So you bought gamecenter?
Friday, September 30, 2011
Re: [Madness Writers] RE: [Madness Writers] Re: [Madness Writers] 9/30/2011 06:59:00 PM
gotta keep it up away from himn, man
gamecenter man, 1) maybe an hour and 15 to watch a game, half the
time, no commercials. 2) much better quality than the shit on myp2p.
3) watch it anytime. 4) watch other teams anytime.
oh yeah, the rink might get a league going where the Riverhawks play,
the city arena, middle of October until the hockey rink opens back up.
that'd be sweet. no idea on cost, hopefully its not too much.
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 11:34 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow. lame.
>
> yeah, I saw the Pens won. Too easy.
>
> I dont think i'll be playing any games this weekend. I told Emily one NHL
> game each day at most. I need to do other things.
>
> Jasper bit the headset cord. Didn't rip it apart, but i dont think it works
> now.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/30/2011 08:34:00 PM
RE: [Madness Writers] Re: [Madness Writers] 9/30/2011 06:59:00 PM
Wow. lame.
yeah, I saw the Pens won. Too easy.
I dont think i'll be playing any games this weekend. I told Emily one NHL game each day at most. I need to do other things.
Jasper bit the headset cord. Didn't rip it apart, but i dont think it works now.
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/30/2011 06:59:00 PM
it seems to take up as much RAM but it doesnt kill the processing, so
far i like it.
far i like it.
my slapshot on nhl is 95 acc 94 power. booom.
pens won, 5-0, gonna be a force. malkin with the open netter. too easy.
i was gonna say something...
just won a HUT game, too good at D. won 2 drop ins.
won a tournament 1st round, the rookie tourney, cant change the
difficulty, scored 5 goals in the 1st, won 11-0, not even fun.
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 9:59 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> firefox isn't bad, but chrome is probbaly better. I use firefox only when
> chrome acts up when I open the lid on the laptop which is rare.
>
> tell me which is better
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/30/2011 06:59:00 PM
hahahahahahAHAHAH
matt cook from center ice, halfway through the game, 2-0. first goal
was a sweet, sweet PP goal, one timer after the face off win and pass.
was a sweet, sweet PP goal, one timer after the face off win and pass.
pens are owning. tho chicago had like 5 PP so far.
gonna try firefox
instead of chrome, eats up a shit load of RAM. firefox doesnt seem
to be doing that much better but we'll see.
to be doing that much better but we'll see.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
ha ha
Puck Daddy prefers pictures of half-naked hockey players, Avery-mania,
and other banana-centric stories.
Closet's getting full.
and other banana-centric stories.
Closet's getting full.
comment on that story about that christian nhl fag. good stuff.
Re: [Madness Writers] Re: [Madness Writers] 9/29/2011 02:47:00 AM
im probably gonna buy that gamecenter this weekend. i dont wanna
waste 2.5 hours every game day watching when i can fast forward it to
half that time. and watch clips from other games, too.
waste 2.5 hours every game day watching when i can fast forward it to
half that time. and watch clips from other games, too.
i played a season of be a GM mode, chicago took the cup, the top teams
were chicago and san jose in the west, pens and caps in the east.
buffalo and montreal were 3rd and 5th, flyers and rags were 7th and
8th, toronto was 4th (haha).
kings were 3rd and detroit was like 6th opr 7th.
rags have no D and flyers have no O. buffalo does look pretty good.
pens, though, if they aren't #1, top 3 at least. not sure about
washington's roster but i know they are good. san jose, eh, maybe,
and not sure about chicago. i dont really think san jose has a
chance. i'd still say vancouver is up in the top 5. boston has no
chance this year. idont even think they made the playoffs in the
game. no offense.
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> you can skate with mario for a week. 7600 smackers or so. 1250 extra
> to take a guest.
>
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 5:48 AM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
>> the Penguins' homepage has highlights of the Kings game. Some of the
>> shootout attempts were a waste.. Staal looks like he didn't even try, or
>> his
>> hands were really slow. MAF's glove hand is lightning.
>>
>> --
>> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/29/2011 02:47:00 AM
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/29/2011 04:46:00 AM
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/29/2011 02:47:00 AM
you can skate with mario for a week. 7600 smackers or so. 1250 extra
to take a guest.
to take a guest.
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 5:48 AM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> the Penguins' homepage has highlights of the Kings game. Some of the
> shootout attempts were a waste.. Staal looks like he didn't even try, or his
> hands were really slow. MAF's glove hand is lightning.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/29/2011 02:47:00 AM
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/02/ipad-2-vs-original-ipad-whats-changed/ wouldn't be a bad idea to go with an iPad 1. $320.
Motorola Xoom is $458 on amazon.. ironic.
I'd have to read reviews of the Amazon Fire and maybe see videos or get a hands on demo before telling anyone to get it for my Christmas gift. No Google Apps might be a deal breaker. Then again, I'd only use it for reading the news and watching videos. Even then, not even sure that I'd really need it.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 10:20:00 PM
74 is the cheapest. 75 is the cheapest for at least 3 tickets (4
available). pens tickets arent cheap. for the panthers? eh, they
arent that great but it'd be a good time to go.
available). pens tickets arent cheap. for the panthers? eh, they
arent that great but it'd be a good time to go.
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> hey man. I texted Sean Johnson and Jimmy about a hockey game on Tuesday
> October 11th. They play the Pantehrs (i've already watched them play the
> Panthers 2 times, maybe 3) at home. We could definitely go to that game. I
> think it's a great idea. even if you don't come home, I'll take them. Guys
> night out, baby.
>
> NOTE TO SELF: CHECK PENGUINS SITE FOR PRICE OF THE GAME. Tickets are still
> available! Maybe you can do it before you go to work. Can't see pricing
> here.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 10:20:00 PM
Monday, September 26, 2011
hey man. I texted Sean Johnson and Jimmy about a hockey game on Tuesday October 11th. They play the Pantehrs (i've already watched them play the Panthers 2 times, maybe 3) at home. We could definitely go to that game. I think it's a great idea. even if you don't come home, I'll take them. Guys night out, baby.
NOTE TO SELF: CHECK PENGUINS SITE FOR PRICE OF THE GAME. Tickets are still available! Maybe you can do it before you go to work. Can't see pricing here.
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 08:01:00 PM
yeah, there should be the two courses in that torrent, i believe i
sent u the 4 videos, but get the torrent, it has the other course as
well, u need that 2nd one,m without it u won't be as good a trader.
sent u the 4 videos, but get the torrent, it has the other course as
well, u need that 2nd one,m without it u won't be as good a trader.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> is dr. burns that 4 videos from the torrent?
>
> yeah, babypips is definitely informative
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 08:01:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 07:57:00 PM
going to bed, have fun man.
there;s a lot of ways to trade, this babypips explains it all, best
resource to know everything, though Doctor Burns presents it in a
useful manner to actually make it realistic.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> making an account now.
>
> Yeah I remember the puck going across the goal line, it came back from the
> end boards and his OsSucks , Hossa went to tap 'er home but missed, there
> was't enough time like you said.
>
> I might try trading tongiht, probably won't have time.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:57:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 07:43:00 PM
if u can, go on to tdameritrade and create an account, a real account,
just so u can login. you can even use the program on their website,
type "thinkorswim web training" or something, u need an account. u
have mine. daedalus311 password with 1.
just so u can login. you can even use the program on their website,
type "thinkorswim web training" or something, u need an account. u
have mine. daedalus311 password with 1.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> nah, it hits osgood and hossa hits it with either .1 or .0 seconds
> left, it wouldnt have counted if it went in either way. goes across
> the goal line (somewaht, more away from it by a few inches).
>
> i remember watching game 5. 3 OT's. sykora with the slapper, miss,
> malkin feeds him again with the wide open TL where momma hides those
> cookies.
>
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:43 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
>> watching the 08 Finals isn't productive. game 6, 1 seconds left, hossa
>> misses the puck after a shot that goes off the end boards and comes back
>> to
>> OsSUCKSgood. boooom.
>>
>> NHL would be fun if you had a team of 5 that knew what they were doing.
>>
>> It's too hard to deke with low stats in those departments. Makes it hard
>> to
>> play offense.
>>
>> It's kinda like in real life - get up to the defender and then it's like
>> "now what do I do? can't take a shot, the lane is blocked, can't deke
>> around
>> huim 'cause my hands are too slow, and can't pass 'cause nobody's open"
>> hah.
>> yeah, I guess I'm nto that good. I was getting a lot better until I hurt
>> my
>> back.
>>
>> --
>> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:43:00 PM
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:46:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 07:43:00 PM
nah, it hits osgood and hossa hits it with either .1 or .0 seconds
left, it wouldnt have counted if it went in either way. goes across
the goal line (somewaht, more away from it by a few inches).
left, it wouldnt have counted if it went in either way. goes across
the goal line (somewaht, more away from it by a few inches).
i remember watching game 5. 3 OT's. sykora with the slapper, miss,
malkin feeds him again with the wide open TL where momma hides those
cookies.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:43 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> watching the 08 Finals isn't productive. game 6, 1 seconds left, hossa
> misses the puck after a shot that goes off the end boards and comes back to
> OsSUCKSgood. boooom.
>
> NHL would be fun if you had a team of 5 that knew what they were doing.
>
> It's too hard to deke with low stats in those departments. Makes it hard to
> play offense.
>
> It's kinda like in real life - get up to the defender and then it's like
> "now what do I do? can't take a shot, the lane is blocked, can't deke around
> huim 'cause my hands are too slow, and can't pass 'cause nobody's open" hah.
> yeah, I guess I'm nto that good. I was getting a lot better until I hurt my
> back.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:43:00 PM
watching the 08 Finals isn't productive. game 6, 1 seconds left, hossa misses the puck after a shot that goes off the end boards and comes back to OsSUCKSgood. boooom.
NHL would be fun if you had a team of 5 that knew what they were doing.
It's too hard to deke with low stats in those departments. Makes it hard to play offense.
It's kinda like in real life - get up to the defender and then it's like "now what do I do? can't take a shot, the lane is blocked, can't deke around huim 'cause my hands are too slow, and can't pass 'cause nobody's open" hah. yeah, I guess I'm nto that good. I was getting a lot better until I hurt my back.
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 07:33:00 PM
i always do EUR/USD
havent really looked at the otehr ones. i believe the GBP is similar
to the EUR, not sure though.
ill start looking into that later this week probably.
i saw this japanese thing on baby
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:33 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> oh yeah, which currency do you trade for? Japanese Yen?
>
> NO idea what you're talkin' about with the Japanese indicator.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:33:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 07:22:00 PM
yeah i was watching the hihglights of the 2008 cup finals. pens got
owned. made me wanna go online and get redemption, but id rather do
something worthwhile.
owned. made me wanna go online and get redemption, but id rather do
something worthwhile.
that business i wanna do, maybe get josh involved on a anymeeting
meeting sometime.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> let's make a date. Either Teusday or Thursday, let's do that trading on the
> computer with that anymeeting. I wanna get more into it. I don't really have
> much occupying my time, otherwise. Spend some time with Jasper, that's about
> it. Vidoegames don't make me feel more worthwhile. Unless it's at night when
> I"m tryign to stay awake. Or If I feel like owning on D.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:22:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 07:20:00 PM
thats why it was like 5 smackers.
boooom.
lookin at this japanese indicator. seems rather pointless. the
things i use are much more simople and effective. guess there's
always times to use certain ones, even if i cant see how for this
japanese crap.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:20 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> oh nice. Yeah, this week for sure, we'll do that. I don't know about
> tomorrow night. I wanna get out of the house tomorrw. Take Jasper to the
> park, or go visit family. Or Josh and Rose. Go somewhere.
>
> If you start getting an extra 200 or more a month, I'll start investing my
> money. Pay off my loans.
>
> That Star Wars game is very, very, very similar to that Psi Ops game. Except
> better. Not much. I was playing on it's heroic difficulty 'cause the
> LEgendary is too tedious.. if the auto save points weren't so long, it
> woldn't be so bad. The boss battles are a joke. Like 99% of all of video
> games, it really has no point. I couldn't care less about the story. I'll
> give it to you when I beat it, but I highly doubt you'd wanna play it for
> long.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:20:00 PM
let's make a date. Either Teusday or Thursday, let's do that trading on the computer with that anymeeting. I wanna get more into it. I don't really have much occupying my time, otherwise. Spend some time with Jasper, that's about it. Vidoegames don't make me feel more worthwhile. Unless it's at night when I"m tryign to stay awake. Or If I feel like owning on D.
oh nice. Yeah, this week for sure, we'll do that. I don't know about tomorrow night. I wanna get out of the house tomorrw. Take Jasper to the park, or go visit family. Or Josh and Rose. Go somewhere.
If you start getting an extra 200 or more a month, I'll start investing my money. Pay off my loans.
That Star Wars game is very, very, very similar to that Psi Ops game. Except better. Not much. I was playing on it's heroic difficulty 'cause the LEgendary is too tedious.. if the auto save points weren't so long, it woldn't be so bad. The boss battles are a joke. Like 99% of all of video games, it really has no point. I couldn't care less about the story. I'll give it to you when I beat it, but I highly doubt you'd wanna play it for long.
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 07:01:00 PM
free, use it in your browser, u can watch my computer screen and we
can talk and stuff through the computer (might be better to use a
phone, the video was about 2 sec delay, no idea about the audio) and
ill show u this program and how to trade.
can talk and stuff through the computer (might be better to use a
phone, the video was about 2 sec delay, no idea about the audio) and
ill show u this program and how to trade.
its all on the browswer, so its pretty much too easy to use.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> what's that anymeeting for?
>
> -
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 07:01:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 06:50:00 PM
i sent another 2500 tonight, so now i have 7500 starting Oct 1 in
there. thats an extra 200 a month I'd say, at least 150 if they only
do 10%. why not put it in there. gotta pay my student loans next
summer, 5000, and the wedding is still i'd say 4000 with the cake and
invitations and all that crap, maybe mom will help out. heather has
an interview with a woman to be a house manager...mow the yard, take
care of hte dogs....400 a week? no idea how thats even legit. thats
more than what the army paid her. guess she'll find out wednesday.
there. thats an extra 200 a month I'd say, at least 150 if they only
do 10%. why not put it in there. gotta pay my student loans next
summer, 5000, and the wedding is still i'd say 4000 with the cake and
invitations and all that crap, maybe mom will help out. heather has
an interview with a woman to be a house manager...mow the yard, take
care of hte dogs....400 a week? no idea how thats even legit. thats
more than what the army paid her. guess she'll find out wednesday.
still 1200 comin to me from PA taxes, should have had it by now, got a
letter today saying they need my army orders as proof i was outside of
PA last year. too easy.
boooooooom
if we do trade this money we get an extra 20% to keep, not sure if
thats worth it, though with my trading im sure i'll be making a
killing,
this friend wants to set guidelines of like 100$ a day maximum. maybe
for the first few weeks, but im telling you man its too easy. market
moved down about 5% writing this, but i would have bveen out by then.
40% profit.
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:59 PM, Sean <seanmichaelross@gmail.com> wrote:
> good for a 40% profit in the past 50 minutes, and its still going in my favor.
>
> muahaha
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
>> yeah you gotta show me. I tried that program once but wasn't sure how to do
>> the actual trading.
>>
>> You and your invisible friend should go to NJ, learn the secrets of the
>> trade, show me.
>>
>> i'm gonna try to watch those videos this week. they haven't downloaded eyt.
>>
>> --
>> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 06:50:00 PM
>
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/26/2011 06:50:00 PM
good for a 40% profit in the past 50 minutes, and its still going in my favor.
muahaha
On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> yeah you gotta show me. I tried that program once but wasn't sure how to do
> the actual trading.
>
> You and your invisible friend should go to NJ, learn the secrets of the
> trade, show me.
>
> i'm gonna try to watch those videos this week. they haven't downloaded eyt.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/26/2011 06:50:00 PM
booom
anymeeting.com heather and i tried it out, its free, i can show you
with ease how to trade. maybe tomorrow we'll do some trading.
with ease how to trade. maybe tomorrow we'll do some trading.
babypips does a really good job explaining the concepts. that doctor
barry burns doesnt do much explaining the in depth reasons of the more
technical indicators, but he does show how to use them which is
invaluable.
i made a shit load of money today.. fake money. the market was moving
a lot today,. apparently this investor guy is going to give us
(markar*** and I...gotta keep this secret) a lot of money since he has
a few people with a billion dollar account looking to have him invest
at least a part of it. in two months we're gonna start doing real
money, though I'd love to start now. its too easy. yeah there's
risk, but if u lose more than 5% on any trade you're fricken
retarded. 2% is the commission, so really 3% is even a lot, I'd say
3% and you're good, any more and you're probably doing something
wrong. and besides, the gains are too good to worry about 3%.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
I might have to swtich days at work, then.
I work that Friday and Saturday daylight. Make Sunday the guy's day out, Sean doesn't work on Sundays.. ah, I think he's on vacation that week, anyway.
you'll have to show me whe nyo ucome up. I dont know when I'll have time to take a real look into it.
This is why I need a real schedule for work. Working Night shifts and day shifts when it's one day apart messes up my sleep, messes up my motivation to do anything.
For example, I'm working Wednesday night, then Friday daylight. I have to stay up as late as I can on Tuesday (made it to 130 last night, I think, never make it past 3.. basically anything I do after 11 is a waste 'cause I'm too tired, just tryin' to stay awake). I have to sleep for a few hours on Thursday, be tired all frickin' day/night, then go to bed around 9 or 10 to wake up for work on Friday. And be tired all day Friday. I'm tired the whole time, it's not that exciting.
Sure, I have Thursday to do stuff, but I'm too tired to find the motivation. Except, I gotta do my exercises for my back which won't be a problem 'cause I need that to get stronger.
If I worked 8 hours a day near home, I'd have the energy from a normal routine.
Working daylight sucks 'cause then I only sleep maybe 7 hours, and right there I'm screwed. Work 12 hours while tired, go home and go to bed.
Doin' the office job wasn't bad, getting 8 hours of sleep a night, working 8 hours. Same schedule everyday. It would be the only way for me to have a normal workout routine. Driving 2.5 hours a day sucked. Killed my motivation to do anything 'cause by the time I got home , I didn't have more than a few hours to myself.
oct and jimmy
i sent thiose videos.
also, i asked jimmy what day he wanted to have the guys day out. i
recommend Sunday since saturday is the family thing and u might work
friday and we have that meeting with that guy.
then again, markarian is mormon and doenst like to "work" on sundays,
i guess he takes it easy. ill ask him tomorrow what he wants to do.
i mean we'll have a good filled weekend, friday we'll hang out and
probably go to Sean's house, then saturday is the family ge together,
sunday guys day out, and then we have to leave early monday cuz we
gotta wake up early tuesday.
gotta go to bed. have fun won 2 games, too easy man. A-
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/21/2011 08:29:00 PM
that stuff is very very ....i woukldnt sa y useless but for now its
completely useless. focus on trends, the simple moving average...no
idea why they have it so far into the site when it should be first.
download that torrent and watch the videos, i put the 1st video in the
email, u need to watch those first 4. ill upload the other 3 now
completely useless. focus on trends, the simple moving average...no
idea why they have it so far into the site when it should be first.
download that torrent and watch the videos, i put the 1st video in the
email, u need to watch those first 4. ill upload the other 3 now
On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 11:29 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> jesus, this babypips stuff is getting more difficult. Would be easier if I
> did some practice trading. hangman, shooting stars, tuning forks, blah blah.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/21/2011 08:29:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/21/2011 08:01:00 PM
lookin for a trial. got my A-. played a game. yeah dude, learned a
new trick for trading, man, its so easy, actually, this one is pretty
complex. a few runs and ill have it down. once i watch the video
itll be easy
new trick for trading, man, its so easy, actually, this one is pretty
complex. a few runs and ill have it down. once i watch the video
itll be easy
ur gonna have to use a proxy to watch it , should be videos or links
to show u how, i know when the game is on Versus or NBC, u just pout
in a Mexican proxy and ur good to go, no blackout. haha. there was a
video on youtube, showed the sites and everything, how to do it.
pretty easy. no trial from what i see, there was one last year for
two weeks, started near the end of october.
On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> maybe get GameCenter tomorrow. I'll be home ot watch them play the Hawks.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/21/2011 08:01:00 PM
dude
gamecenter HAS to be worth it. HD quality man, that malkin video on
the pens site (courtesy of tPb) is a trilliopn times better than the
feed i was watching. makes it actually worthwhile.
the pens site (courtesy of tPb) is a trilliopn times better than the
feed i was watching. makes it actually worthwhile.
http://www.thepensblog.com/tpb/sep2011/pens-win-beat-amway-3-2.html
cant even compare it to the feed i had. ...
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/21/2011 06:27:00 PM
good last 8 min or so, 5 min boarding call on the wangs, then a 5-3
for the wangs, good finish. malkin held on to the puck too long in
the D zone there at the end, managed to get it out. he seems to
like that puck a little too much sometimes.
for the wangs, good finish. malkin held on to the puck too long in
the D zone there at the end, managed to get it out. he seems to
like that puck a little too much sometimes.
On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 9:27 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> pens win.
>
> watched the last minute.. malkin and the Pens couldn't get that empty netter
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/21/2011 06:27:00 PM
malkin
is absolutely killin it out there. unbelievable. back to the 09
Malkin conn smythe MVP. had three defenders on him ikn the O zone,
put the puck between his legs as he's turning left and kicks it with
his back skate to the left. owns those D. finds some sweet passes
to Niskanen who finds neal in the slot but cant finish it.
Malkin conn smythe MVP. had three defenders on him ikn the O zone,
put the puck between his legs as he's turning left and kicks it with
his back skate to the left. owns those D. finds some sweet passes
to Niskanen who finds neal in the slot but cant finish it.
malkin still kinda handles the puck too much, once he lost the puck in
the RD corner of the O zone, but then the pressure overturns and they
score.
Re: [Madness Writers] Re: [Madness Writers] kunitz with a short side ringer.
Niskanen with a beautiful PP goal off the faceoff, D to D one timer.
Niskanen sucks but he's building brownie points. detroit sucks.
Niskanen sucks but he's building brownie points. detroit sucks.
we dont even have crosby
On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> MALKIN with a little magic at the side of the net. 2-1. detroit
> scored a few min after Kunitz. jesus man, what a shot. comes in
> from the Right, protecting the puck, gets to the goal line and brings
> the puck back to his forehand, and wrists it pretty close to Howard,
> might have hit howards blocker or the post, barely floated in but got
> in...he definitely improved over the summer.
>
> detroits goal was a nice set up by datsyuk. malkin had a similar
> setup on Neal (or someone) later but no dice.
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 1-0 pens. malkin set it up, neal on the same line.
>>
>> --
>> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/21/2011 04:28:00 PM
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/21/2011 05:17:00 PM
Re: [Madness Writers] kunitz with a short side ringer.
