction writer. I was not paid to write stories. I was paid to create realistic scenarios based on existing facts. Everything is in the public record.”
He instructed me to check the official transcripts from the investigations of the African embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, and the trial records of the first attack on the World Trade Center. I did so. It all checked out. Usama bin Laden, altered after September 11, 2001, to Osama bin Laden was an Agency recruit from the days of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Sinclair explained that he ran a cost-benefit analysis, projecting the cost in lives and economic loss against the “benefits” to the Agency and the powers it served: Increased military spending, congressional approval of covert operations, broad powers of domestic surveillance, control of Congress and the White House, and, most critically, a forty year “war on terrorism” – a long awaited replacement for the Cold War. It was a virtual carte blanche for the neoconservative ideologues already entrenched in the White House.
“It would have been so easy to prevent this catastrophe,” he said.
He reminded me that the director of the Federal Aviation Administration pleaded with Congress and the administration to secure the cockpits of commercial airlines long before September 2001.
“Where was the Agency then?” he asked. “Where was the FBI? Where were all those men in high office who knew what was being planned and did nothing to prevent it? It would have been so easy.”
I had always considered myself a good, patriotic citizen. Even if I did not always agree with my government, I believed my country was the best and most virtuous on the planet.
This was not a story I wanted to hear, no less report: That our leaders – those in charge of defending our nation – knew what was about to happen and failed to act.
Sinclair offered me an envelope. He explained that it contained all the evidence I would require. I hesitated. I imagined he was reading my mind: Was this really what I wanted? Did I wish to go down in history as the man who exposed the great lie? Did the facts even matter? Would I be vilified by my colleagues in the press? Would I be called a traitor? Would I lose my job and everything I valued and worked so hard to protect?
I took the envelope in my hands, held it for the length of a second thought, and tossed it onto Sinclair’s desk. I had a confession to make. I had already contacted the authorities.
“I suspect,” I said, “there are a couple of agents outside right now.”
Sinclair flashed his sardonic smile.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You passed the test.”
I looked at him with disbelief. All of his passion and conviction were nothing but smoke and mirrors, lies and deceptions, like the lies of war.
“You try to convince me that my government has betrayed the nation, its people, its founding principles, and if you succeed, I go to jail.”
“You want to work in the fourth estate,” he replied, “that’s the test. It’s the price you pay to enjoy the blessings of your profession and the esteem, the privilege and the power of serving the greatest nation on earth.”
He was wrong. The price was much greater. Beneath his twisted sense of humor, a profound sadness would stay with us both as long as we lived. For each of us, shame was the price of survival.
He winked and I went my way. I was back in the newsroom. A few months later, I was given a column and a seat on the editorial board.
I never asked my publisher if he was in on the sting. I never had to.
THE SCENARIO
By Jack Random
PART ONE: THE INFORMANT
On the drive to the rendezvous, I tried to visualize what the informant looked like. I pictured an older man with checkered gray hair, full beard, close cut, slightly unkempt, a little fuzzy around the edges. I smiled, realizing I had painted a portrait of my now retired professor of International Studies at Columbia University.
If the informant was what he presented himself to be, it was an inept analogy. The professor had been a dissident voice, a defender of civil liberties, and an outspoken advocate of civil disobedience. Rumors persisted that he was forced into retirement in the second wave of antiterrorism legislation. I had wanted to contact him, to write his story, but I was advised against it. It was easy to rationalize that decision, then as now, but it left a deep impression of regret.
By contrast, this informant was anything but a dissident. He was an insider, a political operative at best and, quite possibly, a rogue agent, a turncoat to his colleagues and secret ally in the struggle for freedom.
In the space of a few minutes the informant had accomplished what he intended; he had established credibility. His cautionary tone, almost indifferent, an air of confidence, the sense that he was offering directives to be followed without question, a game of phone tag leading to a location on the wrong side of town, all combined to convince a skeptical reporter that he was what he claimed to be: the real deal.
I cursed myself for not having insisted on a name or at least some useful contact. What kind of reporter was I? I was operating on pure speculation and blind faith. It was the kind of situation that invited trouble – as it had before in my tenuous career as a journalist. I swore it would not happen again. It was always the same thing: my weakness, my need and hunger for the story.
I gazed out the window of a yellow cab as we drove past the brownstone towers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, monuments to generations of poverty and a reminder of our government’s failure to address it.
When was the last time a politician referred to the war on poverty? The problem of the poor had become the assault on middle class. Like Vietnam and the war on drugs, it was better to forget.