MALKIN with a little magic at the side of the net. 2-1. detroit
scored a few min after Kunitz. jesus man, what a shot. comes in
from the Right, protecting the puck, gets to the goal line and brings
the puck back to his forehand, and wrists it pretty close to Howard,
might have hit howards blocker or the post, barely floated in but got
in...he definitely improved over the summer.
scored a few min after Kunitz. jesus man, what a shot. comes in
from the Right, protecting the puck, gets to the goal line and brings
the puck back to his forehand, and wrists it pretty close to Howard,
might have hit howards blocker or the post, barely floated in but got
in...he definitely improved over the summer.
detroits goal was a nice set up by datsyuk. malkin had a similar
setup on Neal (or someone) later but no dice.
On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1-0 pens. malkin set it up, neal on the same line.
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/21/2011 04:28:00 PM
Monday, September 12, 2011
Re: [Madness Writers] 9/12/2011 08:12:00 PM
yeah i started reading it last week, still have it open. was pretty
interesting. ironic since the DA from New ORleans (a corrupt city)
was out to find the truth.
interesting. ironic since the DA from New ORleans (a corrupt city)
was out to find the truth.
ill read that bush article sometime.
ill have to show u how to trade when i come up. its pretty easy.
was playin around with this trading for a bit. its tougher than I
thought, but i was kinda jammin my way through it rather than payin
attention to all the indicators. i was up 350$ from a 1000$ within
like 20 minutes. easy to lose it though. right now i just made $400
in the past 5 minutes. im not sure if thats $400 profit or i'd get 40
of that. im almost positive thats $400, thats with a $1000 cash buyin
up 100,000 lots (lots is the term instead of stock).
On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Madness <nayrrizdaed@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ferrie#Allegations_of_involvement_in_the_Kennedy_assassination
>
>
>
> this article on the Warren Commission is good. Never heard of this stuff
> before.
>
>
>
> Titled: The Garrison Commission On the Assassination of President Kennedy
>
> by William W. Turner, Ramparts, 1968
>
>
>
> --
> Posted By Madness to Madness Writers at 9/12/2011 08:12:00 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ferrie#Allegations_of_involvement_in_the_Kennedy_assassination
this article on the Warren Commission is good. Never heard of this stuff before.
Titled: The Garrison Commission On the Assassination of President Kennedy
by William W. Turner, Ramparts, 1968
Re: [Madness Writers] news to read
i read some of them already.
markarian and i i ewere trading the past half hour. made $15.50 or so. if we would have stayed in a few more minutes we'd have made an extra $6. so easy man. almost no risk. its actually a little harder than I thought, just gotta look at more graphs (3 instead of one, but its still easy),.
nhl 12 tomorrow, boooom. u're getting ti tomorrow, right?
news to read
ounded in Iraq: A Marine's Story
Five years after a gunshot changed his life, the author reflects on what a decade of war has cost Americans
Reuters
I cry whenever I think of a memorial service I attended in Iraq. From the back of the hot, packed room next to the chaplain's office, I looked down the center aisle and saw six sets of boots, rifles, helmets, and dog tags. Six Americans had lost their lives defending their country. I had seen these Marines hug each other before heading out on patrol -- real hugs, as if they guessed they might not see each other again. They had been in Iraq for a while and knew how dangerous every mission was.
Blood and treasure are the costs of war. However, many news articles today only address the treasure -- the ballooning defense budget and high-priced weapons systems. The blood is simply an afterthought. Forgotten is the price paid by our wounded warriors. Forgotten are the families torn apart by lengthy and multiple deployments. Forgotten are the relatives of those who make the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our country. As we look back on 9/11, we should also remember all those who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Fewer than 1 percent of Americans have fought in these wars, and it is important for the public to understand their effects on our fighters and those close to them.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, ushered in a new era of reservist involvement, and like many others, I volunteered to deploy to Iraq. As a Civil Affairs Team Leader, I was entrusted to help local Iraqi communities develop critical infrastructure projects. Our focus on foot patrols, combined with the intense heat and carrying 65 pounds of weapons and gear, made for long days. The enemy threat was omnipresent, and this was a chance to truly lead from the front. Being a part of this unit was the highlight of my military career, and in my short time there I learned a lot about leadership and troop welfare.
October 18, 2006, started out like any day over there, at least as much as I can remember of it. We had a newspaper reporter with us, and he rode next to me in the up-armored humvee. We stopped to inspect an Iraqi police station that had been shot up the night before, and then to check on a squad of Marines who guarded a notoriously dangerous area.
As we exited the vehicle at our next stop, I told the reporter about an enemy sniper in the area who had already killed several Marines, and warned him to move quickly. Based on this advice, he took a big step forward, and a bullet smashed into the wall next to us right where his head had been. The next bullet hit me behind my left ear and exited out my mouth, causing catastrophic damage along the way. Somehow, from hundreds of yards away, the sniper had managed to shoot me in the thin sliver of exposed skin between my helmet and neck guard. Miraculously the bullet did not hit my brain or my spinal cord. It did, however, tear apart my mouth and face. Although I initially did not lose consciousness, I do not remember anything from the sniper attack, nor anything else from the next two weeks.
The Marines closest to me thought that I had been killed instantly, but that did not deter Corpsman George Grant. With complete disregard for his own life, Corpsman Grant ran over to me, even though the sniper was still trying to pick off other targets. George saved my life that day. He performed rescue breathing and an emergency tracheotomy on me, even under these chaotic conditions. Ultimately, he was able to stabilize me long enough to get me to the closest medical facility. The Battalion Commander also stared down death to help provide emergency medical care to me.
Fortunately for me, these two warriors weren't the only ones willing to sacrifice their lives for mine. Lance Corporal (LCpl) Buhler, a young Marine whom I barely knew, then drove me to safety at 70 miles per hour, although we normally drove at a quarter of that speed due to the inordinate number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the roads. Had we run over an IED driving that fast, our vehicle surely would have flipped over and killed both of us.
From Iraq, I flew to Landstuhl, Germany and then on to what is now the Walter Reed Bethesda Naval Hospital. By an odd quirk of fate, I would later run into LCpl Buhler at that hospital - he and his best friend in Iraq had approached a black BMW due to an intelligence tip, but the insurgents exploded it when they were just a few feet away. LCpl Buhler was lucky enough to only suffer from shrapnel wounds to his abdomen, but his best friend, as he said, was "vaporized" right in front of him. Although LCpl Buhler recovered from his stomach wounds relatively quickly, I am certain he will struggle with the mental image of his dying friend for the rest of his life.
The next four to six weeks were difficult for me, and at several different times the doctors were not sure if I would survive. At one point, my fever spiked to 105° and I had not slept in a week. I suffered from anxiety, fear, and depression, and had a severe allergic reaction to the medicine administered to me. As a result, extremely graphic and violent hallucinations filled my mind, to the point where although just lying in my bed, I was sweating profusely from the horrific images in my mind. In fact, my heart was beating so quickly that the doctors told my family that if they could not slow it down, I would have a heart attack and die.
After I woke from my medically induced coma, I could not talk for several weeks, but the doctors did not know if that was due to incredible swelling in my head and neck, or if Corpsman Grant had accidentally cut my vocal cord while performing the emergency tracheotomy. Initially, the only way I could communicate was to spell out words, one letter at a time, on the palm of my girlfriend's hand. Dahlia's patience was immeasurable, because it would take several minutes just to communicate one sentence. Although this was a step in the right direction, it was incredibly time-intensive and made it impossible to have a conversation. And it was only with Dahlia that I was able to communicate this way, probably because I felt so comfortable with her. That made visits with my family embarrassing and frustrating for me. Just like our wounded warriors who wake up in a hospital missing an arm or a leg, I did not fully understand what had happened but knew that something was severely wrong.
I can still remember being in the ICU, waking up and stating my last name (although almost unintelligible due to the damage to my mouth, teeth, and tongue), and seeing Dahlia's teary reaction as she realized I was "talking" again. As it turns out, even with the sniper still shooting at us, Corpsman Grant had performed such a perfect tracheotomy that my plastic surgeon later thought that another surgeon had done it.
I knew on one level that Dahlia loved me and just wanted to help, but always in the back of my mind I was inwardly embarrassed about needing so much care. And I struggled mightily with the knowledge that I was back in the States and my Marines were still in Iraq. Like every other wounded warrior in the hospital, I just wanted to hurry up and get back to my unit. It took a long time to move past that, as well as the extreme shame I felt following my injury.
I left the hospital six weeks after arriving there, but not before a number of complicated surgeries to rebuild my mouth, extract bone from my legs to reconstruct my jaws and to lay the foundation for many more surgeries over the next five years. Dahlia dropped everything in her life to take care of me. Although we are married now, Dahlia and I were not yet engaged when I deployed to Iraq, and she left for England to pursue her PhD at Cambridge University. She put her program on hold to be with me, which was one of many sacrifices she has had to make as my caregiver.
I am positive that every other wounded warrior's caregiver has had to make personal sacrifices to take care of those who need them most. The situation of an Army Specialist (E-4), who lost a leg in Afghanistan, serves as a good example. His recovery at Walter Reed was expected to take 18 months, so his young wife moved from Idaho with their baby. That meant forfeiting her job, her health care, and any in-person contact with family. The wife and baby lived in a small room with the bare necessities for six months until the Specialist was no longer an in-patient. The three of them moved to a (somewhat) bigger facility for 18 months while he was an out-patient. After feeling out of control and disrespected by the staff many times over, she could not take her family home soon enough. As another caregiver put it to me, she was her husband's chauffeur, cook, case manager, therapist, personal shopper, nurse, legal aide, job coach -- and on really good days, his wife.
As an outpatient, I was attached to a feeding tube for several months, and required 24/7 nursing. I spent eight months on convalescent leave, following a general cycle of surgery, pain medication and recovery period, over and over. Because virtually all of my teeth had been knocked out of my mouth, I had to carry a towel with me to wipe away the constant flow of saliva out of my mouth (I still drool when I turn my head to the side or bend over). And due to my difficulties with eating, we did not go out to eat for approximately one year; even to this day it is always an embarrassing experience to eat in public. Although I now have lower dentures, I am still waiting on the upper set, and also am missing the end of my tongue, which makes tidy eating impossible. As an adult, a military officer and a professional in the civilian world, the drooling which I simply cannot control is nothing short of humiliating, and I know it makes others feel awkward.
Like many returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, I continue to have issues with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These episodes can range from nightmares to mental reenactments of my injury to inexplicable waves of emotion. Although PTSD is perfectly normal after going to war, in this country and within the Department of Defense there still exists a certain stigma associated with it. I truly believe that a sign of real strength is not to "tough it out" and pretend that the condition does not exist, but to be up front about it and get the help I need.
That being said, attending PTSD counseling can be easier said than done, as the Vet Center's 8 to 4:30 hours conflict with many veterans' work schedules. I recently contacted the Veterans Administration about this conflict, and was simply told that I should seek counseling from a nonprofit organization. That response was as insensitive and insulting as it was disheartening. And what about all of the service members struggling with PTSD who work two jobs to make ends meet, or who are single parents without flexible schedules? This is, unfortunately, a tragic circumstance faced by far too many of our young veterans.
Although I can play golf and exercise and have successfully adapted to my "new normal," the personal costs are significant and long-lasting. It has been five years since I was shot, and I cannot see out of my left eye, cannot always speak clearly, have difficulty running due to the missing bones in my legs, and periodically struggle with behavioral health issues, including not only PTSD but mild traumatic brain injury (TBI).
But I am only one wounded warrior, and there are almost 44,000 just like me from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. That means 44,000 families uprooted with lives turned upside down and 44,000 warriors who will spend years reintegrating into society and adapting to their new normal. These are the obviously wounded -- they are missing limbs, are blind, have newly deformed heads, or are now committed to a life in a wheelchair. Hundreds of thousands of other service members suffer from invisible wounds as they continue to fight the enemies that rage inside their minds. Not all of us will survive, succumbing either to the injuries themselves or to suicide, a desperate and horrible outcome that has continued to plague our community.
However, my distress cannot compare to the grief experienced by more than 6,000 families who have had to bury a loved one killed in Iraq or Afghanistan over the past 10 years. These are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives who will suffer every day due to their indescribable loss. I will not pretend to understand the depths of that sorrow, and I hope all Americans appreciate these terrible sacrifices that have been made.
As September 11, 2011, approaches, take a few minutes to think of wounded warriors and our families. We are in your community, sprinkled throughout small towns and big cities. Do not let our sacrifices go unknown or forgotten. Think about helping that soldier's caregiver with everyday chores, because he or she now has two full-time jobs instead of one. And don't forget that Marine who has to put on a prosthetic leg first thing every morning. Remind yourself that far too many service members have not made it back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
As painful as it is for me, I periodically remind myself of the Marines who did not make it back. I remember meeting some of them and reflecting on their Spartan lifestyles at their forward operating base. Every day brought a very real danger of stepping on or driving over an IED, engaging in deadly firefights with a determined enemy, or not making it into a bunker before incoming rockets and mortars exploded. I also remember their excitement when I gave them a bunch of ketchup and mustard packets I had grabbed for them at our chow hall. Their food -- heavily processed, dry, and tasteless -- left a lot to be desired.
Our unit had lost a lot of Marines, and I asked the Battalion Commander how he dealt with the memorial services for guys barely out of high school. He sighed, looked down, and softly said that it never gets any easier. To this day, it doesn't get any easier for me to think about it, but at the same time I don't want to forget about those young Marines and their memorial service. I gave them ketchup and mustard, and they gave me everything
Dubya and Me
PrintOver the course of a quarter-century, a journalist witnessed the transformation of George W. Bush
Photo courtesy of the White House
By Walt Harrington
They still called him Junior when we first met, in forlorn Midland, Texas, back in July 1986. He was known then for being the son of the vice president of the United States, the agonizingly named George Herbert Walker Bush. As a young staff writer at The Washington Post Magazine, I was trying to persuade Vice President Bush to let me spend several months with him for an in-depth profile I intended to write. But the veep was skeptical, and he left it up to Junior to pass judgment on me and my request.
"Come on down and visit," the man who would eventually be known to the world as President George W. Bush drawled cheerfully to me over the phone. "But I won't tell you any good stuff until I'm sure you're not going to do an ax job."
So began a long and fascinating acquaintanceship with the man who would become one of the most admired and, later, reviled presidents in U. S. history. Over the next 25 years, our paths crossed again and again, most recently in his Dallas office last April. I had just read Bush's 2010 memoir Decision Points, and I was struck by his many references to history. In the back of my mind was an article that Karl Rove had written for The Wall Street Journal in 2008, which revealed (much to the consternation of the president's derisive critics) that Bush had read 186 books for pleasure in the preceding three years, consisting mostly of serious historical nonfiction. Intrigued, I asked Bush whether he would talk to me about how his passion for reading history had shaped his presidency and perspective, and he agreed.
When I sat down to write about that meeting, however, a different story emerged. History is composed of significant and less significant moments, the trouble being that we often don't know at the time which is text and which is footnote. Yet when it comes to presidents, even footnotes are worth recording. I realized that what I had before me was a story that went beyond politics or policies or the reading habits of a president, an idiosyncratically personal story, a footnote-to-history story spanning a quarter-century.
Midland, 1986: George W. and I met in the 13th-floor office of his oil exploration business. He looked fit, had run 10 miles the day before—his 40th birthday. An open-collared light-blue shirt, sweat rings, shadow of a beard, nice tan, handsome, macho. He tenaciously lipped an unlit cigarette, and I could feel his incendiary impatience. Even then, he broke his sentences, got them jumbled, his thoughts careening. He was blunt and indiscreet, and he made intensely disparaging off-the-record remarks about some of his father's political rivals.
George W. talked mostly about his dad, admiringly, of course. About how GHWB had been a World War II fighter pilot who, upon graduating from Yale, left the safety and comfort of the eastern establishment for Midland and the oil works. As an aside, we also talked about W., how he, too, had gone to Yale, learned to fly fighter jets, and moved to West Texas to make it in the oil biz. He wasn't exactly bragging, but he was letting me know that he, too, was accomplished, although he seemed well aware that his life so far was one writ small compared with his dad.
"I'm putting myself in his shoes, I guess," he said, adding that he couldn't remember when he stopped competing with his dad, but he had. With what I took as pride that his father had asked him to vet me, he said, "He trusts my judgment now."
Perhaps the operative word was "now"—finally, at age 40.
What I couldn't have known, of course, was that July 1986 would be a watershed moment in the life of George W. Bush, who was then having a running contest with too much drink. He had embarrassed his parents by asking a female dinner guest what sex was like after 50. He had cursed out a reporter in a restaurant in front of the reporter's child. Three weeks after my visit, while on a morning jog and suffering from still another hangover, W. decided to stop drinking, which he did, cold turkey.
In Midland all those years ago, the normal distance between prominent source and reporter didn't apply, and W. invited me out to a Mexican restaurant with Laura and their four-year-old twin daughters, who got in trouble for throwing chips, were threatened with a spanking, and went home without dessert. He also invited me to his house, where I found books by John Fowles, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Gore Vidal lying about, as well as biographies of Willa Cather and Queen Victoria. A few years later, I might even have thought they had been purposely left there for the eyes of a reporter, but not on that unstaged evening. Laura would eventually write that even then, George read every night in bed.
I also found an open Bible in the house. "I've read it cover to cover, and it wouldn't hurt you, Walt, to do the same," Bush said, laughing. Within the last year, W. had begun a new lifetime regimen of daily Bible readings, as I and all of America would later learn.
What I remember most about my visit was Bush's personality. He was a friendly, funny, bantering, confident man, a regular guy. He was easy to like, and I liked him. More important, he also liked me and recommended that his father cooperate on my story. He even arranged for me to visit his parents at the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the vice president, W., and I went fishing on his dad's famous Cigarette boat. At one point, the subject of inequality in America came up, and the vice president asked for my opinion. I said that some people were born with the leg up of money, education, and connections, and that those born well-to-do often ended up doing better in life. The veep listened respectfully, but an angry W. raged on about how my view was "crap" from the '60s.
I figured that was the last I'd see of Junior.
Twenty-five years later, George W. Bush looks great. Two years as a civilian have been good to him. His feet clad in golf shoes and up on his desk, he leans back in his chair, a well-mouthed, unlit cigar as a prop. At 7:45 A.M., he's talking golf.
"I didn't play golf during my presidency except the first two years. So I came back out here, and then I decided I was going to get better at golf, not just play golf."
"And have you?" I ask.
"I have gotten better. The problem is I'm never good enough. That's the problem with the game. It requires discipline, patience, and focus. As you know, I'm long on"—and he hesitates, smiling, losing the sentence—"well, a couple areas where I could use some improvement."
Same W.: sentences broken and jumbled, thoughts careening.
He certainly enjoys reading and talking about books. And his friends know it. On his desk is a stack of books that have come as gifts: All Things Are Possible Through Prayer;Basho: The Complete Haiku; Children of Jihad; and Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children. To the pile, I add my own gift, Cleopatra by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Stacy Schiff. Right now, Bush is reading Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life, a biography of the first president. "Chernow's a great historian," Bush says excitedly. "I think one of the great history books I read was on Alexander Hamilton by Chernow. But I also readHouse of Morgan, Titan, and now I'm reading Washington."
He mentions David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter, a book about the Korean War that he read before a visit last year to Korea, to give a speech to evangelicals. "I stand up in front of 65,000 Christians to give a speech in South Korea … ," he says, "and I'm thinking about the bloody [battles] fought in the Korean War." Halberstam's book—coupled with earlier readings of David McCullough's Truman and Robert Beisner's Dean Acheson, a biography of Truman's secretary of state presented to him by Bush's own secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice—gave the event deeper resonance. The decisions of the unpopular President Harry S Truman, he realized, made it possible for a former U. S. president to speak before freely worshipping Koreans 60 years later. "So history, in this case, gave me a better understanding of the moment, and … put it all into context—the wonder of the moment."
I tick off a partial list of people Bush has read books about in recent years in addition to Washington, Truman, and Acheson: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Huey Long, Lyndon Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Mellon, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ulysses S. Grant, John Quincy Adams, Genghis Khan.
"Genghis Khan?" I ask incredulously.
"I didn't know much about him. I was fascinated by him. I guess I've always been fascinated by larger-than-life figures. That's why I'm looking forward to readingCleopatra. I know nothing about her. … But you can sit there and be absorbed by TV, let the news of the moment consume you. You can just do nothing. I choose to read as a form of relaxation. … Laura used to say, 'Reading is taking a journey,' and she's right."
I must remind myself: This is the same man I met in Midland, Texas.
As it turned out, I did see George W. soon again after the encounter on his father's Cigarette boat. After my story ran in The Washington Post Magazine, the vice president invited my family over to lunch and horseshoes at his official residence, on the grounds of the U. S. Naval Observatory. The vice president had actually called twice to invite us over, but on both occasions, our schedules hadn't meshed. After the second invite, George W. called my house.
"Walt, my dad is vice president of the United States," I remember him saying with a touch of irritation. "When he calls and invites you to lunch, you come to lunch."
I apologized and explained the conflicts.
"So if he invites you again, you'll come?"
"Of course."
If I had been covering politics, I wouldn't have accepted such an invitation, but since I wasn't, my editor and I saw no conflict of interest. When my wife, son, daughter, and I arrived on the appointed day, George W. was also there with Laura and their daughters. At one point, while the rest of us chatted, the vice president and my toddler daughter played under the table with Millie the dog. In those days, I was far less interested in the younger Bush than in the elder, about whom I was then thinking of writing a book.
During his father's presidential campaign, W. moved to Washington, and we occasionally met for lunch at the Old Ebbitt Grill, near the White House. Probably because I wasn't a political reporter, Bush was comfortable spouting off about what he considered the bad press his father was getting, about how reporters were unfairly crucifying "a good man," as W. often described his dad. He also gently boasted of his role as his dad's watchdog on his national campaign staff. W. was certainly as smart as the next guy in Washington, but president? I never imagined it.
After GHWB was elected in 1988, I proposed my book idea to him: I would leave thePost, shadow him through his presidency, and tell the deeply personal story of what it was like to be president of the United States. Bush was intrigued enough to call his son for advice again. At a breakfast at the Hay-Adams Hotel, across Lafayette Square from the White House, with W., National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray in attendance, I made my pitch. Afterward, W. slapped me on the back and said, "I give you a B+, Walt."
Tough grader, I thought.
President Bush and I went back and forth on the book idea for the first months of his presidency before he finally decided he would not undertake the project: an embedded independent reporter would inevitably learn too many national security secrets, and perhaps a few other secrets, too. Anyway, W. and I didn't talk again during his dad's presidency. But after GHWB lost his reelection bid in 1992, my wife and I got an unexpected invitation to a White House Christmas party. That evening, the president laughed and told me that now that he was on his way out, he didn't have a long list of people he had to invite to the White House; he could invite just the people he liked. W., who had moved back to his home state and become president of the Texas Rangers baseball team, was there, and we made our quick hellos before he went off to mingle. As the evening was ending, W. pulled my wife and me aside. "Dad would like you to come up to the residence after the party," he said.
So up we went in the elevator with a Secret Service man. When we got off, the president and I fell a safe distance behind my wife, W., and First Lady Barbara Bush, allowing me to privately tell President Bush I was sorry about his defeat. A few steps into the central hall outside the Lincoln Bedroom, President Bush stopped and looked me in the eye.
"You know the worst thing about it, Walt? The embarrassment. It's just so embarrassing."
As was his way, W. was mostly angry that night, believing again that the press coverage of his father was unfair and biased. "I was a reactionary for George Bush … , " he would later tell me. "And so the criticism of my dad was unbelievably painful."
In the spring of 1993, I was in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and called W. Laura was out of town, and he invited me to his house for dinner, where I got the news: George W. Bush was thinking about running for governor of Texas. He did, and won. He won again. He became president. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Not until 2003, with the Iraq war begun, did our paths cross again.
"So what is it about history that grabs you?" I ask.
"I'm fascinated by people," Bush says, "and a lot of history is the study of individuals making a difference. … I haven't really sat and tried to figure out why I was interested. All I can tell you is I have been for a long period of time."
In high school, at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Bush had an American history teacher, Tom Lyons, who brought the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression to life. "He made history so interesting and exciting," recalls Bush, who was no star pupil, either at Andover or at Yale, where he majored in history. One of his favorite professors at Yale, Wolfgang Leonhard, had fled Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union, only to see his mother arrested under Stalin. Leonhard defected and ended up teaching the young Bush about the horrors of Soviet-era oppression. Professors such as Leonhard created in Bush, even if he was a C+ student, a lasting impression: "what it was like to live under a society in which a few made the decisions for everybody."
"When I became more sober about life"—and Bush chuckles here—"a philosophy, a kind of clarity began to take hold. … I think, as I matured, the seeds that had been planted during college began to take hold. In other words, the lessons I'd learned, which fascinated me at the time, actually became part of a philosophical foundation." Bush would eventually come to describe this foundation, starkly and simply, as "the struggle between tyranny and freedom."
"When I got elected governor and president, history gave me a chance to study the decisions of my predecessors," Bush says. As governor, he read The Raven, by Marquis James, a biography of Sam Houston, the father of Texas statehood. "I was fascinated by the story of Houston voting against secession, and reading a description of him basically being driven out of town by angry citizens. … My only point is that one lesson I learned, if they're throwing garbage on Houston, arguably Texas's most famous politician—Sam Houston Elementary School, where I went to school in Midland, was named for him!—if they're throwing garbage on him, they can throw garbage on me."
Bush remained calm and confident during his tumultuous presidency. Critics saw him as delusional; defenders saw him as self-assured. Bush believes that one of the most important stage requirements of the presidency is indeed never to signal weakness or self-doubt or confusion: "One of the things you learn about great leaders is that they never project the burdens of responsibility on others." He remembers Richard Carwardine'sLincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (one of 14 Lincoln biographies Bush read while he was president), which recounts the 16th president's perseverance through not only military defeat after defeat, stupefying troop casualties, and public ridicule, but also the death of his son Willie and the debilitating emotional turmoil of his wife.
"You're not the only person that's ever gone through hard things," Bush says of the lessons he has learned from history. "In other words, can you imagine the signal I would have sent had I said, 'Ah, why me? Why am I thrust in the middle of all this stuff?' And they had kids on the front line of combat who were actually having to do all the work."
"You faced some vicious personal attacks," I say.
"I did. But so did Abraham Lincoln." He recalls opening the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. "There's an exhibit, and the voices of opposition to Lincoln were being played. I said, 'Wow!' This guy, America's—remember now, I got Lincoln's portrait on the wall at the White House and I got a bust of Lincoln—and I hear the people calling him a baboon, just vicious."
When Bush read, in Presidential Courage, by Michael Beschloss, that historians were still debating whether George Washington had been a good president, he told Laura that if they were still debating Washington's presidency more than 200 years later, he would not worry what public opinion was saying about him now. "And the other thing for me was that I saw a great man be criticized, as you might recall," he says, referring again to the vitriol aimed at GHWB during the losing reelection campaign of 1992. "On the harshness meter, it seemed unusually harsh to me, as the son. So, therefore, when I became president, the criticism to me was nothing compared to the criticism to him. And so I was able to keep life in perspective two ways: one, through reading of history and how other leaders were treated, but also having witnessed history with my dad."
A book got me back together with President W. after a decade, my own book The Everlasting Stream, a memoir of my many years of rabbit hunting with my Kentucky father-in-law and his good-old-boy buddies. In it, I also mentioned my back-and-forth negotiations with GHWB, and my publisher thought it would be great to have a book cover blurb from the former president, who graciously agreed. When the book appeared in the fall of 2002, I sent GHWB a signed copy, along with a signed copy for W. Soon, I got a handwritten note from President W.
"Old #41 gave me your book (which I will soon read)," the president wrote. He gave his best to my family and ended with, "Come by sometime." Then, I got another handwritten letter from the president dated four days later: "I just finished The Everlasting Stream and liked it a lot. I told Laura, 'The boy can still write.' … Should you ever come back to see what you are missing, check in at the Post or rub elbows with the powerful, please call Ashley"—and he gave me his White House secretary's direct dial. "I really enjoy my job, … " he also wrote. "The only problem with this place is there aren't enough rabbit hunters up here."
I know that two invitations from the president should have spurred me to action, but I wasn't planning to be in Washington until the following August. In the meantime, at the University of Illinois, where I had become a journalism professor after leaving The Washington Post in 1996, I was surrounded by students and faculty angry about Bush's impending invasion of Iraq. In my academic cocoon, Bush was called a stupid warmonger trying to avenge his father's failure to oust Saddam Hussein, a stupid warmonger trying to make the world safe for Big Oil, a stupid warmonger trying to prop up his sagging popularity. I told colleagues that I believed Bush—right or wrong—sincerely considered Iraq a deadly threat to the United States, period. My view got me labeled a Bush conservative. Then one morning I got into my academic office building's elevator and saw this scratched into the paint: "Kill Bush."
I had to catch my breath: Was this America?
When New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd invoked my by-then ancientWashington Post Magazine article about GHWB in arguing that W. was little more than "a wealthy white man with the right ancestors," I wrote a column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch responding both to Dowd and to all the vitriol directed toward the president.
"I have told various George W. haters that they had best not underestimate the man," I wrote, "that he's smart, thoughtful in a brawny kind of way and, most of all, a good and decent man. … What I've never mentioned is that I didn't vote for George W. I disagree with him on the Supreme Court, environment, abortion, the death penalty and affirmative action. So I voted against this good and decent man. It pained me to do it. … It baffles me that grown people must convince themselves that those with whom they disagree are stupid or malevolent."
I didn't hear from the president, but a few days later, I got a poignant letter from his father. "Tell those kids in your class not to give up on POTUS," he wrote, using the popular acronym for president of the United States. "Tell them life for a president is not easy, yet I have never heard #43 whine about the loneliest job on earth, never seen him pose gazing out into the future to depict how tough his job is. Walt, he does not want war. He does want Iraq to do what it has pledged to do. Have you ever seen a president face so many tough problems all at once? I haven't." The elder Bush was clearly feeling as much pain over the criticism of his son as W. had felt over the criticism of his father.
I figured that after publicly declaring that I had not voted for W., the invitations to the White House would cease. Yet when I was in Washington the following August, in 2003—three months after the "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln—I called Ashley, as directed. To my astonishment, Ashley called back and said the president would love to see me. In the early evening a couple days later, I pulled into the southeast gate to the White House.
"Where should I park?" I asked the officer.
"Anywhere in the lot," he said. "Who are you here to see?"
"President Bush."
"Oh," he sputtered, "then pull up along the circle and park at the White House."
I rolled my little '95 Toyota Camry up to the back door, where mine was the only car. A polite Secret Service agent met me, and up I went again in the White House elevator. When the doors opened, there was President W., wearing, as I recall, a rather garish flower-print shirt and casual cream-colored slacks.
"Walt, how are you?" I remember him asking as he hugged me with one arm.
"I'm well, Mr. President. And you?"
The president had two cigars in the other hand, and he offered me one. "You still smoke cigars?" he asked.
"I thought you had gotten rid of all your bad habits," I said, as we walked through the long, elegant center hall in the second-floor residence.
"I still curse a little bit, too," he said, laughing. "Let's go out on the balcony," meaning the Truman Balcony, which overlooks the South Lawn and the Washington Monument.
The president gestured for me to sit facing the beautiful, sunny vista, and he sat facing me, his back to the yard. We lit up, puffed on our cigars, caught up on family news, talked briefly about my memoir and my column in the Post-Dispatch, which he had read. I could think of only one question to ask him: "What is it like to be president of the United States?"
President Bush leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and stared at me intently. "Are we off the record?"
"Yes."
And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I've never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as "amazing," "remarkable," "stunning."
President Bush—and he was, no doubt, by then a real president—talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran's nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.
As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me. Perhaps a half hour into the conversation, we were joined by Bush's campaign media adviser, Mark McKinnon, whom Bush had nicknamed "M-Kat."
"M-Kat used to be a Democrat, too," Bush quipped, referring to me. "I converted him."
After about an hour, Bush said that Laura was out of town and asked if McKinnon and I would like to join him for dinner. We did, of course, and we moved into the residence dining room, where Bush sat at the head of the table, McKinnon and I on either side, while the president's black cat, Willie, lounged on the far end. Really, he just kept talking. I thought perhaps it was my naiveté that was making the evening seem so remarkable. But when the president was called away from the table for a few minutes, I asked McKinnon if working in the White House was as demanding as Bush had said. He said it was, and then he got a sort of faraway look in his eyes. "But then you have an evening like tonight," I remember him saying. I left the White House in a daze. I even got lost in the pitch-black darkness and had to drive around the small parking lot for a few minutes to find my way to the gate. I called my wife, and she asked how the evening had gone. I couldn't answer.
"I've never known you to be speechless," she said, genuinely surprised.
I finally said, "It was like sitting and listening to Michael Jordan talk basketball or Pavarotti talk opera, listening to someone at the top of his game share his secrets."
My takeaway: what a difference a decade had made.
In the remaining years of his presidency, I visited Bush several more times, always in the Oval Office. He was candid, but nothing like that first night. His only remark about Barack Obama was, as I recall it, "No matter who wins, when he hears what I hear every morning, it will change him." When I met with Bush in the summer of 2008, after eating hot dogs alone together in the little dining room off the Oval Office, he put his hand on my shoulder and said he wanted me to help him with his memoir. In my spit-and-vinegar youth, I would never have considered using my journalism skills in service to a politician. But the idea of eavesdropping on the private stories of one of only 43 men who had ever held the presidency was too compelling. I told him I would help. A couple months later, I got a handwritten note from the president thanking me for my willingness but saying he had decided "to go a different route."
I was not surprised. The president is a tough grader. I must have scored only a B+.
President Bush has just about lipped his cigar to death, but still he keeps working it. "The job of the president is to be strategic in thought and to look over the horizon," he says, waving the soggy cigar. "And history helps a president look over the horizon." In the White House, Bush sometimes read for pleasure in the Treaty Room, the president's private office, lounging back in its comfortable chair with his feet up on the desk, or while exercising on the elliptical machine. But mostly, he read, as he had in Midland, at night in bed. "Reading books," Bush says, "means you're not lonely."
In Decision Points, Bush cites book after book that influenced his thinking in the White House. The Bible, for one, and he quotes Lincoln, who called it "the best gift God has given to man." After 9/11, he thought of Lincoln's declaration that the battle between freedom and tyranny was "an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory"—words, he says, that framed his policy toward the war on terror. He citesSupreme Command by Eliot Cohen, a strategic studies professor at Johns Hopkins University, who argued that a president must hold his generals accountable for results. And Dereliction of Duty by Colonel H. R. McMaster, who argued that the Vietnam War military leadership had not done enough to correct the flawed strategy adopted by President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. In Iraq, the counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold, and build" employed by McMaster, who had become commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry regiment, replaced the failed strategy of "train-and-withdraw" used by Bush's generals at the start of the war.
Just after his 2004 reelection, Bush read The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky, a Soviet dissident who had spent nine years in the gulag and who reported that he and his fellow political prisoners had been inspired by then-President Ronald Reagan's clarion—some said belligerent—call for freedom in the Soviet empire. Bush decided that he, too, would be clear in that call. In his Second Inaugural, he intoned: "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
Bush also emphasizes that he made decisions as president so as not to repeat what history had convinced him were the mistakes of former presidents. He relented on changes in his controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program when his acting attorney general, James Comey, and FBI Director Robert Mueller threatened to resign over aspects of it. He didn't want a repeat of President Richard M. Nixon's infamous Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon's attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned after refusing to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. Bush also was determined not to micromanage the military planning in Afghanistan and Iraq, as he believed Johnson and McNamara had done in Vietnam. Although his critics would disagree, he also believes he took care not to repeat the wartime overreactions that had led to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 under John Adams, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, or Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
I ask what he believes is the most important quality in great leaders.
"Willingness to stand on principle, the notion that public opinion changes back and forth and that you shouldn't chase public opinion. … Lincoln had a set of principles that were important to him. 'All men are created equal under God' is the ultimate. It's the ultimate principle for America's freedom. … But Lincoln acted on it in a difficult political environment. People forget that he was in a very tough reelection campaign, and it wasn't until Sherman makes it to Atlanta that his prospects brightened. Secondly, Lincoln had a strategic vision for the country. One of the great presidential decisions ever was to keep the country intact. … The question oftentimes in history is what would have happened if a different decision were made. We'd have been Europe."
Of his own presidency, he says, "Obviously, there were some very difficult moments, and there was some doubt as to whether or not decisions I had made were going to become fruitful. But I also realized there's a whole history of what would have happened, what are the consequences had you not made a decision. So, like on Saddam Hussein, maybe it's a historian's perspective … but no doubt in my mind, if he were in power today, all that's happening in the Middle East now would be much more dangerous." And what might have happened in Libya during the recent uprising, Bush asks, if he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair hadn't convinced Qaddafi to give up his weapons of mass destruction? The same logic applied, he says, during the financial meltdown during his last months in office. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman and a preeminent historian on the causes of the Great Depression, told Bush that unless he did something drastic, the nation would descend into depression.
"Well, I had read enough history about the Depression to know the consequences. … I didn't want history to record that there was a moment when George W. Bush could have done something to prevent the depression and chose not to." We don't know if inaction would have resulted in a depression, he says—only that he did act and there was no depression. "It's just one of those moments where you just had to move one way or the other. And I moved."
I ask, "What did you see as your principles?"
"One of them was 'freedom is universal,' which was unbelievably controversial for a period of time during my presidency, which, frankly, astonished me, given my reading of history." He paraphrases his Second Inaugural: "We'll resist tyranny at all times, all places, basically. Well, to me, you could say that was inspired by Lincoln. … Based upon the principle that deep in everybody's soul is the desire to be free. And what's interesting is, it's playing out right now," he says, referring to the populist uprisings in the Middle East.
"The interesting thing about Egypt was that of all the countries in the Middle East, Egypt had a great chance to become an example of democracy. And President Mubarak, after '82, chose not to head that way. Eventually, though, the young, educated, unemployed said, 'Wait a minute! We're tired of it!' I wasn't surprised. I wasn't surprised when the people of Iraq went to vote. I really wasn't. And took enormous risks to vote. Or the people in Afghanistan. Unbelievably inspirational moments as far as I was concerned. Others didn't see it that way, I fully understood. But, to me, it was validation of the concept that all want to be free."
His decision to launch the military surge in Iraq in 2007, at a time when the military situation was deteriorating and American public opinion had turned overwhelmingly against the war, was rooted in what he saw as the central principle of his presidency and the question historians would ask about what would happen if he did not make the decision. "The surge was, one, a belief that freedom is universal and, therefore, if given a chance, people will seize the moment. And the other calculation was, 'What does failure mean?' "
So how will history judge his presidency?
"Some people walk up and say, 'Oh, man, history is going to judge you well.' And my quip is, 'I'm not going to be around to see it.' And to me, that's one of the most important lessons you learn through history—you're just not gonna be around to see it. … I'm confident of this: that those conclusions will be more objective with time than they could conceivably be now."
I ask if he thinks President Obama has read his book.
He laughs. "If somebody said he hasn't had time to read it yet, I'd say, 'I understand.' "
I visited President Bush in the Oval Office one more time. I was thinking about doing a book about how Americans pray, and I had remembered that way back in Midland, he had advised me to read the Bible cover-to-cover, something I had done since then. He agreed to talk with me about his prayer life, and, for a final time, I journeyed to the Oval Office.
"I've thought about this conversation a lot since you asked … ," President Bush said. "I'm learning and have been learning ever since 1986, really."
That afternoon, only a few months before he would leave office, we sat beneath the famous Rembrandt Peale portrait of George Washington, and President Bush told me that he prayed daily in the White House. He prayed for spiritual insight—to "be more discerning of the Word of God." He prayed that God keep his wife and daughters protected. He prayed that our soldiers and their families be given comfort and strength. He did not pray for good weather on his daughter's wedding day, or that his father's hip surgery go well, or that the stock market rise.
"Do you pray, 'Dear God, let Congress get it right?' " I asked.
"No."
" 'Dear God, let Pelosi get it right?' "
"No, no, no, no, no, God is not the minority leader"—and then he laughed and corrected himself. "Majority leader. … Nor do I pray for a Republican victory. … I really don't."
He prayed before his presidential debates, kept a little cross in his pocket that he would squeeze: " 'Dear God, I pray that I speak clearly and bring calm.' " He prayed before his State of the Union addresses, alone in the little holding room: " 'Dear God, I pray that you shine through me today.' "
"And the prayers of the people," he said, referring to those who pray for him, "this is where I get into a little shaky ground because I can't prove it." But Bush said he had actually felt the prayers of people asking God to comfort him. "And so the pop psychologists say, 'Well, he's grasping for affection.' … I tell people all the time this—that the prayers of the people matter. And I do have a sense of calm." Perhaps, he said, his prayers and the prayers of others are the reason. "I've been asked this some: 'Do you think God wanted you to go to war?' I didn't ask in prayer. … I don't think that's fair to God to do that."
"Have you prayed, 'Dear God, if I was wrong about this, forgive me'?"
"No, no, no. First of all, I don't believe I'm wrong about it. I don't believe it's wrong to confront evil. And I don't believe it's wrong to give people the opportunity to live in a free society. … I don't want to bring God down into a presidential debate over 'yes' or 'no' into Iraq."
"Do you have compassion for your enemy?"
"I have yet to forgive Osama bin Laden, and, frankly, haven't prayed [for him] because I think he needs to be brought to justice in order to prevent him from killing other people."
THE JOURNALIST AND THE SPIES
The murder of a reporter who exposed Pakistan's secrets.
by Dexter FilkinsSEPTEMBER 19, 2011
Pakistani intelligence officials warned Shahzad to curb his reporting, which revealed links between the military and Al Qaeda.
On May 30th, as the sun beat down on the plains of eastern Pakistan, a laborer named Muhammad Shafiq walked along the top of a dam on the Upper Jhelum Canal to begin his morning routine of clearing grass and trash that had drifted into the intake grates overnight. The water flow seemed normal, but when he started removing the debris with a crane the machinery seized up. He looked down and saw, trapped in the grates, a human form.
Shafiq called some colleagues, and together they pulled out the body. Occasionally, farmers and water buffalo drown in the canal, float downstream, and get stuck in the grates, but never a man in a suit. "Even his tie and shoes were still on," Shafiq told me. He called the police, and by the next day they had determined the man's identity: Syed Saleem Shahzad, a journalist known for his exposés of the Pakistani military. Shahzad had not shown up the previous afternoon for a television interview that was to be taped in Islamabad, a hundred miles to the northwest. His disappearance was being reported on the morning news, his image flashed on television screens across the country. Meanwhile, the zamindar—feudal lord—of a village twenty miles upstream from the dam called the police about a white Toyota Corolla that had been abandoned by the canal, in the shade of a banyan tree. The police discovered that the car belonged to Shahzad. Its doors were locked, and there was no trace of blood.
The previous afternoon, Shahzad had left his apartment, in the placid F-8/4 neighborhood of Islamabad, and driven toward Dunya studios, about five miles away. It was five-thirty; the television interview was scheduled for six. According to a local journalist who talked to a source in one of Pakistan's cell-phone companies, Shahzad's phone went dead twelve minutes later. His route passed through some of the country's most secure neighborhoods, and no one had reported seeing anything suspicious. Some Pakistanis speculated that Shahzad might even have known the people who took him away.
It was a particularly anxious time in Pakistan. Four weeks earlier, American commandos had flown, undetected, into Abbottabad, a military town northwest of Islamabad, and killed Osama bin Laden. The Pakistani Army, which for more than sixty years has portrayed itself as the country's guardian and guide, was deeply embarrassed: either it had helped to hide bin Laden or it had failed to realize that he was there. Certainly it hadn't known that the Americans were coming.
Less than three weeks after the Abbottabad raid, the Army was humiliated a second time. A group of militants, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests, breached one of the country's most secure bases, the Pakistan Naval Air Station-Mehran, outside Karachi, and blew up two P-3C Orion surveillance planes that had been bought from the United States. At least ten Pakistanis affiliated with the base died. The components of several nuclear warheads were believed to be housed nearby, and the implication was clear: Pakistan's nuclear arsenal was not safe. In barracks across the country, military officers questioned the competence of Pakistan's two most powerful men, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani, the chief of the Army staff, and General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or I.S.I. Some officers even demanded that the Generals resign. Ordinary Pakistanis, meanwhile, publicly disparaged the one institution that, until then, had seemed to function.
Amid this tumult, Shahzad wrote a sensational story for Asia Times Online, the Web site that employed him, saying that the attack on the Mehran base had been carried out by Al Qaeda—not by the Pakistani Taliban, which had claimed responsibility. He said that the Mehran assault had been intended to punish the military for having conducted "massive internal crackdowns on Al Qaeda affiliates within the Navy." A number of sailors had been detained for plotting to kill Americans, and one "was believed to have received direct instructions from Hakeemullah Mehsud"—the chief of the Pakistani Taliban. It was not the first time that Shahzad had exposed links between Islamist militants and the armed forces—a connection that Pakistan's generals have denied for years. But the Mehran article was his biggest provocation yet.
Shahzad, whose parents migrated from India after Partition, making him a muhajir—Urdu for "immigrant"—was an affable outsider within Pakistan's journalistic circles. Asia Times Online is not connected to any of the country's established newspapers; its editorial operations are based in Thailand. Shahzad had no local editor to guide him or restrain him. Only a few other journalists had written as aggressively about Islamist extremism in the military, and not all of them had survived.
A hallmark of Shahzad's reporting was that it frequently featured interviews with Islamist militants, including Al Qaeda fighters. His work was sometimes inaccurate, but it held up often enough so that other journalists followed his leads. Perhaps because he had cultivated so many militants as sources, he occasionally seemed to glorify the men who were carrying out suicide bombings and assassinations. In 2009, he published a breathless account of a meeting with Ilyas Kashmiri, a top Al Qaeda leader. Shahzad noted that the terrorist "cut a striking figure," was "strongly built," and had a powerful handshake, adding, "Ilyas, with his unmatched guerrilla expertise, turns the strategic vision into reality, provides the resources and gets targets achieved, but he chooses to remain in the background and very low key." At other times, like many Pakistani journalists, he seemed to spare the intelligence services from the most damning details in his notebooks. But on several important occasions—as in the case of the Mehran attack—he wrote what appeared to be undiluted truth about the Pakistani state's deepest dilemmas.