The idea had been to combat crime on the streets, create community pride, and thereby save the urban landscape, but concentrations of poverty in high-rise buildings did not have the desired effect. Crime was more rampant than ever and the towers became markers for urban blight. Like a domestic domino theory, the government pressed on with its grand experiment long after its obvious failure. What else could they do?
We drove past the pimps, hookers, junkies, and a cacophony of boom box rap before arriving at the appointed address. It was the basement of an abandoned storefront. I took note of an all night café on the corner across the street before paying the cabbie. At least there was a place I could use to get off the street while waiting for a cab to return me to the relative safety of my middle class apartment.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The informant was nothing like my former professor. He was an older man, clean shaven, white haired and crew cut, his dress informal but meticulous. The general impression was distinctly military. He claimed to be an analyst and spoke of “the agency” in tones bordering reverence. He said that for twenty year his job had been to run scenarios: What if scenarios.
“We took situations, real and hypothetical, and ran them through probability quotients. We analyzed the results and projected outcomes.”
Despite my protests, he insisted on beginning his story in Lebanon, Beirut, circa 1983. It was the year a group of Shiite Muslims attacked the American Embassy, killing dozens of CIA operatives and capturing the Agency’s station chief for Middle East operations. According to the informant, they ran a scenario that indicated any response had to be covert. They were unwilling to risk congressional inquiry.
“Our hands were everywhere,” he said. “We were supporting both sides in every conflict. We were sponsoring Islamic fundamentalists as a buffer against Soviet influence.”
The Reagan Republicans had conspired with America’s most hated enemy, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, for the release of American hostages immediately after Reagan’s inauguration as president. The deal culminated in the delivery of weapons and spare parts in exchange for funds that, in turn, were used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua – expressly forbidden by an act of Congress.
“If ever there was a cause for impeachment,” the informant said, “this was it. Reagan consorted with the enemy to defraud an election, openly defied Congress, and lied to cover his tracks. What is the definition of treason if this was not?”
I began to suspect it was either a hoax or a trap. In my years as a reporter, I had seen it all. I once took a shot at the paper’s corporate owner, refusing to run stories that were obvious plants, and I had paid for my indiscretions. I was kicked out of the newsroom and given a desk in Metro. I was hoping that this story would give me the jump I needed to get my career back on line but I was losing faith.
“I just don’t believe you,” I confessed. “I don’t believe you were ever with the Agency. I think you’re just some radical looking for attention.”
“Did I say I was with the Agency?” he replied with a cynical smile.
Then he shrugged with an incredulity that was as biting as it was sincere.
“You’re right. You found me out.”
I was dumfounded. I wanted to be disappointed but what I felt was relief. The journalist within was dying. I had to consider the consequences. I had a wife and child. At least I still had a job. Many did not. At least I still had my freedom.
I clicked off my recorder, gathered my notes and stuffed them in my briefcase. Out of habit, I reached out to shake hands with the man who had just played me for a fool. The informant, with a sardonic pose, placed a business card in my hand: “William Sinclair, Consultant.”
“Same time tomorrow?” he asked.
I laughed but felt a rising anger that I knew was fear at its core.
“We’ll see,” I replied.
I left thinking I would toss his card in the first trashcan I saw.
PART TWO: GRAVITY
I knew someone who knew someone at the Agency. I had contacts at the Pentagon and the State Department. I could make a few calls and tap my sources – or not. I could play the part of a journalist or go back to Metro and be a good boy. Nothing was certain.
I struggled with it through the night, like a shadow at the dinner table, like a ghost in the bed I shared with my faithful wife. I did not confide in her. She would only support me as she had always done. I was a good husband and father. She was a good mother and wife. I did not want her support. I wanted a way out that would allow me to retain a sense of self-esteem. The only way was to see it through.
I made the calls and what I found was conclusive: William Sinclair was the real deal. His involvement with the Agency went back three decades. He had risen from a low level data processor to a prime analyst when suddenly, in 1996, he went AWOL. If the Agency knew why, they were not talking. They wanted Sinclair and the man who turned him in could expect a sizable reward. I could be the hero of my own story. I could get my desk back in the newsroom. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wanted a Pulitzer.
“I knew you’d come,” smiled Sinclair.
“The hell you did,” I replied.
A man like him leaves nothing to chance. In the vernacular of the intelligence community, he knew more about me than I knew about myself. I wondered: What did he know that made him think I was his boy? Was it a sting? Was it all a part of the domestic offensive in the perpetual war on terrorism? If so, I was vulnerable the moment I walked through the door.