An autopsy report showed that Shahzad had died slowly and painfully, his rib cage smashed on both sides, his lungs and liver ruptured. Someone, apparently, had intended to send a message by killing him.
The media in Pakistan immediately suggested a culprit. According to the newspaper Dawn, it was believed that Shahzad "had been picked up by the I.S.I. because of his recent story on the P.N.S.-Mehran base attack."
Two days after Shahzad's body was found, an I.S.I. official made a statement denying that its agents had played any role in the killing. Shahzad's death, he said, was "unfortunate and tragic," adding, "Baseless accusations against the country's sensitive agencies for their alleged involvement in Shahzad's murder are totally unfounded." Forty-six journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 2001, and the I.S.I. had never before issued such a stark denial. The statement hardly quieted suspicion; in fact, it heightened it. "Everybody knows who did it," Muhammad Faizan, a colleague of Shahzad's at Asia Times Online and a friend, told me. "But no one can say."
I met Saleem Shahzad nine days before he disappeared, and he seemed to know that his time was running out. It was May 20th, and Islamabad was full of conspiracy theories about the Abbottabad raid: bin Laden was still alive; Kiyani and Pasha had secretly helped the Americans with the raid. Mostly, the public radiated anger and shame.
I had called Shahzad to discuss a pair of stories he'd written about bin Laden. In March, five weeks before the raid in Abbottabad, Shahzad claimed that bin Laden had suddenly come across the radar screens of several intelligence agencies: he was on the move. The story also reported that bin Laden had held a strategy meeting with an old friend, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan mujahideen whom the State Department considers a "global terrorist." Then, just after the Abbottabad raid, Shahzad published a report claiming that the Pakistani leadership had known that the Americans were planning a raid of some sort, and had even helped. What the Pakistanis didn't know, Shahzad wrote, was that the person the Americans were looking for was bin Laden. Both stories struck me as possibly dubious, but it was clear that Shahzad had numerous sources inside Pakistani intelligence and other intelligence agencies in the region.
Shahzad and I agreed to meet at a Gloria Jean's coffee shop, not far from his home. For years, Islamabad was a sleepy town of bureaucrats; however dangerous the rest of Pakistan was, the capital was usually quiet. This was no longer true. In 2008, the Marriott Hotel, only a few miles from Gloria Jean's, was destroyed by a suicide bomber, who killed or wounded more than three hundred people. Lately, the Kohsar Market—the collection of expensive boutiques where the Gloria Jean's is situated—had been declared off limits for American Embassy personnel on weekends, out of fear that it would be attacked.
Shahzad and I took our coffees upstairs. He pointed to a table in an alcove by a window. "Welcome to my private office," he said, with a smile. "No one will be able to hear us here."
We talked for a few minutes about the Abbottabad raid and the stories he'd written. Shahzad was tall and self-possessed; he had thick black hair and a round face offset by a trim beard. He was warm and expressive, the sort of reporter whom people talked to because he seemed genuinely nice. No wonder he got all those scoops, I thought. He was wearing Western clothes and spoke flawless English. He told me that he knew some of my colleagues, and offered to help me out in any way that he could.
And then Shahzad changed the subject. What he really wanted to talk about was his own safety. "Look, I'm in danger," he said. "I've got to get out of Pakistan." He added that he had a wife and three kids, and they weren't safe, either. He'd been to London recently, and someone there had promised to help him move to England.
The trouble, he said, had begun on March 25th, the day that he published the story about bin Laden's being on the move. The next morning, he got a phone call from an officer at the I.S.I., summoning him to the agency's headquarters, in Aabpara, a neighborhood in eastern Islamabad. When Shahzad showed up, he was met by three I.S.I. officers. The lead man, he said, was a naval officer, Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir, who serves as the head of the I.S.I.'s media division.
"They were very polite," Shahzad told me. He glanced over his shoulder. "They don't shout, they don't threaten you. This is the way they operate. But they were very angry with me." The I.S.I. officers asked him to write a second story, retracting the first. He refused.
And then Admiral Nazir made a remark so bizarre that Shahzad said he had thought about it every day since.
"We want the world to believe that Osama is dead," Nazir said.
Bin Laden was still alive, his whereabouts presumably unknown, when that conversation occurred. I pressed Shahzad. What did they mean by that?
He shrugged and glanced over his shoulder again. They were obviously trying to protect bin Laden, he said.
"Do you think the I.S.I. was hiding bin Laden?" I asked him.
Shahzad shrugged again and said yes. But he hadn't been able to prove it. (The I.S.I. calls this claim an "unsubstantiated accusation of a very serious nature.")
Shahzad said that he'd left I.S.I. headquarters that day thinking that he needed to be careful. Now, two months later, there was another reason to worry: a book that he'd written, "Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban," was being released in three days, in both Pakistan and the West. The book, written in English, explored even more deeply the taboo subject of the I.S.I.'s relationship with Islamist militants.
"They're going to be really mad," Shahzad said.
Since the founding of Pakistan, in 1947, one of the country's central myths has been the indispensability of the Army. Along with its appendage the I.S.I., it has intervened regularly in domestic politics, rigging votes and overthrowing elected governments. Civilians have been viewed by the Army as a collective nuisance, easily undermined or ignored.
In the spring of 1999, when General Pervez Musharraf, then the chief of the Army staff, sent Pakistani soldiers into the Kargil region of India—setting off a war between the two countries—he didn't even bother telling the Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. (Musharraf denies this.) Sharif tried to fire him, but Musharraf threw Sharif in jail and took control of the government. Musharraf ruled for nine years, bullying the Supreme Court and fixing elections, and exhausting the public's patience for military rule. Since Musharraf left office, in 2008, the military has continued to pay the country's civilian leaders little respect. In October, 2009, after an attack by Islamist militants on the Army's headquarters in Rawalpindi, Rehman Malik, Pakistan's Interior Minister, was prohibited from entering the compound. The country's current President, Asif Zardari, is seen as serving merely at the military's pleasure.
Pakistan is one of the world's poorest countries, but it has the eighth-largest army, which takes up nearly a quarter of the country's federal budget. The Army's oligarchs have appropriated a remarkable amount of the country's wealth; they have substantial investments in the oil-and-gas industry and own shopping centers, farms, banks, and factories. Members of the Army are believed to traffic in narcotics, guns, and mercenaries. Officers live behind high walls, in manicured compounds of a luxury unimaginable to the average Pakistani. Army officers send their children to special schools and avail themselves of special hospitals. "The Pakistani Army is like a mafia," Ayesha Siddiqa, an independent author who has written extensively about the Pakistani military, said. "The Army has its own interests, and it will eliminate any opposition to those interests, including civilian governments."
But the most pernicious of the Army's activities has been its long alliance with Islamist militants. Since the late seventies, the military and the I.S.I. have trained and directed thousands of militants to fight in Indian Kashmir—an area that Pakistan has claimed since independence—and in Afghanistan. For years, the I.S.I. has offered sanctuary to Taliban leaders, who have used Pakistan as a base for planning operations.
In an article published in October, 2010, Shahzad reported that I.S.I. officials knew where top Taliban leaders were hiding in Karachi, yet had done nothing to pick them up. Some Western officials believe that the I.S.I.'s protection extends to the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Omar. In May, a retired senior Pakistani military officer told me that Mullah Omar was living in Pakistan, with the knowledge of the country's security agencies. "Our people have his address," he said. The I.S.I. also provides support to the Haqqani network, a Taliban-related guerrilla group. Publicly, Pakistan's generals claim that they cannot find Taliban and Haqqani leaders. Although many American officials consider this a lie, Pakistan continues to receive as much as three billion dollars a year from the U.S.—most of it for the military.
In recent years, as Pakistan has edged toward anarchy, the I.S.I. has grown bolder and more violent. This spring, a witness testified in federal court in Chicago that I.S.I. agents were deeply involved in the planning of the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008, which killed a hundred and sixty-three people. The witness, a Pakistani-American named David Headley, said that he had received espionage training from I.S.I. operatives, and that he had provided hours of video surveillance of the Mumbai target to the I.S.I. and a terrorist group called Lashkar-e-Taiba. Headley testified that he understood Lashkar to be operating "under the umbrella of the I.S.I." Shortly after the Mumbai attack, Shahzad published an article alleging that the operation was based on an I.S.I. scheme for an attack on another Indian target. At the time, the I.S.I. was under the direction of General Kiyani.
Since the late nineties, the I.S.I.'s links to bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been strong enough to expose some embarrassing entanglements. In 1998, the Clinton Administration fired cruise missiles at a jihadi training camp in Afghanistan, in the hope of killing bin Laden. The missiles missed him, but they killed several Islamist militants—and the team of I.S.I. agents who were training them.
The agency's links to bin Laden continued after the 9/11 attacks. This May, I travelled to Afghanistan to meet an I.S.I. agent named Fida Muhammad, who had been arrested by Afghan intelligence agents. He was being held in Pul-i-Charki prison, outside Kabul. When I arrived, the Afghan guards brought Muhammad to a small room and left him alone with me and my translator. Muhammad told me that he'd been a prisoner since 2007. He was from Sada, a village in the Federal Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. He described himself as a civilian employee of the I.S.I. For much of the past decade, he said, he had escorted Haqqani fighters from their sanctuaries in Pakistan into Afghanistan, where they fought against the Americans. He had been hired for his knowledge of the trails that wind through the mountainous border. "I can pass right under the noses of the Americans and the Afghans, and they will never see me," he said. He'd been arrested while spying on Indian agents inside Afghanistan.
Muhammad told me that his most memorable job came in December, 2001, when he was part of a large I.S.I. operation intended to help jihadi fighters escape from Tora Bora—the mountainous region where bin Laden was trapped for several weeks, until he mysteriously slipped away. Muhammad said that when the American bombing of Tora Bora began, in late November, he and other I.S.I. operatives had gone there, and into other parts of eastern Afghanistan, to evacuate training camps whose occupants included Al Qaeda fighters.
"We told them, 'Shave your beards, change your clothes, and follow us,' " Muhammad said. "We led them to the border with Pakistan and told them they were on their own. And then we went back for more."
Muhammad was part of a four-man team, and there were dozens of such teams. He estimated that the I.S.I. teams evacuated as many as fifteen hundred militants from Tora Bora and other camps: "Not only Arabs but Pakistanis, Uzbeks, and Chechens. I didn't see bin Laden. But there were so many Arabs." The operation had been sanctioned at the highest levels of the I.S.I. "There are people in the I.S.I. who believe the militants are valuable assets," he said. (The I.S.I. denied Muhammad's account.)
Amrullah Saleh directed the Afghan intelligence service from 2004 to 2010. He recently told me that in 2005 his men arrested an I.S.I. operative, Syed Akbar Sabir, who had escorted bin Laden from the Pakistani region of Chitral to Peshawar, passing through Kunar Province, in Afghanistan, along the way. "We believed that he was part of the I.S.I. operation to care for bin Laden," Saleh said. In 2006, Sabir was convicted in an Afghan court of aiding the insurgency, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. I spoke to him at Pul-i-Charki in May. He told me that he was a trained physician and a member of a militia financed by the Pakistani Army, but he denied that he was an I.S.I. operative.
Since the raid in Abbottabad, U.S. officials have openly suggested that the Pakistani Army or the I.S.I. helped to hide bin Laden, but hard evidence has yet to be found. Perhaps the most suggestive hint of official involvement comes in the shadowy figure of Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj, who was the director of the I.S.I. in 2007 and 2008. He was very close to Musharraf—they are reportedly related by marriage. Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer, says that Taj was deeply involved with Pakistani militants, particularly those fighting against India. Riedel, who oversaw President Barack Obama's initial review of strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said, "Taj was very close to the militant networks. And his fingerprints were on everything." In 2008, American officials successfully pressured Musharraf to remove Taj, suspecting that he had been involved in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, earlier that year.
Before taking over the I.S.I., Taj was the commandant of the Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad. That is, he was the senior military official in Abbottabad at the time that American officials believe bin Laden began living there. Taj retired from the Pakistani Army in April, just days before the raid in Abbottabad. Attempts to track him down in Pakistan were unsuccessful.
Riedel said, "Taj is the right person at the right time. If the I.S.I. was helping to hide bin Laden, then it would make sense to park him somewhere permanently. Who better to be the park policeman than Musharraf's favorite general?"
Shahzad was not the only Pakistani journalist whose reporting made him a target of the state. Umar Cheema, a reporter for the News, an important Pakistani daily, has published numerous articles on the military's failures. At three in the morning on September 4, 2010, Cheema was driving home from a tea shop in Islamabad, where he'd met some friends, when he was forced off the road by two unmarked Toyotas. Two men in police uniforms approached his car. They told him that he was suspected of running over and killing a pedestrian.
The policemen directed Cheema into the back seat of a black Land Cruiser, where two other men handcuffed him and covered his face with a shawl. After two hours, the car came to a stop. He was led up a stairwell, and a heavy door closed behind him. Cheema asked, "What police station have we come to?" One of the men responded, "Shut up." "That's when I knew I was in trouble," Cheema told me. During the next half hour, he was stripped, beaten with rods and a leather strap, and sexually humiliated. "I was crying out to God," Cheema recalled. Then the shawl covering his face was removed: standing around him were five masked men. They shaved his head and eyebrows and took degrading photographs of him. "We're going to make an example of you," one of the men said.
Cheema, who is thirty-four, described his ordeal over tea at my hotel in Islamabad. He spoke without hesitation, and seemed remarkably fit, given all that he'd been through.
The torturers, Cheema said, put the shawl back over his face and drove him to a village a hundred miles from Islamabad. One of the men removed the cuffs and told him to walk into the street. "You'll find your car right over there," the man said. "Don't look back." They'd taken Cheema's glasses, wallet, and cell phone, and given him a hundred rupees—the equivalent of a dollar and twenty cents. "That was for the toll on the way home," he said.
Cheema's captors made it clear that they were working for the government. "You are being punished for your reporting," one of them said during the interrogation. Cheema had no doubt that he had been detained by the I.S.I.; ten times over the previous six months, he told me, the agency had warned associates of his that it was unhappy about his reporting. (The I.S.I. denied that it had anything to do with the assault.)
Pakistani journalists say that it is not easy to predict when the security agencies will detain, torture, or kill a reporter. Pakistan is a peculiar state: it is unjust and autocratic, but it is also partly open and partly democratic. The media there is loud, lively, and varied, and there are good newspapers, magazines, and television networks that investigate official misconduct. And although reporters in Pakistan are routinely threatened and sometimes brutalized, a small cohort seems able to write more freely about sensitive subjects.
The journalist best known outside Pakistan is Ahmed Rashid, the author of several books on Pakistan and Afghanistan; his book "Taliban" was a best-seller in the U.S. He has published dozens of revelatory reports on the military and intelligence services. Rashid says that he has been threatened repeatedly by the I.S.I. over the years, and was once warned personally by Musharraf. Rashid's colleagues believe that his prominence in the West has protected him; he writes regularly for The New York Review of Books and the Financial Times.
These days, Rashid says, he has had to be more careful. After a recent threat, he stayed out of Pakistan for a couple of months before returning to his home, in Lahore. "There is a red line in Pakistan—there has always been a red line," Rashid said. "But, after Saleem Shahzad, no one knows where the red line is anymore." He went on, "It's debilitating. You can't really go out and report. Sometimes you just sit and think about what is going to happen."
Saleem Shahzad wasn't well known outside the country. Asia Times Online, which he joined in 2000, had only a small presence in Pakistan, and was struggling to attract international readers. Shahzad seemed to enjoy the freedom that the Web site offered, even if it meant that he had to surrender some influence. In the preface to "Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban," he wrote, "Independent reporting for the alternative media best suits my temperament as it encourages me to seek the truth beyond 'conventional wisdom.' As a result, I study people and situations from a relatively uncompromised position."
In the decade after 9/11, Shahzad's reporting increasingly attracted notice within Pakistani media circles. Many of his articles for Asia Times Online were reprinted in the Pakistani press. What stood out was his legwork: he often travelled to the tribal areas near the Afghan border to meet with members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Zafar Sheikh, Shahzad's best friend and a local correspondent for the Saudi state television network, told me, "Saleem would say, 'Let's have a joyride!,' and then we would go off to somewhere crazy to meet the militants." Shahzad took to the rugged life. During the government's offensive against militants in the Swat Valley, in 2009, rebels were impressed by his ability to sleep, untroubled, for hours in the open air.
Sheikh warned Shahzad that the stories he was writing could get him in trouble with the authorities. "I told him so many times, 'Saleem, you're going to be killed, what you're doing is too dangerous,' but he was reckless."
In September, 2009, Pakistani officials announced that Ilyas Kashmiri, the Al Qaeda operative, had been killed in a drone strike. On October 15th, Shahzad published a memorable rebuttal—his account of meeting Kashmiri, with a dateline from North Waziristan. "We planned this battle to bring the Great Satan and its allies into this swamp," Kashmiri told him. Shahzad got the story right: Kashmiri was still alive. The article's tone bordered on gloating. Shahzad wrote that Kashmiri's arrival in the border areas would send "a chill down spines in Washington as they realized that with his vast experience, he could turn unsophisticated battle patterns in Afghanistan into audacious modern guerrilla warfare."
Tony Allison, a South African who works in the Thailand offices of Asia Times Online, was Shahzad's editor. "Sometimes, Saleem would disappear for three or four days, and I wouldn't know where he'd gone, and then he would emerge with a great story," he told me. "I knew he could get the story and I trusted him."
Shahzad was not universally respected by his peers. No doubt there was some resentment over his scoops. But sometimes he seemed to be regurgitating the stories his sources told him without checking whether they were true. Sometimes he got things seriously wrong. His story claiming that Pakistan's leaders assisted the Americans' raid in Abbottabad, for instance, is not supported by any available evidence.
"I liked Saleem, but I didn't always know what was right and what was wrong," Cyril Almeida, the chief political columnist for Dawn, told me. "It was difficult to know where he was getting this stuff."
In Shahzad's book, there are many vivid anecdotes; for instance, he details an incident in which an Al Qaeda militant and former Army officer, Major Haroon Ashik, smuggled a shipment of night-vision goggles through Islamabad International Airport, assisted by an aide to President Musharraf. The story seems solid, as it is based on an interview with Ashik. But the book's analysis is shallow: Shahzad depicts Al Qaeda not as an embattled and fragmented entity, as most of the available evidence suggests it is, but, rather, as an Islamist version of SPECTRE, from the James Bond films—a monolithic, secretive power whose influence stretches across the globe. Similarly, instead of portraying the group as a far-flung franchise operation, as it is widely seen in the West, he claims that Al Qaeda has been intimately involved in directing other militant groups in the region, including the Taliban.
Shahzad's book, even more than his daily journalism, leaves the impression that he harbored sympathy for the killers he writes about. Not only does he describe with enthusiasm the exploits of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters like Ilyas Kashmiri; he refers several times to "Khurasan"—an outdated term for Central Asia that Al Qaeda followers often use to denote the region. At the end of the book, Shahzad writes, in an oddly prophetic register, "The promised messiah, the Mahdi, will then rise in the Middle East and Al Qaeda will mobilize its forces from Ancient Khurasan for the liberation of Palestine, where a final victory will guarantee the revival of a Global Muslim Caliphate."
When Shahzad was in college, he was a member of the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political party that has fed thousands of recruits into militant groups. Some of his classmates received training as guerrilla fighters, and Shahzad told other journalists that these young men became key sources for his reporting in the field. In recent years, friends and colleagues say, Shahzad stopped supporting Jamaat-e-Islami, finding its ideology too radical.
Although Shahzad didn't support the militants' aims, his feelings for them ran deep. "I think Saleem had great sympathy for the militants, not because he believed in the caliphate but because he understood their side of the story," Allison, his editor at Asia Times Online, said. "He understood and empathized with them. He had empathy for the Western soldiers in Afghanistan, too. This is why he was trusted by the militants. He did not share their vision, but he understood their vision."
Shahzad was socially conservative: he didn't drink, and friends and colleagues describe him as pious. But they say that he didn't support Islamist violence. "Saleem felt that there was a kind of endgame unfolding between the militants and the Americans, because the Americans had been so stupid in Afghanistan," Hameed Haroon, the publisher of Dawn, told me. "This permeated his writing. But he was against the terror."
Because Shahzad had relationships with a number of I.S.I. agents, he was one of a small class of reporters more likely to become targets of the intelligence agencies. Talking to the I.S.I. allowed him to get privileged information, and to verify information that he had picked up on his own. But maintaining a relationship with the I.S.I. may have created expectations of loyalty. Almeida, the Dawn columnist, told me that he refuses to talk to the I.S.I.: "Once you start talking to these people, that creates a relationship, and then they think you owe them. Then, if you do something they don't like, they feel betrayed."
Ayesha Siddiqa, the independent author who has written scathingly of the military, said that, two years ago, she turned down an offer to meet General Pasha, the I.S.I. chief. "Once you go into the headquarters, they have you," she told me. "They can photograph you there, they can put out the word that you were visiting, they can blackmail you." Siddiqa, too, has been threatened repeatedly by associates of the military and the I.S.I. Since Shahzad's death, she has felt more pressure than ever before. "It wears on me," she said. "Some days, you can't work. I know that they could come for me anytime."
Siddiqa spoke to Shahzad only hours before he disappeared. At about 4 P.M. on May 29th, he called her on her cell phone. She was driving, she said, so the conversation was brief. Shahzad seemed interested in some aspect of official Pakistani duplicity. She recalls him saying, "Pakistan should stop lying to the U.S.—even if we don't want to do what they want us to do, we should stop lying about it." They agreed to speak later that day.
According to Shahzad's friends and colleagues, he had been warned by the I.S.I. at least three times before he finally disappeared. Shahzad documented one of those encounters in remarkable detail.
On October 16, 2010, Shahzad published an article about Abdul Ghani Baradar, then the deputy commander of the Taliban. The next day, he was summoned to the I.S.I.'s headquarters. The Baradar story touched on the I.S.I.'s relationship with Taliban leaders—an extremely sensitive subject. Earlier that year, American and Pakistani intelligence agents had arrested Baradar during a raid in Karachi. At the time, both the Americans and the Pakistanis hailed Baradar's arrest as a breakthrough in their difficult relationship. But I.S.I. agents later told a different story: they had orchestrated Baradar's arrest, after discovering that he was holding secret peace talks with Afghanistan's leaders, without informing his I.S.I. handlers. The I.S.I. agents had set up the raid in Karachi in order to cut off the peace talks. Shahzad, in his October article, wrote that the I.S.I. had quietly released Baradar.
After a tense meeting with two I.S.I. officers about the article, Shahzad called Ali Dayan Hassan, the director of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan. Hassan suggested that Shahzad make notes of the meeting. Shahzad did so, and sent a copy of them to Hassan. Shahzad wrote that he was met at headquarters by two I.S.I. officials—Commodore Khalid Pervaiz and Rear Admiral Nazir, the same officer who gave him the warning in March.
Nazir and Pervaiz were courteous as they asked him to reveal his sources for the Baradar story. Shahzad refused. They asked him to publicly retract the story, and Shahzad refused to do that, too. The I.S.I. officers did not push him, he wrote.
But at the very end of the conversation Nazir made an ominous remark. He said, "We recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data—diaries and other material—during the interrogation. The terrorist had a hit list with him." He then added, "If I find your name on the list, I will certainly let you know."
Seven months later, on May 22nd, the naval base at Mehran came under attack. The siege lasted fifteen hours and was covered, live, on Pakistani television. Footage shot by cameramen just outside the base showed plumes of fire from the ruined jets spiralling into the night sky.
Five days after the incident, Shahzad published his report saying that the attack was a reprisal for the Navy's arrest of sailors who were Al Qaeda sympathizers. High-level naval officers, Shahzad wrote, had been secretly negotiating with Al Qaeda over the fate of the detained sailors. To move the discussions along, militants had already carried out three attacks on naval targets in Karachi.
Shahzad quoted naval officers as saying that the arrest of the Islamist sailors had set off a chain reaction. "That was the beginning of huge trouble," one officer told Shahzad. According to the article, top officers in the Navy believed that the ease with which the militants had attacked the naval base indicated there was a "sizable Al Qaeda infiltration within the Navy's ranks." Indeed, Shahzad wrote, the Mehran attack had been carried out by a group of fighters led by Ilyas Kashmiri—the Al Qaeda fighter whom he had praised for his "unmatched guerrilla expertise."
Three days after the attack, the naval base at Mehran got a new commander: Commodore Pervaiz, one of the two I.S.I. officers who, in October, had warned Shahzad to tone down his reporting. The embarrassing Asia Times Online report was published on Pervaiz's second day in command. Two days later, Shahzad disappeared.
Commodore Zafar Iqbal, an I.S.I. spokesman, told me that Pervaiz would not be available for an interview. "Out of the question," he said.
The Islamization of the Pakistani military causes deep worry among policymakers in the United States and Europe. Pakistan, which is believed to possess about a hundred nuclear warheads, has the fastest-growing atomic arsenal in the world. The fear is that rogue members of the military could help a terrorist group like Al Qaeda acquire a warhead, or that a group of Islamist military officers could overthrow the government. "The Pakistanis are worried to death about the security of their nuclear weapons," a senior American military officer told me. "They would never tell us that, but we are sure of it."
Even before the attack on Mehran, there had been signs of violent radicalism inside the Pakistani military. Two assassination attempts against President Musharraf in 2003, both of which nearly succeeded, were carried out by Al Qaeda fighters who were assisted by Air Force officers. And in October, 2009, came the attack on the Army's headquarters in Rawalpindi, killing twenty-three people. The attackers wore Army uniforms and seemed to know the layout of the headquarters. One of the lead attackers was a former medic in the Pakistani Army.
Shahzad argues in his book that it was around the time of the attempts on Musharraf's life that Al Qaeda made its first substantial inroads into the Army. "From 2003 onwards Al Qaeda succeeded in sowing the seeds of dissent within Pakistan's armed forces," Shahzad writes. "Pakistan's tribal youths and formerly pro-establishment jihadi cadres moved away from Pakistan's ruling establishment and promised allegiance to Al Qaeda."
In the weeks after the Abbottabad raid, Islamist groups tried to capitalize on the outpouring of anti-American anger inside the Pakistani military. The most active group appears to have been Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global movement that advocates a peaceful restoration of the caliphate, the theocratic state that once ruled the Islamic world from Spain to the Arabian Sea. Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned in Pakistan, but it is allowed to operate in many countries, including the United Kingdom.
After the attack on the Mehran base, people working on behalf of Hizb ut-Tahrir distributed leaflets at military bases and in cantonments in Karachi, with the aim of stirring up a revolt. One leaflet said, "O true officers of the Pakistan Army! Your leaders broke their promises again. . . . These traitorous leaders are spilling your blood and the blood of Muslims in Afghanistan and the tribal areas, and they are doing this for America. . . . This is a request for you to prepare a plan to give power to Hizb ut-Tahrir." The incidents, which took place on May 3rd, May 7th, and June 23rd, were confirmed by Commodore Iqbal.
Pakistan's military leaders have become acutely nervous about Hizb ut-Tahrir, and about the Islamist threat more generally. In June, they announced the arrest of Brigadier Ali Khan, who worked at Army headquarters, because of alleged associations with Hizb ut-Tahrir. According to Pakistani press accounts, Brigadier Khan had denounced Kiyani and Pasha in language similar to that used in the leaflets.
Iqbal told me that Khan's arrest was approved at the highest levels. "You don't just arrest a brigadier," he said. "It's a very big deal." Some American officials believe that the arrest of Khan, who was only months from retirement, was designed to send a message to lower-ranking officers that Islamist sentiment—and insubordination—would not be tolerated. "Khan was a fall guy," the senior American military officer told me. Khan's arrest may have been ordered to reassure the U.S. as well. American officials say that Kiyani and Pasha, for all their faults, are the best allies the U.S. is likely to get.
The attack on the Mehran base was especially troubling, because it could be seen as a test run for an assault on one of Pakistan's nuclear bases. "You have to appreciate how impressive the attack in Karachi was," the senior American military officer said. "They practiced it. They knew the layout of the base. They probably built a mock-up of the place. And no one knew a thing."
Commodore Iqbal did not rule out the possibility that the attackers were helped by Al Qaeda sympathizers inside the base, but said that there was "no proof" yet. At least three Pakistani sailors have been court-martialled.
The presence of Islamists in the Navy, and at Mehran, was not a secret among Pakistanis. But Shahzad's article was particularly incendiary. Not only did he report that sailors at the base had helped the attackers; he wrote that the Navy's leadership was bargaining directly with Al Qaeda. "Consider the time when Saleem's piece came out," a high-level American official told me. "The military felt humiliated. It felt backed into a corner." The official added, "When you're backed into a corner like that, you strike back."
The first order to harm Shahzad was issued shortly after his article on the Mehran attack appeared. The initial directive was not to kill him but to rough him up, possibly in the same way that Cheema had been dealt with. But a senior American official confirms that, at some point before Shahzad was taken away, the directive was changed. He was to be murdered.
Five weeks after the killing, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said publicly that it had been "sanctioned by the government" of Pakistan. In fact, according to the American official, reliable intelligence indicates that the order to kill Shahzad came from a senior officer on General Kiyani's staff. The officer made it clear that he was speaking on behalf of Kiyani himself. (General Athar Abbas, the spokesman for the Pakistani Army, called this allegation "preposterous.")
After the discovery of Shahzad's body, some of his friends and family members told me they believed that the I.S.I. agents had meant only to beat him, and that things got out of hand. They had reason to think so. A year earlier, during an altercation with a guard outside a social club in Islamabad, Shahzad had been shot. Shahzad's brother-in-law, Hamza Ameer, told me that the guard had become angry after Shahzad complained about being denied entry, because he had forgotten his membership card. The bullet had penetrated his liver, and it remained lodged near his spine. (According to Ameer, Shahzad eventually pardoned the guard in a Pakistani court, as is allowed under the law, so the guard went free.) Shahzad's autopsy report says that a ruptured liver is one of the things that killed him.
But Dr. Mohammed Farrukh Kamal, one of the physicians who performed the autopsy, told me that Shahzad had been beaten with a heavy instrument, like a metal rod, and he dismissed the notion that Shahzad had been killed by mistake. "You don't hit a person that hard by accident," he told me. "They meant to kill him."
Shahzad's journalism may not have been the sole reason that he was targeted. I.S.I. officials may have become convinced that Shahzad was working for a foreign intelligence agency. This could have elevated him in the eyes of the military from a troublesome reporter who deserved a beating to a foreign agent who needed to be killed.
In fact, Shahzad, at the time of his death, was in contact with several foreign intelligence officials. He told me that a Saudi intelligence official was among those who had told him that bin Laden had met with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the mujahideen now considered a terrorist. Shahzad himself, under questioning from the I.S.I., had admitted that another source for that story was General Bismillah Khan—then the Interior Minister of Afghanistan, and a loathed figure in the Pakistani military.
More crucially, it appears that, in the months before Shahzad was killed, some foreign intelligence agencies tried to recruit him. Roger van Zwanenberg, the publisher of Pluto Press, the London imprint that released Shahzad's book, told me that members of British intelligence had asked Shahzad for help during a short visit that he made to London in March. The intelligence officers wanted Shahzad to help them get in touch with Taliban leaders. "Saleem declined," van Zwanenberg said. He added that, when Shahzad attended a conference in New Delhi this spring, officers from an Indian intelligence agency offered to put him on a retainer. Several of Shahzad's colleagues confirmed this.
There is no evidence that Shahzad was working for any foreign intelligence agency, but mere suspicion on this front could have imperilled him. "What is the final thing that earns Shahzad a red card—the final thing that tips him over from being a nuisance to an enemy?" a Western researcher in Islamabad said to me. "If someone concluded that he was a foreign agent, and that the stories he was putting out were part of a deliberate effort to defame the I.S.I. and undermine the I.S.I.'s carefully crafted information strategy—if anyone in the I.S.I. concluded that, then Saleem would be in grave danger."
On June 3rd, four days after Shahzad was found in the Upper Jhelum Canal, a C.I.A. officer, operating a pilotless drone, fired a missile at a group of men who had gathered in an orchard outside the village of Ghwa Khwa, in South Waziristan. Locals who ran to the scene saw many bodies, but a group of militants who had survived told them to stay back. "Kashmiri Khan! Kashmiri Khan!" one of them yelled. Among the dead was Ilyas Kashmiri—the terrorist whom Shahzad had once proved to be still alive, and who he said was responsible for the attack on the Mehran base.
Three days later, Rehman Malik, Pakistan's Interior Minister, announced that, this time, Kashmiri was definitely dead.
Given the brief time that passed between Shahzad's death and Kashmiri's, a question inevitably arose: Did the Americans find Kashmiri on their own? Or did they benefit from information obtained by the I.S.I. during its detention of Shahzad? If so, Shahzad's death would be not just a terrible example of Pakistani state brutality; it would be a terrible example of the collateral damage sustained in America's war on terror.
If the C.I.A. killed Kashmiri using information extracted from Shahzad, it would not be the first time that the agency had made use of a brutal interrogation. In 2002, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda operative held by the Egyptian government, made statements, under torture, suggesting links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden; this information was used to help justify the invasion of Iraq.
Kashmiri, who was forty-seven, was a guerrilla fighter who received training from both the Pakistani Army and the I.S.I. According to American officials, he fought in the guerrilla war inside Indian Kashmir, working closely with the I.S.I. According to one frequently heard story, Kashmiri, returning from an operation in India, presented Musharraf—then the chief of the Army staff—with the head of an Indian soldier.
But, as Musharraf began to curtail the activities of militant groups operating in India, Kashmiri moved to the tribal areas and started waging war against the Pakistani state. He brought together the 313 Brigade, an amalgam of Al Qaeda, Taliban, and other fighters. Kashmiri was accused of playing a key role in one of the two unsuccessful plots to assassinate Musharraf in 2003, and he is believed to have helped orchestrate the 2009 attack on the Army's headquarters. Earlier this year, David Headley, the Pakistani-American who testified in Chicago about the Mumbai attack, named Kashmiri as a key terrorist planner.
On May 27th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Islamabad, and she presented to Pakistani leaders a list of high-value targets. According to ABC News, Kashmiri was on the list. That morning, Shahzad had published the article naming Kashmiri as the perpetrator of the attack on the Mehran base—broadcasting, once again, his connection to the militant leader.
Bruce Riedel, the former C.I.A. officer, said, "After the Abbottabad raid, the Pakistanis were under enormous pressure to show that they were serious about Al Qaeda."
Shahzad, at the time of his death, was in contact with several Taliban and Al Qaeda militants. It's obvious from his book that Kashmiri was one of them. Muhammad Faizan, Shahzad's colleague, said, "The militants used to call him, not the other way around."
After Shahzad's murder, the Pakistani government appointed a commission, led by a justice of the Supreme Court, to investigate. In late July, the justice, Mian Saqib Nisar, summoned a group of Pakistani reporters and editors and briefed them on his progress. Bani Amin Khan, the inspector general of the Islamabad police, also appeared at the meeting, with some of his investigators. According to reporters who attended the briefing, one of the investigators said that he had seen something unusual in Shahzad's cell-phone records: more than two hundred and fifty-eight calls to and from a single number during a one-month period.
Imtiaz Alam, the secretary-general of the South Asian Free Media Association, told me that after the briefing he approached Khan and pressed him for details. Khan's answer, according to Alam: "The calls were with Ilyas Kashmiri." When I asked Khan about Shahzad's case, he threw me out of his office.
The evidence is fragmentary, but it is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which Pakistani intelligence agents gave the C.I.A. at least some of the information that pinpointed Kashmiri. Likewise, it seems possible that at least some of that information may have come from Shahzad, either during his lethal interrogation or from data taken from his cell phone. In the past, the I.S.I. and the C.I.A. have coöperated extensively on the U.S. drone program.
This relationship has been strained since the bin Laden killing. For the moment, much of the drone program, once based in Pakistan, appears to be frozen. According to the senior American military officer, the drones are no longer flying out of Shamsi Air Base, in Pakistan, but from Afghanistan, and the intelligence used to target militants is now being collected almost entirely by American networks. Most of the drone strikes are being carried out without prior Pakistani knowledge.
"We want the Pakistanis' coöperation, but we are prepared to go without it," the military officer told me. The Americans' unilateral approach to drone strikes is causing intense tension with Pakistani leaders, and not just because of their claims that the strikes kill many civilians. The drone strikes sometimes reveal that the Americans and the I.S.I. are working against each other.
On March 17th, four missiles fired from a drone hit a group of men who had gathered at a market in the village of Datta Khel, in North Waziristan. As many as forty-four people died. The Pakistani government denounced the strike, claiming that it had killed a number of tribal elders, and demanded an apology.
As with nearly all drone strikes, the precise number and nature of the casualties were impossible to verify. The high-level American official told me that the "tribal elders" were actually insurgent leaders. But he offered another reason that the Pakistani officials were so inflamed: "It turns out there were some I.S.I. guys who were there with the insurgent leaders. We killed them, too." (The I.S.I. denied that its agents were present.)
What were I.S.I. agents doing at a meeting of insurgent commanders? The American official said that he did not know.
A senior counterterrorism official said that the Kashmiri strike was not connected to Shahzad's death. At the same time, the official acknowledged that in the past the U.S. had received intelligence from the Pakistanis on Kashmiri, and confirmed that the Pakistanis continue to share information on targets.
Commodore Iqbal, the I.S.I. spokesman, reiterated the agency's insistence that it had no involvement in Shahzad's death. But he said that the C.I.A. and the I.S.I. were still coöperating. "We are giving the Americans a lot of intelligence," Iqbal told me. "We don't feel like we are getting much in return." When I asked him if the I.S.I. had coöperated on the strike that killed Kashmiri, he said, "I can't answer that."
These days, the high-level American official told me, most drone attacks in Pakistan are "signature strikes," which are carried out when a group of people match a certain profile—they are operating a training camp, for instance, or consorting with known militants. Such strikes are not directed at specific individuals—like, say, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's new leader. Usually, the agency doesn't know the identities of the people it is firing at. "Most of the high-value targets have been killed this way," the American official told me.
In the case of Kashmiri, the American official initially told me that he had been killed in a signature strike. "We did the strike, and we found out later that it was him," the official said. When I pressed him, though, he said, "We sort of thought he would be there." He declined to elaborate.
Bruce Riedel, the former C.I.A. officer, said that helping the agency kill Kashmiri would have made eminent sense to the I.S.I. Kashmiri had become an enemy of the Pakistani state, and had maintained potentially embarrassing contacts with Pakistani security services.
"If you start from the premise that the Pakistanis had something to do with hiding bin Laden, then you have to assume that they were trying very hard to put everything back into the tube," Riedel said. "And so it would have made sense for them to get rid of Saleem Shahzad. And Kashmiri, too."
In Pakistan, reporting on Shahzad's case ceased, for the most part, after a few weeks. Shahzad's wife, Anita, recently communicated with me, via e-mail. "I don't want to rewind to that bitter time," she said, adding that Shahzad had been "a brave man." She assured me that "here in Pakistan they are trying their level best to find the culprit."
In the wake of Shahzad's death and the Abbottabad raid, the tone of the Pakistani press darkened. Some columnists argued that the Pakistani state was poised to fall to Islamist militants. Ayman al-Zawahiri "is the man waiting to become the caliph of Pakistan," Khaled Ahmed wrote in the Friday Times, an influential weekly.
This spring, Umar Cheema, still recovering from his ordeal with the I.S.I., was invited to the U.S., where he was honored by Syracuse University for his journalism. Cheema told me that while in America he was offered several fellowships, as well as the prospect of asylum. He decided to come home. "If Pakistan were not in such dark shape, I would leave," he told me. "But it is my duty to try to make this a better country for the next generation." He quickly broke a number of important stories, including one charging that Yousaf Raza Gilani, the Prime Minister, and the twenty-five members of his cabinet paid no taxes last year.
Zafar Sheikh, Shahzad's friend and colleague, took a different path. Years ago, Sheikh said, he regularly accompanied Shahzad on road trips to the tribal areas, and sat in mud huts and interviewed Taliban commanders. He, too, had aspired to write revelatory stories about the inner workings of the I.S.I. But now he has set those ambitions aside.
"I used to be a brave journalist," Sheikh told me one day as we rode in a car across the Punjabi plains. "But I will be frank with you. I don't want to get killed like Saleem. I don't want to suffer like Saleem did. So I'm not part of the war anymore. I am just writing stereotypical bullshit stories—and no one is angry."
We drove on for a little longer, toward the Upper Jhelum Canal, and, a few minutes later, we found the place where the laborer had discovered Shahzad's body. The water was streaming into the intake grates.
"I used to look for stories that would open people's eyes," Sheikh said. "Now I am just a stupid correspondent doing stupid stories. And I am happy. I am happy." ♦
How an Omniscient Internet 'Sextortionist' Ruined the Lives of Teen Girls
- By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
- September 7, 2011 |
- 6:36 pm |
- Categories: Miscellaneous
In the spring of 2009, a college student named Amy received an instant message from someone claiming to know her. Certainly, the person knew something about her—he was able to supply details about what her bedroom looked like and he had, improbably, nude photos of Amy. He sent the photos to her and asked her to have "Web sex" with him.
Instead, Amy contacted her boyfriend Dave, who had been storing the naked photos on his own computer. (Note: victim names have been changed in this story). The two students exchanged instant messages about Amy's apparent stalker, trying to figure out what had happened. Soon after the exchange, each received a separate threat from the man. He knew what they had just chatted about, he warned, and they were not to take their story to anyone, including the police.
Amy, terrified by her stalker's eerie knowledge, contacted campus police. Officers were dispatched to her room, where they took down Amy's story and asked her questions about the incident. Soon after, Dave received more threats from the stalker because Amy had gone to the police—and the stalker knew exactly what she had said to them.
Small wonder that, when the FBI later interviewed Amy about the case, she was "visibly upset and shaking during parts of the interview and had to stop at points to control her emotions and stop herself from crying." So afraid was Amy for her own safety that she did not leave her dorm room for a full week after the threats.
As for Dave, he suffered increased fear, anxiety, confusion, and anger; he later told a court that even hisparents "had a hard time trusting anyone or even feeling comfortable enough to use a computer" after the episode.
Due in large part to the stress of the attack, Dave and Amy broke up.
But who had the mysterious stalker been? And how did he have access both to the contents of Dave's computer and to private discussions with police that Amy conducted in the privacy of her own room?
Why is my webcam light on?
The bizarre case wasn't an isolated incident. Around the same time, a Los Angeles area juvenile named Sara received an instant message from a screen name that looked almost identical to her boyfriend's. The person behind it asked her for pornographic photos; she supplied them. She soon realized her mistake, but it was too late. Threats began to roll in, saying that her mysterious interlocutor would post Sarah's nude photos on the Internet if she did not send more. When Sara e-mailed copies of these threats to her boyfriend, the stalker knew. He even called her on the phone to make the threats more personal.
"For the longest time I didn't know who this man was, why he was doing it or [if] he would come back," Sara later wrote in a victim impact statement. "Not knowing is the worst, most dreaded feeling. It's always in the back of your mind. I moved away from the LA/OC [Los Angeles/Orange County] area but even here the thoughts never left me."
In another case, a woman named Gloria received an e-mail with the subject line "who hacked your account READ it!!!" from someone who claimed to have invaded her machine. Why? The hacker said it was because Gloria's ex-boyfriend had hired him to do so—a "particularly traumatic" move, as the government later noted, because Gloria had actually taken out a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, who had been harassing her. Gloria didn't reply to the e-mail and soon received another, this time containing a nude picture of her and promising to post it across the Internet if Gloria didn't do as he wished.
It was one of the few cases where the stalker acted on his warning. After Gloria sent copies of these threats to a friend of hers, the stalker somehow knew about it and told her, "you pissed me off now I'm going to show you." Her nude photo was posted to MySpace—appearing on the account of the friend to whom Gloria had shown the stalker's threats.
The cases grew stranger. A 17-year old girl was online when she received an instant message from her sister—but her sister was in the next room and not using a computer. Various women reported that the lights on their laptop webcams would pop on at times when the cameras weren't in use; one woman was so unnerved by the behavior that she covered her own computer's camera with a sticker to make sure no one was spying on her.
But someone had been, and he went after so many people that Glendale, California police finally realized a broader pattern was emerging in their area. The FBI investigated and on March 8, 2010, after six months of investigations and interviews, obtained a federal search warrant for a small, neat home on Monica Lane in Santa Ana. Two days later, the feds descended, looking for their man.
Mijangos' Santa Ana home (Google Maps)
Meet Guicho
Inside the home, they found 32-year old Luis "Guicho" Mijangos sitting in a wheelchair. Mijangos was an illegal alien and a paraplegic who hadn't walked since he was around 17, when a drive-by gunshot wound paralyzed him from the waist down. He grew up—unhappily, in his telling—in Mexico, where his father was "harassed" and later died. After the death, Mijangos' mother took her son to the US and eventually remarried.
Despite his injuries, Mijangos had prospects. He had taken computer classes at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and become proficient in Java, C++, and Web design. He set up home-based Web and computer consulting business and told investigators that he was clearing a respectable $1,000 per week.
But when the FBI showed up with a search warrant, Mijangos quickly admitted to much more. He worked with a few "black hat" hackers, he said, helping them transfer money and make use of stolen credit cards. He claimed that his criminal role was deliberately kept minor "because it meant that he would face less trouble from the police," according to the account of the FBI Special Agent who interviewed him.
Agents had doubts about the scope of this initial account. Mijangos admitted that he did sometimes hack into other people's computers. A favorite trick was seeding peer-to-peer networks with popular-sounding song titles that were actually malware; when someone downloaded and executed the file, their machine was infected and would open itself to Mijangos's control. He claimed to have done this only five times.
Mijangos arrives for sentencing (Nick Ut/AP)
And when it came to the crazy stalker-style behavior that so many women (and some men) had reported, Mijangos said his work was being misconstrued. Instead of "sextorting" his victims, Mijangos said he "hacked into female victim accounts at the request of boyfriends and husbands to determine whether the female victims were cheating on their boyfriends or husbands," according to an FBI account. "Mijangos said he was supposed to be paid for this conduct but was not.