I asked why he had chosen me. He replied that I was not his first choice. He had considered a number of reporters who had shown some backbone, some integrity, some degree of professional pride but none had passed the test.
I soon learned that the test involved enduring Sinclair’s lectures on the history of American foreign policy. One of his favorite themes was that Americans have no sense of history. In the world according to Sinclair, that was what distinguished America from everyone else.
“To America, Vietnam is ancient history. To the rest of the world, it was only yesterday.”
He rambled on about Operation Phoenix in the early stages of the war, when 20,000 South Vietnamese were allegedly rounded up and executed. They were supposed to be our allies. He talked about free fire zones and the commonality of My Lai. He claimed that three million Southeast Asians had lost their lives as the result of our actions.
“We don’t count enemy dead,” he said with a profound sadness. “There was a time when we did.”
He sat behind his naked desk in the sparsely furnished room and stared into space, as if he could still see their faces, their wide dark eyes, their contorted and charred bodies.
“The Vietnamese are the bravest people in world history. After fighting every empire from the Ottoman to the British and French, they turned back the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.”
I was moved by his account and wondered what role he had played in the war. It was not my purpose, however, to revisit Nam or to rewrite history according to one rogue agent. When I said as much, Sinclair poured a large glass of water and dropped it on the concrete floor, shards of glass scattering like shrapnel from an antipersonnel bomb.
“What is this?” he challenged.
“An irrational display of self righteous indignation,” I replied. He had already been through any number of reporters. I was confident he needed me as much as I needed him.
“Gravity,” he answered. “Come back when you have some sense of it.”
I went home and did some homework.
PART THREE: HISTORY
Sinclair’s history lesson resumed with Nicaragua in the early eighties. The Agency backed the Contras, a ruthless paramilitary force, against the Sandinistas, a coalition of working class and indigenous peoples. It was there that an infamous Agency Operations Manual was uncovered.
As Sinclair put it: “How to Subvert Popular Government by Terrorist Tactics.”
It openly advocated a nightmare scenario: Creating an atmosphere of constant fear with random looting, rape and murder, techniques of torture, hiring criminals to do the dirty work, assassination, and creating martyrs by killing your own leaders. He added that the Agency would not hesitate to use the same tactics within our own country if it believed it could get away with it. He connected the dots: Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-Contra, the Kennedy assassinations and Martin Luther King.
I was reluctant to consider such a wide brush for any story in the current political climate. The mere whisper of conspiracy, past, present or future, would never get past the editorial board of any major news organization, including mine.
Still, he left an impression, almost unthinkable thoughts, unspeakable possibilities that would transform my dreams to nightmares and darken my view of the world for years to come.
It was not the world I believed in. It was not the world I wanted to believe in. I was not prepared to accept such a radical transformation of reality.
Sinclair went on about our involvements throughout Latin America: El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Columbia, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. (In Argentina, 9-11 recalls the Agency sponsored coup that replaced Salvador Allende with the butcher Augusto Pinochet.) Everywhere it was the same story: Subversion of lawful democracies in favor of military despots. We allied ourselves with thugs, criminals and drug lords.
He lingered on the story of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the clergyman who stood up against oppression of the poor. It was hardly noted in the American press when nearly 200,000 peasants were slaughtered in Guatemala, but when six Jesuit priests, four American missionaries and the Archbishop Romero were tortured and executed, it was front-page news.
“Why do they hate us?” he asked with a twisted grin.
“They hate us for Suharto, America’s bloody gift to Indonesia. They hate us for the massacre of East Timor, where the price of opposition was one quarter of their population.
“Why do they hate us?”
He was pacing the room, gaining momentum, as he moved on to the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The first Gulf War was fought over the issues of cross-drilling and Kuwaiti belligerence. Saddam Hussein cleared the invasion with the American consulate but he could not have been surprised by America’s betrayal. It was an opportunity to establish dominance in a critical region. Our objective was accomplished when we refused to leave as promised after the war.
“Why do they hate us?”
“We financed Islamic fundamentalists throughout the world but especially in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded. After the Russians pulled out, we asked the ‘freedom fighters’ to return our more sophisticated weaponry. They politely declined.”
If it was an argument, Sinclair was winning. My mind was opening to the possibility that our government was guilty of massive crimes against humanity. I was beginning to believe that we – our government, our intelligence forces, and our military – were the real terrorists but my mind stopped short, unable to make that leap.
I wondered why he left the Agency. He had known these things for years. Why would he continue to work for an agency that was at least partly responsible for so much suffering and death?