"Mijangos acknowledged he threatened to expose these pictures, and reckoned the threats might look like extortion, but stated that he did so to discourage anyone from contacting the authorities. Mijangos also acknowledged he asked for additional sexual videos but only to determine whether they would actually do it."
It didn't take long to punch a hole in these claims. The FBI recovered four laptops, a BlackBerry, and a host of USB drives from Mijangos's home; a "filter team" scoured the devices for anything that fit the parameters of the search warrant. After vetting, such material was turned over to the FBI agents working the case, who learned that Mijangos had actually gone after 129 different computers for a total of 230 victims. Forty-four of the victims were juveniles.
The FBI found different kinds of malware on the computers, including tools to install a key logger on remote machines, software to turn on webcams and microphones attached to infected computers, and "dozens of videos" from those webcams, most showing the victims " getting out of the shower, dressing for the day, having sex with a partner."
In a file called "things importan" [sic], the FBI even found screen captures from victim machines showing identifying information about them displayed on bank and financial websites.
On June 17, 2010, the FBI Cyber Squad operating out of Los Angeles swore out an arrest warrant against Mijangos. Five days later, Mijangos was arrested at 6:10 am and charged with felony extortion.
A long list of accusations
Sextortion
After his arrest, Mijangos later admitted that he made up to $3,000 a day performing "complicated financial hacks" with others. He hung around in online hacker forums like "CC Power," learned how to use malware tools like Poison Ivy and SpyNet to gain entry to other machines, and use "crypter" software to hide his work from anti-virus and security programs.
Some of the hacks simply targeted individuals, slipping the initial malware onto their machines through P2P networks. Once he had control, Mijangos's malware contacted mijangos.no-ip.org, a service that obscured his own domain name while giving his malware a persistent location for phoning home. When contact was made, Mijangos could download additional code like keyloggers to the infected machines, and it was a simple matter to grab and misuse people's credit cards after that.
But the truly odd "sextortion" behavior was Mijangos's calling card. Indeed, as the government later put it, he "dedicated considerable time to toying with victims." If he obtained access to a woman's computer, he searched for incriminating photos and video—or accessed the webcam and tried to take some of his own. If he obtained access to a man's computer, he instead impersonated the male and reached out to the man's girlfriend to ask for nude photos. With photos in hand, Mijangos would approach the women and threaten to post the picture publicly unless they sent additional nude videos of themselves. Some women did so.
He then spent considerable time monitoring people's communications. In the case of his most spectacular hacks, Mijangos could watch the instant messaging and e-mail communications of both a boyfriend and girlfriend, and could even listen in to conversations made over the phone or in person with police by using the computer's built-in microphone. The omniscient effect this created tended to terrify victims; one said later that she felt like her life had been taken from her.
The government defines "sextortion"
On March 21, 2011, Mijangos reached a plea deal with the government and copped to two felony charges, computer hacking and wiretapping. The deal required that, whenever he might leave prison, Mijangos would report all computer use, online accounts, and passwords to his probation officer, and "shall not hide or encrypt files or data without prior approval."
On September 1, federal judge George King sentenced Mijangos to 72 months in prison for his "psychological warfare" and "sustained effort to terrorize victims."
"The FBI has seen a rise in similar cases based on the exploitation of emerging technologies by criminals," said Steven Martinez, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, in astatement after the sentencing, "and it's my hope that this sentence serves as a warning for victims of Internet predators to advise law enforcement or a trusted source when threatened, and always refrain from sending compromising photographs via cyberspace."
But people just won't refrain, as illustrated by the rise of "sextortion" cases across the country. In one of the most memorable, a male high school student just outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, conned numerous male classmates into sending him nude pictures of themselves, then demanded that some engage in sex acts with him to keep the pictures from coming out.
Citing a few more recent examples, an August Associated Press story claimed that sextortion is on the rise in the US, and the government has taken to using the term in its criminal filings.
Without nude pictures and compromising videos, the attackers in such cases have no leverage—but digital devices have made it so easy to point, shoot, and share that everyone involved in the Mijangos hacks already had such pictures, and didn't appear to have hidden or secured them. With pictures that common, but taboos against their public distribution still strong, sextortion will certainly continue. But at least Luis Mijangos won't be doing it.
The Big Party
BRYAN SMITH
At the hop: Hefner and friends huddle at the Playboy Mansion in 1966. Photo Gallery »
She is beautiful still in the spring sunlight, the form, the façade, the long, lovely lines. Not young, but quite fashionable, striking the same winsome pose she held when her presence along this glittering Gold Coast stretch could stop men in their tracks. They would stand before her bewitched then, desperate for her favor. Depending on who they were, it would be granted—though not always. She could be fickle that way. But such was her power, her mystery, that she never wanted for suitors.
That was long ago. The men no longer stare. They pass now with barely a glance. These days, the four-story brick and limestone Victorian-style manor house is just a building.
But for one gilded period some 40-odd years ago, 1340 North State Parkway was much more. In the abstract, it was both the epicenter of a new sexual freedom and an object of scorn; more concretely, it was the setting for some of the most notorious, celebrity-filled parties of its time. Where else might you see Frank Sinatra chuckling at a gorgeous naked woman diving into an indoor pool filled with other gorgeous naked women? Meet Joe DiMaggio and Dean Martin and Warren Beatty and the Rolling Stones in the same ballroom? Slide down a fireman's pole to an underwater bar lit by the sparkling green of an aquarium window through which yet more gorgeous women could be seen cavorting like so many mermaids?
The building, of course, was the Playboy Mansion—the original Playboy Mansion—at a time when its owner, a West Side boy named Hugh Marston Hefner, ruled the city, if not the world.
Back then, the Playboy imprimatur festooned Chicago and environs—lines stretched outside the Playboy Club on Walton Street; the word "Playboy" blazed atop the Palmolive Building in nine-foot-high letters. Chicago was home to the Playboy Towers Hotel and the Playboy Theater, and the 1,000-acre, 300-room Playboy resort aroused sleepy Lake Geneva. It was an era when Playboy Bunnies bicycled to Schwartz's on Rush to pick out merry widow corsets; when Playmate centerfolds struck seductive poses in studios on the Magnificent Mile; when the TV show Playboy's Penthouse hepped it up with jazz greats in a Loop studio.
It's been so long since Hefner lived in the Chicago mansion that these days it's hard to believe the place existed, much less that it still stands. And, yet, there it is, beautiful on a sunny spring day, an old flame, an apparition, a silent witness to a strange, singular era in a town she loved and lost.
***
During the 1960s, life inside the Playboy Mansion was a decade-long frolic Photo Gallery »
Hefner is back there, in his mind's eye, the day I meet him at his current home—Playboy Mansion West, near Beverly Hills. He sits on a plum-striped couch in the library, a dim parlor that features a bare-breasted ceramic bust of Barbi Benton, one of Hefner's enduring loves and the woman partly responsible for his leaving Chicago for good in 1975.
He is 83 now, his hair thinned and woven with white. He is hard of hearing in the right ear, so I am asked to sit to his left. He wears his trademark crimson smoking jacket draped, as always, over silk pajamas, which today are black. He discarded his pipe many years ago, on his doctor's advice, after a mild stroke in 1985. But that missing piece of stagecraft, deployed in the fifties to make himself look sophisticated, hasn't diminished the image, the bearing, the great natural charisma, the reality of who he is. He is talking about the L.A. mansion, telling me, as he does all interviewers, that it is his spiritual home. Moving here, he explains, was the best thing he's ever done.
Still, as he speaks, his voice conveys wistfulness, and he concedes that he looks back to those years in Chicago fondly. Seeing him so at ease in the lap of his current luxury, it's hard to imagine he would long for the grit of the Windy City, particularly given the painful chain of events that sealed his desire to leave. But so powerful were those days, those memories, that the King of Fantasy, in this late afternoon of his life, admits he would love to turn back the clock, if only for a moment. "What I would love to do," he says, his voice taking on a curious poignancy, "would be to get in a time machine and simply walk back into that mansion in 1965."
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP) BURT GLINN/MAGNUM PHOTOS, (BOTTOM) COURTESY OF PLAYBOY MAGAZINE © BY PLAYBOY
Hefner, in Paris in 1970, with his then-girlfriend Barbi Benton and the movie director Roman Polanski Photo Gallery »
Hefner has always enjoyed a deeply romantic streak, and when he first saw the grand manor at 1340 North State in the winter of 1959, he fell hard. "He loved it," recalls his friend and colleague Victor Lownes. "It met his needs perfectly."
At the time, Hefner had achieved a measure of fame, both on the strength of his racy, daring new magazine and his up-by-the-bootstraps story—a Chicago boy hocks his furniture to start a magazine that makes him wildly rich and puts him at the forefront of one of the most powerful cultural movements of the century: the sexual revolution. All of this in a rust-belt city under the sway of its newly crowned potentate—da' mayor—Richard J. Daley, a national political player, but a buttoned-up old-school square who banished underlings who fell short of his deeply Catholic, almost fusty sense of propriety. But it wasn't until the publisher started throwing his parties at 1340 North State that Hefner became an icon.
Built in 1899 for a prominent Chicago doctor named George Isham, the 72-room mansion had been one of the famed residences of its day, having entertained such guests as Theodore Roosevelt. Guarded by imposing wrought iron fences, the brick and stone structure offered spectacular possibilities for a newly crowned King of Pleasure, starting with a 60-foot-long, 30-foot-wide ballroom large enough to accommodate hundreds of guests, a giant marble fireplace, inlaid teak floors, oak-paneled walls, a grand staircase, and bronze chandeliers. The basement offered the perfect location for the indoor pool Hefner had dreamed of having, with an adjoining garage where he could store his custom-built Mercedes convertible.
Hefner snapped up the mansion for $400,000, then quickly sank hundreds of thousands more into renovations. Within months, he had constructed a sybaritic paradise that was part salon, part Roman bath, part fortress, and part show-palace, all two blocks from Lake Michigan and a bunny hop from the teeming bars of Division Street. In addition to the kidney-shaped tropical pool, which featured a "woo grotto" reached by plunging through a cascading waterfall, the house included a game room, an underwater bar reached via fireman's pole, a bowling alley, a steam room, a tanning room, and a descending movie screen installed in the ballroom on which guests could take in first-run flicks. Two suits of armor guarded the entrance and a museum's worth of original artwork adorned the walls, including a huge Picasso over the fireplace.
Hefner scans photos shot forPlayboy in 1961 Photo Gallery »
Upstairs were lavish guest suites nicknamed the Blue Room and the Red Room—sleeping accommodations for honored guests—and double rooms reserved as dorm space for 25 to 30 Bunnies at the soon-to-be-opened Playboy Club. A fleet of butlers and a fully staffed kitchen catered to the whims of Hefner and his guests, who could order off of an extensive room service menu around the clock. And then there was Hefner's bedroom, which featured plush white carpet, a Jacuzzi large enough for 12, and, most famously, an enormous rotating round bed fitted out with buttons with which Hefner could control the television, stereo, and lights.
The finishing touch was a gift from Hefner's associate publisher, A. C. Spectorsky, a brass plaque bearing the Latin phrase Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare. Attached to the front door, its English translation provided a cheeky warning, as well as a credo for both house and master: "If You Don't Swing, Don't Ring."
Previously, you might have found Hefner prowling the Rush Street triangle in the wee hours—nightclubs like Cloister on Rush, or the Black Orchid, or The Chez Paree. In those pre-mansion days, he would make the rounds with an after-hours band of brothers: Shel Silverstein, the bald, bearded Chicago cartoonist; Don Adams, the comedian who would gain renown as the star of the television comedy Get Smart; and Victor Lownes, the suave, womanizing impresario of the Playboy Clubs—number two man at Playboy, and one of Hefner's closest friends. Once ensconced at 1340, however, Hefner found few reasons to venture out.
Before Chicago could catch its breath, Hefner had bought a second building, a five-story living embodiment of the Playboy lifestyle that would create an equal stir and generate an even greater amount of publicity. The Playboy Club at 116 East Walton Street was patterned after an elegant members-only Chicago establishment called the Gaslight Club, where patrons were served by beautiful showgirl waitresses dressed in abbreviated costumes. Playboy magazine had run a small feature on the Gaslight and the response was astounding. "When I saw that reaction, we felt we had something much larger," says Lownes, who was made director of promotions for the Chicago club, and who would eventually become lord of a vast network of Playboy clubs across the United States and abroad.
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP) MICHAEL LIPCHITZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS, (BOTTOM) GEORGE BRICH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the mid-sixties, a "Bunny Mother" confers with her young charges Photo Gallery »
The new club featured several floors of sophisticated entertainment and fine food and drink in a setting designed to be the embodiment of the mod, hip, upwardly mobile lifestyle portrayed in the magazine. The star attraction of the dark, cozy leather-and-teak lair, of course, was the newly created Playboy Bunny, a typically busty, always pretty young woman dressed in a soon-to-be iconic one-piece satin swimsuit costume, stylized rabbit ears, cotton tail, and cleavage.
When it opened on February 29, 1960, the place was more than a hit—it was a sensation. Despite the frigid weather, long lines stretched out the door, and cars pulled up two and three deep. For $50, patrons received a lifetime membership and a key stamped with the Playboy logo. Diners enjoyed $1.50 meals and drinks, while listening to top-flight comedians and singers. Among the acts was a young black comedian named Dick Gregory—whose controversial hiring established Hefner as a staunch supporter of racial equality. Nearly 17,000 keyholders and their guests visited the club in the first month alone. "People were coming to Chicago from all over the world," says Hefner.
In quick order, Playboy went from a low-key, barely noticeable suite of offices to a high-profile presence that dominated downtown. In the process, it began shouldering aside the long-held image of Chicago as a mobster enclave and replacing it with a new, hip, slightly naughty aura. "Chicago has become the sex symbol capital of the United States," the syndicated columnist Art Buchwald wrote in a 1962 column. "If this is the wrong image of Chicago, it must be blamed on Playboy's publisher, Hugh Hefner. . . . We were invited to his house one night to look around, which is to Chicago what being invited to Buckingham Palace is to London."
Not everyone was pleased. The Catholic establishment disdained Playboy and so did Daley. "I had a very cordial relationship with Daley Jr. [Richard M. Daley], but never had a very friendly relationship with the father, because the father was in the hands of the church," says Hefner. The two first clashed over the location for an event that would mark a defining moment in the development of the young magazine: the 1959 Playboy Jazz Festival.
Having first granted permission for the event to be at Soldier Field, Daley reversed himself after the Catholic church objected. The move turned out to be a blessing. Not only were the intimate confines of the new venue, Chicago Stadium, better suited for the concert, but it rained during the event. Still, Hefner and his magazine were on notice.
Among the public at large, however, the feeling toward Playboy seemed one of voyeuristic fascination. "Hardly any young man new to the street and the neighborhood can resist the temptation to glance at the imposing [mansion]," a 1969 story in the Chicago Tribune observed. "Sometimes men stop and stare, as if expecting to see the nubile Playboy Bunnies themselves cavorting at the few windows that remain undraped."
Whatever Chicago's opinion of Hefner, he wasn't going away. For him, his magazine, and the people who were fans of both, the fun was just starting.
* * *
Hefner with the Playmate Karen Christy Photo Gallery »
It was an extraordinary sight: the beautiful young woman, trailing a tangle of flowing, dark brunette hair, clip-clopping down Inner Lake Shore Drive on a gorgeous black gelding, riding from her Near North stables through Lincoln Park, over to North State Parkway, and up to the gates of 1340. The year was 1963, and Patti Reynolds, a Playboy Bunny and soon to be centerfold, and her horse, Frankie, were making their daily trip to the mansion, where she had moved into a small studio apartment on the same floor as the Bunny dorm.
"I would go get him about 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock in the morning, and I would ride to the mansion, right up to the butler's pantry," recalls Reynolds. "Hef would come out and pet the horse in the morning and there was a Bunny I was friends with, Marika [Lukacs], and she'd get on the back of the horse with me, and we'd go riding down State Street. In those days, the police would stop you, but just to talk because they knew who we were—Playboy Bunnies."
Reynolds was 17 when she talked her way into a waitress job at the Gaslight Club, and still under age when she answered an advertisement in the Tribune seeking "beautiful, charming and refined young ladies" to work in the new Playboy Club. "I was afraid of everything," she says. "I felt these girls were so beautiful. I couldn't believe I had been hired."
Reynolds, who would become the September 1965 Playmate of the Month, says the rules were strict, but that didn't stop her or other Bunnies from making the occasional mischief. "I remember working with another Bunny," she recalls. "She was very busty. When we worked the show rooms, she would be sitting on a chair, and she would pull her costume down. Some guy watching the show would grab his friend and say, 'Look at that!' By the time the other guy looked over, she had covered up and was sitting there like nothing had happened. Every so often we'd get fired by Hef's brother, Keith, and we'd go running to Hef—'Boo hoo, your brother fired us'—and he'd say, 'All right, Patti, go back to work, but be a good girl this time.'"
Dianne Chandler, who was both Playmate of the Month and cover girl for the magazine's September 1966 issue, was working as a waitress at the Pancake House in Champaign-Urbana when she saw an ad similar to the one that drew Reynolds. "I had just fallen off the turnip truck," says Chandler, who grew up in Oak Park. She got hired and moved into the mansion, where she met Shel Silverstein, who had taken up semi-permanent residence in the Red Room.
"I had talked Hef into letting my baby sister stay for a night. So we were both in our baby doll jammies, sitting in bed watching TV, and all of a sudden the door opens from the bathroom and in pops this bald head. That was the time when he wore these kind of Mexican looking pants, with fringy bottoms and sandals, and he had his guitar and said, 'What's going on here?' The next thing we knew, he jumps onto the bed with my sister and me, curls his feet under him Indian style, starts strumming the guitar and singing these hysterically off-color songs."
Reynolds recalls walking past the steam room one day when a hand reached out and pulled her into a fog of giggling Bunnies. "Everybody was squealing and laughing and hands were everywhere," she says. "When the steam cleared I looked to see who had pulled me in and it was Hugh O'Brian, the actor who played Wyatt Earp." ("Could've been," O'Brian told me when I reached him by phone at his Los Angeles home.) She escaped just in time to run into Hefner. "Having a good time, Patti?" he asked.
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP) BETTMANN/CORBIS, (BOTTOM) COURTESY OF PLAYBOY MAGAZINE © BY PLAYBOY
A distraught and disheveled Hefner reacts to the 1975 suicide of his friend and aide Bobbie Arnstein, which occurred during a drug investigation that circled around Playboy Photo Gallery »
Beneath the fun-and-games veneer lay a more complicated reality. Many of the women chosen to be Bunnies or Playmates came from small towns and less-than-scintillating jobs as secretaries or shop girls. Suddenly, they were living in the most famous private residence in America, attending celebrity-studded parties, living with a staff of butlers at their disposal. By day, they either slept or shopped or sunned on a rooftop deck (much to the delight or indignation of guests at the nearby Ambassador Hotel). By night they worked in the hottest club in town.
The women I talked to said they enjoyed their time at the mansion and were grateful to Hefner for welcoming them into a glamorous—and lucrative—world they would otherwise have never known. Many describe him as an avuncular figure, who was deeply loyal and who seemed to care about their well-being. Chandler, for instance, once confessed to Hefner that she was having financial troubles. "He called a guy over and said, 'Bring me the checkbook,' and he wrote a check to me for five grand. He told me, 'You'll pay it back—I know you will.' And I did, every cent."
On the other hand, the women of the mansion faced limits, hierarchies, and an unabashed male culture. The Bunny dorm, for example, had rules: no boyfriends in the house, no pets. Coming in at all hours was discouraged. Bunnies were not allowed to date their customers or their managers. There was a pecking order: Playmates were given their own apartments, while Bunnies lived four to a room.
More to the point, men ruled the hutch. Hefner could sleep with whomever he wanted, while the women were expected to remain loyal. "It was guilt-free for him," says Joyce Nizzari, who was Playmate of the Month for December 1958, and had a brief fling with Hefner. "I remember being absolutely crushed when I found out Hef was seeing other women. But when I began to see other men, he couldn't accept that. He would tell you it breaks his heart and that the romance is pretty much over." Painful as such things were, says Nizzari, they were simply rules one didn't question—not if you wanted to remain in Hefner's orbit. (She has stayed friends with Hefner and currently works as an assistant at the L.A. mansion.)
A double standard also applied to Hefner's close friends who either worked or played at the Playboy Club. Specifically, the no-fraternization rules didn't apply; Lownes, for example, dated numerous Bunnies. The Bunnies weren't obligated to sleep with Hefner's pals, but some say they felt pressured. A Bunny named Pearl Bey Price, for example, quit after months of passes by one of the senior managers at the club. "He fired me again and again," she said in The Bunny Years, a collection of where-are-they-now stories. "But each time Arnie Morton (one of the original partners) would ask me to come back, promising he would speak to [the manager] about leaving me alone." Price said she became so fed up that one day she changed out of her Bunny outfit, found the manager, and flung the costume in his face. "You're always trying to get in my pants," she recalled saying, before quitting for good. "Here's your chance. Have a ball!"
At the mansion, women could draw the line, but most wanted to join the fun. "I was never expected to do anything untoward," says Marilyn Cole, Playboy's first full frontal nude Playmate and Lownes's wife since 1984. "But I [enjoyed] behaving in a certain way and I did. I think the thigh-length boots and hot pants confirmed that."
Patti Reynolds caught on the hard way. "I kind of kept to myself at first—I would come home from work and go right up to my room—and I noticed I wasn't getting invited to any parties," she says. "So I asked Hef what was going on and he said, 'We don't ring if you don't swing, Patti. You read the sign.'"
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP LEFT) BETTMANN/CORBIS, (TOP RIGHT) ROY HALL/CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Hefner shows off the ballroom's vaunted sound system Photo Gallery »
If wangling an invitation could be hard for a Bunny, for ordinary folks a mansion party was "about as easy to get into as the gold vault at Fort Knox," according to one columnist of the day. "It was the place people wanted to stay, wanted to party," says Hefner.
The glittering, Gatsbyesque affairs drew hundreds of guests, including writers, artists, intellectuals, political figures, movie stars, sports figures, models, literary lions—not to mention, of course, a bevy of Bunnies and Playmates. The sights ranged from the curious to the bizarre, the shocking to the silly. A Washington Post article from 1971 marveled: "There was the noted oracle Max Lerner, cautiously twisting with a blonde chick on the parquet floor . . . in an absolute sybaritic atmosphere of eye-searing flashbulbs and shattering rock music, packed throngs of shouting people, smoke and 100-degree heat." Harold Ramis, who edited the magazine's "Playboy Party Jokes" column from 1968 to 1970, recalls a 1969 event at which he encountered the cast of the musical Hair splashing nude in the pool and singing "Let the Sunshine In."
Over the years, a rich and deep mythology has grown up around the parties. Some claim they were sexless affairs as tame as an office picnic. Frank Brady, for example, a former editor and the author of an unauthorized biography of Hefner, writes that at the more than 100 parties he attended, he rarely saw anything remotely close to the freewheeling frolics of popular lore. Steve Byer, a former Playboy marketing director who wrote a searing tell-all about his years at the magazine, described the parties as "screamingly dull."
Others, however, say the mansion more than lived up to its reputation. "All the rumors you hear about Playboy—they're true, all of them," says Laurence Gonzales, an editor and writer with the magazine from 1972 to 1978. "It wasn't quite Roman in its quality, but it was pretty close."
Reg Potterton, a writer for Playboy, recalls, "Lots of screwing went on in the Underwater Bar and in the Game Room, on the pool table and under the pool table. There really wasn't much to do in the house except to do that."
Hefner says that the level of action depended on who you were, what the function was, and the era in which you attended. "Certainly in the 1960s in Chicago, there was no public sex," Hefner says. "There was sex going on down in the underwater bar. There was certainly sex going on in the bedroom," but visions of naked revelers writhing around the mansion were pure fantasy.
There was one notable exception. The 1972 visit by the Rolling Stones was not a party, but a four-day, drug-drenched bender that fulfilled the most fevered imaginings of what went on behind the mansion's closed doors. From it emerged tales of orgies in the Roman Bath, sex under the grand piano, burned furniture, ravaged rooms, and deflowered virgins. "When the maids cleaned up there were needles all over the goddamn place," recalled Hefner friend John Dante in Inside the Playboy Mansion. Among the more memorable moments, Hefner would later recall, was a Bunny's abrupt admission to Mick Jagger that "I want to bite your ass." Jagger, in a legendary rejoinder, said, "Have at it, luv."
* * *
Ten blocks—in some ways, a world—away, the editorial staff of Playboy was putting out a magazine that had gone from a 70,000-issue upstart to a circulation behemoth. By its tenth birthday, celebrated in January 1964, magazine sales had reached 2.4 million. In the next four years, circulation would soar to 5 million. By 1972, it would reach its height—an astonishing 7.2 million. Advertising, and money, gushed in.
From the mansion, Hefner, a workaholic who took an almost obsessively hands-on approach to Playboy, issued infamous memos, Brobdingnagian in size, from his bedroom office. For a time, in fact, while he was writing the "Playboy Philosophy"—a multi-part exegesis in the magazine—Hefner became a virtual hermit. He rarely ventured out, working days without sleep fueled on dozens of bottles of Pepsi a day and a Dexedrine addiction that would nearly kill him. ("He became a 24-hour person," recalls Lownes, who introduced Hefner to the drug, "writing pages and pages of memos. The joke became you had to take a Dexedrine to read them.") Editors and executives came to dread marathon meetings at the mansion, which would sometimes stretch deep into the night, usually because Hefner was obsessing over some minor detail, a photo caption, some seemingly innocuous wording.
Still, even the office had its share of glamour and sex. "We had all these famous people coming through," says David Standish, who was hired as an editor in 1967 and now teaches journalism at Northwestern University. "You'd walk in the office one day and there's Timothy Leary standing there with his arctic blue eyes staring holes in you. The next day, there was Carl Sagan. As a literary person, I got to have dinner with Norman Mailer, who did a piece in the early seventies on Muhammad Ali for us."
In 1967, when the magazine moved to ten floors of the Palmolive Building at 919 North Michigan Avenue, the setting seemed almost to encourage the sex. "You walk into this building and it looks like the set for a pornographicStar Trek movie," recalls Gonzales. "The hallways were kind of curving and the surfaces had been covered with a kind of textured ivory-colored plaster. There were little grottoes with sculptures in them and the lighting was very indirect, so you had this sense of kind of being in a cave."
"The best sex I ever had was in one of those offices," says James Petersen, who was the longtime Playboy sex advisor. "Occasionally, we would get phone calls from the Westin hotel because there was an art director at Ouimagazine [a short-lived Playboy spinoff] who liked to cavort with his models in his office without closing the windows. I just assumed everybody slept with everybody."
The good news was that the money kept rolling in, fueling the extravagances. Gonzales experienced the magazine's penchant for excess from his first day on the job: "They gave me this office with a raw silk love seat in it and an Italian marble desk," he recalls. "And my secretary, who was this vivacious redhead, came in and said, 'Do you need anything?' I said, 'Some pencils and a pencil sharpener would be fine.' The next day there was this mahogany pedestal next to my Italian marble desk, with an electric pencil sharpener that looked like it had been designed by NASA. On my desk was a piece of pottery that had a bunch of number 2 pencils."
"Nothing was too much," says Barbara Nellis, who worked her way up from the marketing department to a senior editor. "There was no trip that couldn't be taken, no fiction that couldn't be bought, no event that couldn't occur. They were just swimming in money."
PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF PLAYBOY MAGAZINE © BY PLAYBOY
The jazz and blues singer Ernestine Anderson (center), clad in hip-hop regalia, serenades a pair of Bunnies at the Playboy Club in 1962 Photo Gallery »
By the late 1960s and early '70s, Playboy had reached its zenith. Hefner was a worldwide celebrity and Chicago, at least to some, shone in the reflective glow. The company now boasted "seventeen Playboy clubs, three gambling casinos, four large resort hotels, two movie theaters, a book division, a film division, a record company, modeling and limousine agencies, and dozens of merchandise items emblazed with the Bunny logo," according to Mr. Playboy. Air travelers at O'Hare would occasionally glance out their windows to see the Big Bunny, a $4.5-million gleaming black converted DC-9 airliner, taxi by. In 1969, the magazine held a National Playboy Bunny Recruitment Day, during which nearly 400 female hopefuls ("in wild-pattern tights," according to the Tribune) clashed with half a dozen members of Women's Liberation shouting, "Sisters, know your enemy!"
The party seemed to be in full swing, but the first whispers of last call had begun to sound. Hefner was already splitting time between Chicago and Los Angeles—partly because of his new television show, Playboy After Dark, which was taped in Los Angeles, and partly because of a woman he had fallen in love with: Barbi Benton. An 18-year-old UCLA coed who was an occasional extra on the show, she found the estate that would become Playboy Mansion West, and she refused to put up with Hefner's cheating on her with a Playmate living at the Chicago mansion, a blond Texas beauty named Karen Christy.
* * *
The love triangle caused problems, but it was more than Hefner's desire to appease Benton that drove him from Chicago for good. Rather, it was a young U.S. attorney with designs on a different sort of mansion—the one where the Illinois governor lived. James Thompson, then a highly respected corruption fighter, led a prosecutor's office that had set its investigative sights on Chicago's most notorious party.
A Tribune headline heralded the beginning of the end on December 8, 1974: "Federal drug probers zeroing in on Hefner." The publisher, the story said, "has emerged as a prime target of a federal narcotics investigation . . . that centers on suspected illicit drug activities inside Hefner's Playboy mansions in Chicago and Los Angeles."
At the heart of the probe was a woman named Bobbie Arnstein. Her title was social secretary, but she was much more to Hefner. Once a romantic interest, Arnstein—lovely, funny, tough, troubled—had since become one of Hefner's closest friends and aides, as well as a beloved member of the Playboy family. For two years, ever since her boyfriend had been arrested on a charge of smuggling cocaine from Miami to Chicago, the feds had been after her to lead them to the ultimate recipient of the drugs.
Evidence would eventually indicate that it wasn't Hefner. In fact, other than tolerating some pot smoking, he was generally known to be opposed to drugs, particularly cocaine, and to discourage their use at the mansion. Arnstein refused to cooperate. Then, in March 1974, she was arrested and charged with participating in the smuggling case.
Though questions swirled about the testimony of her chief accuser—the Miami cocaine supplier testifying under a grant of immunity—Arnstein was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Despite its being her first offense, Judge Bernard M. Decker slapped her with the maximum prison term of 15 years—with a catch. Decker indicated that he might significantly reduce the sentence pending a study of certain psychiatric and medical problems.
Arnstein's defenders said the "provisional" sentence was a coercive ploy to give prosecutors a hammer to pressure her into implicating Hefner, a view echoed by the New York Times columnist William Safire. "What clearer invitation to perjury can there be than such a 'provisional sentence?'" he wrote. "It is one thing to give a cooperative witness a break, entirely another to threaten to let a defendant rot in the slammer until he or she tells the story the prosecution wants."
Ploy or no, Arnstein continued in her refusal to implicate Hefner, saying he was not, and never had been, involved with drugs.
On January 11, 1975, out on bail pending an appeal, Arnstein checked into what was then the Hotel Maryland on Rush Street after dinner with friends. She was found the next day—dead of an overdose of barbiturates. In her hotel room, she had left behind a suicide note in which she maintained her innocence and defended her boss. "Hugh M. Hefner is—though few will ever realize it—a staunchly upright, rigorously moral man. . . . [H]e has never been involved in any criminal activity which is being attributed to him now."
Hefner, in Los Angeles when he received word, flew the next day to Chicago, writing out a statement in longhand en route aboard the Big Bunny. Against the advice of his attorneys, he called a press conference at the Chicago mansion. Haggard and trembling, Hefner told the television and newspaper reporters gathered in the ballroom, "Excuse me if I look a bit harried. I'm quite upset." He accused investigators of, in effect, murdering Arnstein in an effort to get him. The drug probe, he charged, was "a politically motivated, anti-Playboy witch hunt."
Thompson did not himself prosecute the Arnstein case, but as the head U.S. attorney here, he became the public face of the controversy. He branded Hefner's "witch hunt" charges ridiculous, saying in an interview, "I don't want to debate the guy because he's off the wall."
Today, Hefner continues to believe that the feds were out to get him, and Thompson continues to dismiss the notion. "There wasn't the slightest possibility that we would have been after Hefner," Thompson told me. "His lifestyle, whatever it was, was irrelevant to me, to the office, to anybody else. We just followed whatever evidence we had and wherever it led us."
A few months after the suicide, Thompson resigned as U.S. attorney to run for governor, an office he would hold for four terms. The drug investigation of Playboy continued for a few more months, then fell apart and was officially dropped.
The damage, however, was done. Arnstein was dead. Hefner was devastated and disillusioned. The magazine staff was demoralized. "It was awful," recalls Standish. "There was a pall over the whole office, just this leaden atmosphere. Our feeling at the time was that Thompson was just out to get Hefner to make a reputation for himself and that poor Bobbie Arnstein just got caught in the middle. It was a gloomy time, and a paranoid time, because we all thought they were out to get all of us."
To Gonzales, the Arnstein case signaled, in some ways, the death of an era. "There had been this atmosphere that we were at an extended party that nothing could touch," he says. "This came as a real shock that changed everything. There was a sense of reality creeping in."
At the time of Arnstein's death, Hefner had all but moved permanently to Los Angeles. "Things were very different here from Chicago," Hefner says. "Tom Bradley, the [Los Angeles] mayor, attended the opening of the Playboy Club and was a frequent guest at the parties and so was Jerry Brown, the [California] governor." Arnstein's suicide, however, and Karen Christy's decision to return to Texas, decided matters for Hefner. "After she died, there really wasn't a lot of reason for going back," he told me, in the library at the Los Angeles mansion. "There really wasn't anything left for me there."
Over the next few years, Playboy's presence in Chicago vanished, piece by piece, building by building. In 1976, the Playboy Theater was bought and renamed. The Playboy resort in Lake Geneva was sold in 1981 after years of mounting losses; in 1976, the Playboy Towers Hotel became simply the Towers Hotel. In 1989, a Dallas-based commercial real-estate company bought the Playboy Building and removed the nine-foot-high Playboy lettering that had once dominated the Magnificent Mile skyline.
Chicago's Playboy Club, which had moved twice since its spectacular opening, hung on at Clark and Armitage until 1986, a shadow of the sensation it had once been. Soon, the few remaining Playboy Clubs around the country closed down, too.
For Patti Reynolds, a businesswoman who stayed in Chicago, the city would never be the same. "I think it changed Chicago," she says. "You didn't have that excitement when you came down to the Rush Street area, where you could turn around and bump into Hef, or go into places like Mister Kelly's and there'd be a Playmate and a couple of Bunnies."
The fate of the mansion would provide the most curious epilogue. In the mid-seventies, with the magazine's circulation sliding and Playboy Enterprises struggling amid a recession, Lownes, Hefner's old right-hand man, was summoned back from England, where he had made himself—and Playboy—a fortune running a Playboy Club and casino. He slashed the payroll, and began looking for other places to cut. The Big Bunny jet was first on the chopping block (it was sold to Venezuelan Airlines for $4.2 million). Next would be the mansion, Lownes told the Tribune on July 28, 1975. Hefner had been there only three weeks in the previous year.
After the story came out, Hefner balked and Lownes sheepishly announced that he had misspoken. But the reality was undeniable. Hefner was gone. The mansion, now tended by a skeleton staff, was finished. The party was over.
The mansion wheezed along on life support, opened for occasional charity benefits and business functions. The last real bash there was in 1978, when Hefner returned for Playboy's 25th anniversary. For one night, the place recaptured its old glory, attracting celebrities, Playmates, doctors, aldermen, business executives, and models. A couple even swam in the pool—"two fully suited women and a man wearing goggles who made faces in the window of the underwater bar," according to the Tribune.
As the years passed, Playboy executives struggled with what to do with the place; there was even talk of turning it into a mayor's mansion. Then, in August 1984, with Hefner's daughter, Christie, now at Playboy's helm, the property was leased to the School of the Art Institute, where Hefner had once taken figure-drawing classes. Charged a token $10 a year for five years, the school named the place Hefner Hall, and it turned the former Bunny dorms into sleeping quarters. Students sometimes took impromptu—and unauthorized—tours of the place, astonished to find that the pool, and its grotto bar, though drained, were still there, as was the bowling alley, where a gold bowling ball bearing the inscription "Hef" remained.
Because of the high maintenance costs, however, the school eventually abandoned the property and sold the mansion to a developer in 1993. By 1999, the pool, grotto bar, and bowling alley had all been removed and the building was fully renovated and turned into condos. The only undisturbed remnant of the glory days was the ballroom. It was too beautiful not to keep, the developer decided.
The Behavioral Sink
Will Wiles
How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25—as this particular model was called—was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan. The Universe took the form of a tank, 101 inches square, enclosed by walls 54 inches high. The first 37 inches of wall was structured so the mice could climb up, but they were prevented from escaping by 17 inches of bare wall above. Each wall had sixteen vertical mesh tunnels—call them stairwells—soldered to it. Four horizontal corridors opened off each stairwell, each leading to four nesting boxes. That means 256 boxes in total, each capable of housing fifteen mice. There was abundant clean food, water, and nesting material. The Universe was cleaned every four to eight weeks. There were no predators, the temperature was kept at a steady 68°F, and the mice were a disease-free elite selected from the National Institutes of Health's breeding colony. Heaven.
Four breeding pairs of mice were moved in on day one. After 104 days of upheaval as they familiarized themselves with their new world, they started to reproduce. In their fully catered paradise, the population increased exponentially, doubling every fifty-five days. Those were the good times, as the mice feasted on the fruited plain. To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction.
Calhoun's concern was the problem of abundance: overpopulation. As the name Universe 25 suggests, it was not the first time Calhoun had built a world for rodents. He had been building utopian environments for rats and mice since the 1940s, with thoroughly consistent results. Heaven always turned into hell. They were a warning, made in a postwar society already rife with alarm over the soaring population of the United States and the world. Pioneering ecologists such as William Vogt and Fairfield Osborn were cautioning that the growing population was putting pressure on food and other natural resources as early as 1948, and both published bestsellers on the subject. The issue made the cover of Time magazine in January 1960. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, an alarmist work suggesting that the overcrowded world was about to be swept by famine and resource wars. After Ehrlich appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1970, his book became a phenomenal success. By 1972, the issue reached its mainstream peak with the report of the Rockefeller Commission on US Population, which recommended that population growth be slowed or even reversed.
But Calhoun's work was different. Vogt, Ehrlich, and the others were neo-Malthusians, arguing that population growth would cause our demise by exhausting our natural resources, leading to starvation and conflict. But there was no scarcity of food and water in Calhoun's universe. The only thing that was in short supply was space. This was, after all, "heaven"—a title Calhoun deliberately used with pitch-black irony. The point was that crowding itself could destroy a society before famine even got a chance. In Calhoun's heaven, hell was other mice.
So what exactly happened in Universe 25? Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed "the beautiful ones," never sought sex and never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.
On day 560, a little more than eighteen months into the experiment, the population peaked at 2,200 mice and its growth ceased. A few mice survived past weaning until day six hundred, after which there were few pregnancies and no surviving young. As the population had ceased to regenerate itself, its path to extinction was clear. There would be no recovery, not even after numbers had dwindled back to those of the heady early days of the Universe. The mice had lost the capacity to rebuild their numbers—many of the mice that could still conceive, such as the "beautiful ones" and their secluded singleton female counterparts, had lost the social ability to do so. In a way, the creatures had ceased to be mice long before their death—a "first death," as Calhoun put it, ruining their spirit and their society as thoroughly as the later "second death" of the physical body.
Calhoun had built his career on this basic experiment and its consistent results ever since erecting his first "rat city" on a quarter-acre of land adjacent to his home in Towson, Maryland, in 1947. The population of that first pen had peaked at 200 and stabilized at 150, when Calhoun had estimated that it could rise to as many as 5,000—something was evidently amiss. In 1954, Calhoun was employed by the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Maryland, where he would remain for three decades. He built a ten-by-fourteen-foot "universe" for a small population of rats, divided by electrified barriers into four rooms connected by narrow ramps. Food and water were plentiful, but space was tight, capable of supporting a maximum of forty-eight rats. The population reached eighty before succumbing to the same catastrophes that would afflict Universe 25: explosive violence, hypersexual activity followed by asexuality, and self-destruction.
In 1962, Calhoun published a paper called "Population Density and Social Pathology" in Scientific American, laying out his conclusion: overpopulation meant social collapse followed by extinction. The more he repeated the experiment, the more the outcome came to seem inevitable, fixed with the rigor of a scientific equation. By the time he wrote about the decline and fall of Universe 25 in 1972, he even laid out its fate in equation form:
Mortality, bodily death = the second death
Drastic reduction of mortality
= death of the second death
= death squared
= (death)2
(Death)2 leads to dissolution of social organization
= death of the establishment
Death of the establishment leads to spiritual death
= loss of capacity to engage in behaviors essential to species survival
= the first death
Therefore:
(Death)2 = the first death
This formula might apply to rats and mice—but could the same happen to humankind? For Calhoun, there was little question about it. No matter how sophisticated we considered ourselves to be, once the number of individuals capable of filling roles greatly exceeded the number of roles,
only violence and disruption of social organization can follow. ... Individuals born under these circumstances will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of alienation. Their most complex behaviors will become fragmented. Acquisition, creation and utilization of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial cultural-conceptual-technological society will have been blocked.
If its growth continued unchecked, human society would succumb to nihilism and collapse, meaning the death of the species. Calhoun's death-squared formula was for social pessimists what the laws of thermodynamics are for physicists. It was a sandwich board with "The End Is Nigh" written on one side, and "QED" on the other. Indeed, the plight of Calhoun's rats and mice is one we easily identify with—we put ourselves in the place of the mice, mentally inhabit the mouse universe, and cannot help but see ways in which it is like our own crowding world.
This is precisely what Calhoun intended, in the design of his experiments and the language he used to describe them. Universe 25 resembles the utopian, modernist urban fantasies of architects such as Ludwig Hilberseimer. Calhoun referred to the dwelling places within his Universes as "tower blocks" and "walk-up apartments." As well as the preening "beautiful ones," he refers to "juvenile delinquents" and "dropouts." This handy use of anthropomorphism is unusual in a scientist—we are being invited to draw parallels with human society.
And that lesson found a ready audience. "Population Density and Social Pathology" was, for an academic paper, a smash hit, being cited up to 150 times a year. Particularly effective was Calhoun's name for the point past which the slide into breakdown becomes irretrievable: the "behavioral sink." "The unhealthy connotations of the term are not accidental," Calhoun noted drily. The "sink," a para-pathology of shared hopelessness, drew in pathological behavior and exacerbated its effects. Once the event horizon of the behavioral sink was passed, the end was certain. Pathological behavior would escalate beyond any possibility of control. The writer Tom Wolfe alighted on the phrase and deployed it in his lament for the declining New York City, "O Rotten Gotham! Sliding Down into the Behavioral Sink," anthologized in The Pump House Gang in 1968. "It got to be easy to look at New Yorkers as animals," Wolfe wrote, "especially looking down from some place like a balcony at Grand Central at the rush hour Friday afternoon. The floor was filled with the poor white humans, running around, dodging, blinking their eyes, making a sound like a pen full of starlings or rats or something." The behavioral sink meshed neatly with Wolfe's pessimism about the modern city, and his grim view of modernist housing projects as breeding grounds for degeneration and atavism.
Wolfe wasn't alone. The warnings inherent in Calhoun's research fell on fertile ground in the 1960s, with social policy grappling helplessly with the problems of the inner cities: violence, rape, drugs, family breakdown. A rich literature of overpopulation emerged from the stew, and when we look at Calhoun's rodent universes today, we can see in them aspects of that literature. In the 1973 film Soylent Green, based on Harry Harrison's 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room!, the population of a grotesquely crowded New York is mired in passivity and dependent on food handouts which, it emerges, are derived from human corpses. In Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner's 1972 novel of a hyperactive, overpopulated world, society is plagued by "muckers," individuals who suddenly and for no obvious reason run amok, killing and wounding others. When we hear of the death throes of Universe 25—the cannibalism, withdrawal, and random violence—these are the works that come to mind. The ultraviolence-dispensing, gang-raping, purposeless "droogs" of Antony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange, which appeared in the same year as Calhoun's Scientific American paper, are the very image of some of the uglier products of mouse utopia.
Calhoun's research remains a touchstone for a particular kind of pessimistic worldview. And, in the way that writers like Wolfe and the historian Lewis Mumford deployed reference to it, it can be seen as bleakly reactionary, a warning against cosmopolitanism or welfare dependence, which might sap the spirit and put us on the skids to the behavioral sink. As such, it found fans among conservative Christians; Calhoun even met the pope in 1974. But in fact the full span of Calhoun's research had a more positive slant. The misery of the rodent universes was not uniform—it had contours, and some did better than others. Calhoun consistently found that those animals better able to handle high numbers of social interactions fared comparatively well. "High social velocity" mice were the winners in hell. As for the losers, Calhoun found they sometimes became more creative, exhibiting an un-mouse-like drive to innovate. They were forced to, in order to survive.
Later in his career, Calhoun worked to build universes that maximized this kind of creativity and minimized the ill effects of overcrowding. He disagreed with Ehrlich and Vogt that restrictions on reproduction were the only possible response to overpopulation. Man, he argued, was a positive animal, and creativity and design could solve our problems. He advocated overcoming the limitations of the planet, and as part of a multidisciplinary group called the Space Cadets promoted the colonization of space. It was a source of lasting dismay to Calhoun that his research primarily served as encouragement to pessimists and reactionaries, rather than stimulating the kind of hopeful approach to mankind's problems that he preferred. More cheerfully, however, the one work of fiction that stems directly from Calhoun's work, rather than the stew of gloom that it was stirred into, is optimistic, and expands imaginatively on his attempts to spur creative thought in rodents. This is Robert C. O'Brien's book for children, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, about a colony of super-intelligent and self-reliant rats that have escaped from the National Institute of Mental Health.