It was not something he wanted to address. His eyes grew cold; his entire body seemed to shrivel like an old man in a storm. Finally, he produced an obituary and quietly sat down while I read:
“William Randolph Sinclair, Jr., 27, of Arlington, VA, died at St. Jude’s Medical Center. He was a veteran of Desert Storm. He is survived by…”
The pieces started falling into place. His son, following the example of his father, lost his life in consequence.
“You wrote a story,” said Sinclair, “about the Gulf War Syndrome.”
I had indeed. As many as half of the soldiers who served in the first war later contracted the sickness. It began with a mild rash, headaches, nausea, but developed into a neurological disorder resembling Parkinson Disease. Whatever the cause – depleted uranium munitions, experimental vaccines – the military chose to deny its existence rather than investigate. When they were forced to investigate, their findings were always inconclusive.
“Billy walked over to the high school football field,” continued Sinclair. “He was a star athlete, you know. He walked out into the center of the field, knelt as if in prayer, and put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth…”
His face grew ever darker and a shadow seemed to come over him. His gaze went inward as he summoned the image of his child.
“Before Billy died it was just a game. Not any more.”
The history lessons were over. It was not that I had won his trust. It was just that he no longer seemed to care. If his story had merit and I had the courage to run with it, it was mine.
PART FOUR: THE SCENARIO
Sinclair came up with the terrorist attack scenario in January 1996, ten months before his son ended his own life. It proposed a simultaneous attack by an Islamic fundamentalist group on several cities within the United States. It was an attack on both civilian and government targets – the Washington Monument, Disney World, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon – using commercial airlines as missiles. His superiors were intrigued and asked him to give the enemy a name. He did so. The name had been around for years and his face was that of the perfect enemy: Usama bin Laden.
He emphasized that none of this was the product of his imagination.
“I have no imagination,” he said. “I wasn’t a fiction writer. I was not paid to write stories. I was paid to create realistic scenarios based on existing facts. Everything is in the public record.”
He instructed me to check the official transcripts from the investigations of the African embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, and the trial records of the first attack on the World Trade Center. I did so. It all checked out. Usama bin Laden, altered after September 11, 2001, to Osama bin Laden was an Agency recruit from the days of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Sinclair explained that he ran a cost-benefit analysis, projecting the cost in lives and economic loss against the “benefits” to the Agency and the powers it served: Increased military spending, congressional approval of covert operations, broad powers of domestic surveillance, control of Congress and the White House, and, most critically, a forty year “war on terrorism” – a long awaited replacement for the Cold War. It was a virtual carte blanche for the neoconservative ideologues already entrenched in the White House.
“It would have been so easy to prevent this catastrophe,” he said.
He reminded me that the director of the Federal Aviation Administration pleaded with Congress and the administration to secure the cockpits of commercial airlines long before September 2001.
“Where was the Agency then?” he asked. “Where was the FBI? Where were all those men in high office who knew what was being planned and did nothing to prevent it? It would have been so easy.”
I had always considered myself a good, patriotic citizen. Even if I did not always agree with my government, I believed my country was the best and most virtuous on the planet.
This was not a story I wanted to hear, no less report: That our leaders – those in charge of defending our nation – knew what was about to happen and failed to act.
Sinclair offered me an envelope. He explained that it contained all the evidence I would require. I hesitated. I imagined he was reading my mind: Was this really what I wanted? Did I wish to go down in history as the man who exposed the great lie? Did the facts even matter? Would I be vilified by my colleagues in the press? Would I be called a traitor? Would I lose my job and everything I valued and worked so hard to protect?
I took the envelope in my hands, held it for the length of a second thought, and tossed it onto Sinclair’s desk. I had a confession to make. I had already contacted the authorities.
“I suspect,” I said, “there are a couple of agents outside right now.”
Sinclair flashed his sardonic smile.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You passed the test.”
I looked at him with disbelief. All of his passion and conviction were nothing but smoke and mirrors, lies and deceptions, like the lies of war.
“You try to convince me that my government has betrayed the nation, its people, its founding principles, and if you succeed, I go to jail.”
“You want to work in the fourth estate,” he replied, “that’s the test. It’s the price you pay to enjoy the blessings of your profession and the esteem, the privilege and the power of serving the greatest nation on earth.”
He was wrong. The price was much greater. Beneath his twisted sense of humor, a profound sadness would stay with us both as long as we lived. For each of us, shame was the price of survival.
He winked and I went my way. I was back in the newsroom. A few months later, I was given a column and a seat on the editorial board.
I never asked my publisher if he was in on the sting. I never had to.
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