* * *
The party did not stop for Hefner, of course. If anything, the Los Angeles mansion and the parties there have outshone the Chicago originals. In the years immediately after he moved to L.A. permanently, he seemed determined to bury all memories of his Chicago days under a blizzard of sexual pleasures. Soon enough, a new set of tales, scandals, and legends grew up, and within a few years, it was as if the glory days in Chicago were nothing more than some distant, quaint fantasy. As with the endless string of beauties he had wooed, loved, and eventually drifted apart from, Hefner had left the mansion behind.
Now, the empire he created is faltering. In May, the company projected steep drops in ad revenue and posted a first-quarter net loss of more than $13 million. Jerome Kern, the interim chairman and chief executive, announced that "radical changes" were in the works to make the magazine "younger and fresher." Circulation will be cut and the magazine will be published fewer times a year. At presstime, there were reports that Playboy Enterprises itself—of which Hefner controls 70 percent of the voting stock—was up for sale.
The last constant, it seems, is the man sitting across from me on the shiny striped couch next to the glazed ceramic Barbi Benton bust, searching for the words to describe his feelings toward Chicago, and toward that time of his life. "Mixed emotions," he says. "It was the good, the bad, and the ugly. You love the good parts about Chicago. It was the city that worked, but it was also corrupt."
He falls silent for a moment. The room is hushed, the only sound the mournful screech of the peacocks that strut across the lawn. When he speaks again, his voice softens. "It was a magical place, a magical time," he says. "It's where the boy grew up and dreamed the dreams. I loved the boy and I loved the dreams." And he loved the home, he says, the old flame he left behind but never quite forgot, the building that is beautiful still all these years later, though hardly anyone stops to look.
The Garrison Commission On the Assassination of President Kennedy
by William W. Turner, Ramparts, 1968
(Part I)
JIM GARRISON IS AN ANGRY MAN. For six years now he has been the tough, uncompromising district attorney of New Orleans, a rackets-buster without parallel in a political freebooting state. He was elected on a reform platform and meant it. Turning down a Mob proposition that would have netted him $3000 a week as his share of slot machine proceeds, he proceeded to raid Bourbon Street clip joints, crack down on prostitution, and eliminate bail bond rackets. His track record as the proverbial fighting DA is impressive: his office has never lost a major case, and no convictions have been toppled on appeal because of improper methods.
Garrison is angry right now -- as angry as if some bribed cops had tried to steer him away from a vice ring or as if the Mob had attempted to use political clout to get him off their backs. Only this time, the file reads, "Conspiracy to Assassinate President Kennedy," and it isn't COSA NOSTRA, but the majestic might of the United States government which is trying to keep him from his duty.
"Who appointed Ramsey Clark, who has done his best to torpedo the investigation of the case?" He fumed in a recent speech before a gathering of southern California newscasters. "Who controls the CIA? Who controls the FBI? Who controls the Archives where this evidence is locked up for so long that it unlikely that there is anybody in this room who will be alive when it is released? This is really your property and the property of the people of this country. Who has the arrogance and the brass to prevent the people from seeing that evidence?
Who indeed?
"The one man who has profited most from the assassination -- your friendly President, Lyndon Johnson!"
Garrison made it clear that he was not accusing Johnson of complicity in the crime, but left no doubt that as far as he was concerned, the burden had shifted to the government to prove that it was not an accessory before or after the fact.
"I assume that the President of the United States is not involved," he said. "But wouldn't it be nice to know it?"
The simple probity of Garrison's challenge is underscored by the fact that the government and government-oriented forces have concealed and destroyed evidence, intimidated witnesses and maligned, ridiculed and impeded Garrison and his investigation. In short, the conduct of the government has not been that of an innocent party, but of one determined to cover its tracks. For the past nine months, I have worked closely with the DA and his staff, hoping to contribute to their investigation.
In my opinion there is no question that they have uncovered a conspiracy. Nor is there any doubt that Jim Garrison is one of a vanishing breed: a Southern populist anchored in very traditional American ideals about justice and truth, who can neither rationalize nor temporize in pursuit of them.
By design or ignorance, the mass media -- from NBC to Life -- have created an image of Garrison as a ruthless opportunist with vaulting political ambition, which naturally leads to the conclusion that he is trying to parlay the death of a President into a political tour de force. He is, in fact, neither knave nor fool. No politician on the make would be reckless enough to attempt to usurp the findings of the seven distinguished men of the Warren Commission. "It's not a matter or wanting to gain headlines," says Garrison indignantly. "It's a matter of not being able to sleep at night. I am in an official position in a city where the greater part of the planning of the assassination of President Kennedy took place, and this was missed by the Warren
Commission. What would these people who have attacked me do if they were here and had official responsibility? Would they be able to say, "Jack Kennedy is dead and there is nothing I can do about it?"
[THE MAKING OF A DA]
GARRISON'S ATTITUDES were undoubtedly set by his experiences during World War II in Europe where, while flying a Piper Cub as an artillery spotter during the Allied sweep, he came upon Dachau. The residue of horror he witnessed there etched itself so deeply on his conscience that in the foreword to a collection of criminology essays published in 1966, he deplored the apathy that permitted Dachau. Since man emerged from the mists of time, he wrote, "such reason as he possesses has produced the cross, the bowl of hemlock, the gallows, the rack, the gibbet, the guillotine, the sword, the machine gun, the electric chair, the hand grenade, the personnel mine, the flame thrower, poison gas, the nearly obsolete TNT bomb, the obsolescent atom bomb, and the currently popular hydrogen bomb -- all made to maim or destroy his fellow man." Garrison, who is fond of allegorical example, pictured an extra-terrestrial being happening upon a self-desolated world and asking, "What happened to your disinterested millions? Your uncommitted and uninvolved, your preoccupied and bored? Where today are their private horizons and their mirrored worlds of self? Where is their splendid indifference now?"
With a diploma from Tulane University law school, Garrison tried the life of an FBI agent but found the role too circumscribed to be stimulating. A stint with a firm specializing in corporation law was likewise unrewarding. After another tour of duty in the Korean War -- he is presently a Lt. Colonel in the Louisiana National Guard -- he latched on as an assistant DA in New Orleans and began his public career. After two unsuccessful tries at elective office, he pulled an upset in the 1961 district attorney race. Bucking the Democratic machine and backed only by five young lawyers known as the "Nothing Group" because of their lack of money and prestige, he took to television and came on strong. Like Jack Kennedy, he projected a youthful vigor and enthusiasm that was missing in the stereotyped politicians he was opposing.
Garrison's current battle to get the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA to release evidence about the assassination is not the first time he has tangle with anal retentive government authorities. After the DA's Bourbon Street raids, the city's eight criminal judges began blocking his rouce of funds for the raids, a fines forfeitures pool. Garrison took on the judges in a running dispute that was the talk of New Orleans. On one occasion, a luncheon of the Temple Sinai Brotherhood, he likened the judges to "the sacred cows of India." On another, he accused them of goldbricking by taking 206 holidays, "not counting legal holidays like All Saints' Day, Long's Birthday and St. Winterbottom's Day." Outraged, the judges collectively filed criminal defamation charges. (Complained one, "People holler 'Moo' at me.") The case escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a landmark decsion upheld Garrison's right to criticize public officials.
He exercised that right. When Mayor Victor H. Schiro vacillated on an he quipped, "Not since Hamlet tried to decide whether or not to stab the king of Denmark has there been so agonizin a decision." But if he was an embarrassment to officials, he was a delight to the voters. In 1965, he was returned to office by a two to one margin -- the first New Orleans DA to be reelected in 30 years.
GARRISON's POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY defies definition. He subcribes in part to Ayn Rand's individualist dogma, but is too much of a traditional
democrat to accept its inevitable elitism. He is friendly with segregationists and archconservatives, but bristles at the mention of the Ku Klux Klan. Negro leaders have no quarrel with his conduct of office, and he has appointed Negroes as asistant DAs. Several years ago when the police vice squad tried to sweep James Baldwin's "Another Country" from bookstore shelves, he refused to prosecute ("How can you define obscenity?") and denounced the censorship in stinging terms, thus incurring the wrath of the White Citizens Council. He sees no virtue in capital punishment, but is somewhat ambivalent on the libertarian trend in court decisions. In a law quarterly he predicted that increasing emphasis on "the rights of the defendant against the state may come to be seen as the greatest contribution our country has made to this world we live in"; yet on occasion he has implied that Supreme Court decisions are a factor in the rising rate of violent crime.
But since the start of his assassination probe, his views on many issues have changed appreciably. "A year ago I was a mild hawk on Vietnam," he
relates. "But no more. I've discovered the government has told so many lies in this [th assassination] case it can't be believed on anything." He fears that the U.S. is eveolving into a "proto-fascit state," and cites as one indication the subtle quashing of dissent by an increasingly autocratic central government. The massive and still growing power of the CIA and the defense establishment, he contends, is transforming the old America into a Kafkaesque society in which power is equated with morality.
Garrison detests being called flamboyant, which is the most common adjective applied to him, and in truth he makes no conscious effort at ostentation. But he is one of those arresting figures who automatically dominates any gathering, and his bold strokes in battle, as deliberate as his moves in chess, seem to dramatize his formidable personality. He also must rank as one of the more intellectual big city DAs. He avidly devours history -- it reflects in his metaphor -- and quotes everything from Graham Greene and Lewis Carroll to Polonius' advice to Laertes. But he is not exactly a square. Once known as a Bourbon Street swinger, he is still familiar in a few of the livelier French Quarter spots, where he can sometimes be found holding forth on the piano and crooning a basso profundo rendition of a tune popular half a generation ago. But mostly he sticks to his study at home, and his striking blonde wife and five kids.
It may be that in the end, the rank unfairness of the current siege on Garrison will be its undoing, for the American sense of fair play is not easily trifled with. But do the people really want the truth about the assassination, or is it more comfortable to let sleeping dogs lie? Garrison sees this as the pivotal question in the history of the American democratic experiment: "In our incipient superstate it really doesn't matter what happened. Truth is what the government chooses to tell you. Justice is what it wants to happen. It is better for you not to know that at midday on November 22, 1963, there were many men in many places glancing at their watches. But if we do not fight for the truth now, we may never have another chance."
[The FBI Clears a Suspect]
ON THE MORNING AFTER the assassination, as the nation lay stunned by grief, [Jim] Garrison summoned his staff to the office for a "brain-storming session" to explore the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald had accomplices in New Orleans, where the previous summer he had stumped the streets advocating Fair Play for Cuba.
The DA's men put out feelers into the city's netherworld, and it was First Assistant DA Frank Klein who registered the first feedback. A slight, furtive sometime private eye named Jack S. Martin confided that a David William Ferrie had taken off on a sudden trip to Texas the afternoon of the assassination. The tipster knew Ferrie well, although there was bad blood between them. Both had worked intermittently for the same detective firm, W. Guy Banister & Associates, and were affiliated with the Apostolic Orthodox Old Catholic Church, a sect steeped in theological anti-communism. An exceptionally skilled pilot, Ferrie had been dismissed from Eastern Air Lines in 1962 due to publicity over alleged homosexual activities.
According to Martin, Ferrie had commanded a Civil Air Patrol in which Oswald had once been a member. He had taught Oswald to shoot with a
telescopic sight, and had become involved with his protege in an assassination plot. Less than two weeks before the target date, Ferrie had made a trip to Dallas. His assigned role in the assassination, Martin said, was to fly the escaping conspirators to Matamoros, Mexico, near Brownsville, Texas.
When Ferrie returned to New Orleans on the Monday following President Kennedy's death, he was interrogated by the DA's office. He said his trip had been arranged "on the spur of the moment." With two companions, Alvin Beauboeuf and Melvin Coffey, he had driven straight through to Houston Friday night. On Saturday afternoon, the three skated at an ice rink; that evening they made the short jog to Galveston and hunted geese Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon they headed back to New Orleans, but detoured to Alexandria, Louisiana, to visit relatives of Beaubeouf.
Garrison was unconvinced by Ferrie's account. An all-night dash through the worst rainstorm in years to start a mercurial junket of over 1000 miles in three days for recreational purposes was too much to swallow. "It was a curious trip to a curious place at a curious time," the DA recalls. He booked Ferrie as a "fugitive from Texas" and handed him over to the FBI. The G-men questioned him intensively, then released him.
Since the 40-odd pages recording the FBI interrogation of Ferrie are still classified in the National Archives, one can only surmise the reasons the Bureau stamped its file on him "closed." [1]
Apparently the FBI did not take the pilot too seriously. A short Bureau document in the National Archives reveals Ferrie had admitted being "publicly and privately" critical of Kennedy for withholding air cover at the Bay of Pigs, and had used expressions like "he ought to be shot," but agents agreed he did not mean the threat literally.
Most convincing at the time, the fact that Ferrie did not leave New Orleans until hours after the assassination seemed to rule out his role as a getaway pilot. Moreover, the Stinson monoplane he then owned was sitting at Lakefront Airport in unflyable condition.
Accepting the FBI's judgment, Garrison dropped his investigation. "I had full confidence in the FBI then," he explains. "There was no reason to try and second guess them."
For three years the DA's faith in the Bureau's prowess remained unshaken. Then in November 1966, squeezed into a tourist-class seat on an Eastern jet headed for New York, his interest in the possiblity of a conspiracy was rekindled. Flanking him were Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana and Joseph Rault Jr, a New Orleans oilman. The previous week, Long had remarked in the course of a press conference that he doubted the findings of the Warren Commission. It was at the height of the controversy stirred by publications ripping at the Commission's methods and conclusions.
Garrison bombarded the senator with questions in the manner, he reminisces, "of a prosecutor cross-examining a witness." Long maintained that there were grievous flaws and unexplored territory in the Warren Report. He considered it highly implausible that a gunman of Oswald's "mediocre skill" could have fired with pinpoint accuracy within a time constraint barely sufficient "for a man to get off two shots from a bolt-action rifle, much less three."
The DA's mind reverted to the strange trip of pilot David Ferrie, and he began to wonder how perceptive the FBI had really been in dismissing the whole thing. When he retruned to New Orleans, he went into virtual seclusion in his study at home, lucubrating over the columns of the Warren Report. When he became convinced that Oswald could not have acted alone, and that at least a phase of the conspiracy had been centered in New Orleans, he committed his office to full-scale probe. He launched it quietly, preferring to work more efficiently in the dark.
THE PROBE REFOCUSED ON on Ferrie, and on December 15 he was brought in for further questioning. Asked pertinent details of the whirlwind Texas trip in 1963, he begged lack of memory and referred his questioners to the FBI. What about the goose hunting? "We did in fact get to where the geese were and there were thousands," he recounted. "But you couldn't approach them. They were a wise bunch of birds." Pressed for details of what took place at the ice rink, Ferrie became irritated. "Ice skate -- what do you think?" he snapped.
It didn't take the DA's men long to poke holes in Ferrie's story. Melvin Coffey, one of his companions on the 1963 Texas trip, deposed that it was not a sudden inspiration:
Q: The trip was arranged before?
A: Yes.
Q: How long before?
A: A couple of days.
The probers also determined that no one had taken along any shotguns on the "goose-hunting" trip.
In Houston, the ice skating alibi was similarly discredited. In 1963, the FBI had interviewed Chuck Rolland, proprietor of the Winterland Skating Rink. "FERRIE contacted him by telephone November 22, 1963, and asked for the skating schedule," a Bureau report, one of the few unclassified documents on Ferrie, reveals. "Mr. FERRIE stated that he was coming in from out of town and desired to do some skating while in Houston. On November 23, 1963, between 3:30 and 5:30 PM, Mr. FERRIE and two companions came to the rink and talked to Mr. ROLLAND." The report continues that Ferrie and Rolland had a short general conversation, and that Ferrie remarked that "he and his companions would be in and out of the skating rink during the weekend" (Commission Document 301). When Garrison's men recently talked to Rolland, they obtained pertinent facts that the FBI had either missed or failed to report in 1963. Rolland was certain that none of the three men in Ferrie's party had ice skated; Ferrie had spent the entire two hours he was at the rink standing by a pay telephone -- and finally received a call.
At Houston International Airport, more information was gleaned. Air service personnel seemed to recall that in 1963 Ferrie had access to an airplane based in Houston. In this craft, the flight to Matamoros would take little more than an hour.
Ferrie had patently lied about the purpose of the trip. One of the standard tactics of bank robbers is to escape from the scene of the crime in a "hot car" that cannot be traced to them, then switch to a "cold car" of their own to complete the getaway. Garrison considers it possible that Ferrie may have been the pilot of a second craft in a two-stage escape of the Dallas assassins to south of the border, or may have been slated to be a backup pilot in the evnet contingency plans were activated.
Did Ferrie know Oswald? The pilot denied it, but the evidence mounts that he did. For example, there is now in Garrison's hand information that when Oswald was arrested in Dallas police, he had in his possession a CURRENT New Orleans library card issued to David Ferrie. Reinforcing the validity of this information is a Secret Service report on the questioning of Ferrie by that agency when he was in federal custody in 1963. During an otherwise mild interrogation, Ferrie was asked, strangely enough, in he lent his library card to Oswald. No, he replied, producing a card from the New Orleans public library in the name of Dr. David Ferrie. That card had expired.
When he realized he was a suspect in Garrison's current investigation, Ferrie seemed to deteriorate. By the time he died on February 22, 1967, he was a nervous wreck, subsisting on endless cigarettes and cups of coffee and enough tranquilizers to pacify an army. He had sought out the press only days before his death, labeling the probe a "fraud" and complaining that he was the victim of a "witch hunt." "I suppose he has me pegged as a getaway pilot," he remarked bitterly.
When Garrison delivered his epitaph of Ferrie as "one of history's most important individuals," most of the press winked knowingly. The probe was, after all, a publicity stunt, and the DA had had his headlines. Now that his prime suspect had conveniently passed away, he had the perfect excuse to inter his probe alongside the deceased pilot.
But for DA Jim Garrison, it was not the end but the beginning.
[544 CAMP STREET, NEW ORLEANS]
"WHILE THE LEGEND '544 Camp St., NEW ORLEANS, LA.' was stamped on some of the literature that Oswald had in his possession at the time of his arrest [for "disturbing the peace"] in New Orleans, extensive investigation was not able to connect Oswald with that address" (Warren Report, p.408). So said the Commission. But Garrison *has* connected Oswald with that address. His investigation shows that Oswald functioned
in a paramilitary right-wing milieu of which 544 Camp Street was a nerve center, and that Oswald's ostentatious "Fair Play for Cuba" advocacy was
nothing more than a facade.
The dilapidated building at 544 Camp Street is on the corner of Lafayette Place. Shortly after news of Garrison's investigation broke, I went to 531 Lafayette Place, an address given me by Minuteman defector Jerry Milton Brooks as the office of W. Guy Banister, a former FBI official who ran a private detective agency. According to Brooks, who had been a trusted Minutemen aide, Banister was a member of the Minutemen and head of the Anti-Communism League of the Caribbean, assertedly an intermediary between the CIA and Caribbean insurgency movements. Brooks said he had worked for Banister on "anti-Communist" research in 1961-1962, and had known David Ferrie as a frequent visitor to Banister's office.
Banister had died of an apparent heart attack in the summer of 1964. Brooks had told me of two associates whom I hoped to find. One was Hugh
F. Ward, a young investigator for Banister who also belonged to the Minutemen and the Anti-Communism League. Then I learned that Ward, too, was dead. Reportedly taught to fly by David Ferrie, he was at the controls of a Piper Aztec when it plunged to earth near Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, May 23, 1965.
The other associate was Maurice Brooks Gatlin Sr, legal counsel to the Anti-Communism League of the Caribbean. Jerry Brooks said he had once
been a sort of protege of Gatlin and was in his confidence. Brooks believed Gatlin's frequent world travels were as a "transporter" for the CIA. As an example, he said, Gatlin remarked about 1962, in a self-important manner, that he had $100,000 of CIA money earmarked for a French right-wing clique that was going to attempt to assassinate General de Gaulle; shortly afterward Gatlin flew to Paris. The search for Gatlin, however, was likewise futile: in 1964 he fell or was pushed from the sixth floor of the El Panama Hotel in Panama during the early morning, and was killed instantly.
But the trip to 531 Lafayette Place was not entirely fruitless. The address, I discovered, was a side entrance to 544 Camp Street. Entering either at the front or the side, one arrives via a walkup staircase at the same second floor space. That second floor once housed the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front and W. Guy Banister & Associates.
Guy Banister had been in charge of the Chicago FBI office before retiring in 1955 and becoming New Orleans deputy superintendent of police for several years. He was regarded as one of the city's most vocal anti-Castroites, and published the racist Louisiana Intelligence Digest, which depicted integration as a communist conspiracy. Evidence of his relationship with the federal intelligence apparat has recently surface. A man who knew Banister well has told Garrison that Banister became associated with the Office of Naval Intelligence through the recommendation of Guy Johnson, an ONI reserve officer and the first attorney for Clay Shaw when he was arrested by Garrison.
A copyrighted story in the New Orleans States-Item, April 25, 1967, further illuminates the Camp Street scene. The newspaper, which at the time had an investigative team working parallel to the Garrison probe, reported that a reliable source close to Banister said he had seen 50 to 100 boxes marked "Schlumberger" in Banister's office-storeroom early in 1961 before the Bay of Pigs. The boxes contained rifle grenades, land mines and unique "little missiles." Banister explained that "the stuff would just be there overnight ... a bunch of fellows connected with the Cuban deal asked to leave it there overnight." It was all right, assured Banister, "I have approval from somebody."
The "somebody," one can surmise from the Gordon Novel episode which follows, was the CIA. Novel is wanted by the DA as a material witness
in the 1961 burglary of the Schlumberger Well Co. munitions dump near New Orleans. Subpoenaed by the grand jury last March, Novel fled to
McLean, Virginia, next door to the CIA complex at Langley, and took a lie detector test administered by a former Army intelligence officer which, he boasted to the press, proved Garrison's probe was a fraud. He then skipped first to Montreal and then to Columbus, Ohio, from where Governor James Rhodes, in one of the most absurd stipulations ever atached to a normally routine procedure, refuses to extradite him unless Garrison agrees not to question him on the assassination.
From his Ohio sanctuary the fugitive cryptically asserted that the munitions caper was one of "the most patriotic burglaries in history." When an enterprising reporter took him to a marathon party, Novel's indiscreet tongue loosened further. According to the States-Item article, Novel's oft-repeated account was that the munitions bunker was a CIA staging point for war materiel destined for use in the impending Bay of Pigs invasion. He is quoted as saying that on the day the munitions were picked up, he "was called by his CIA contact and told to join a group which was ordered to transport munitions from the bunker to New Orleans." The key to the bunker was provided by his CIA contact. Novel reportedly said the others in the CIA group at the bunker were David Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith -- New Orleans delegate to the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front -- and several Cubans. The munitions, according to his account, were dropped in Novel's office, Ferrie's home and Banister's office-storeroom.
Ferrie worked on and off for Banister as an investigator, and the mutual affinity was such that in 1962, when Eastern Air Lines was in the process of dismissing Ferrie for publicity over alleged homosexual acts, Banister appeared at a Miami hearing and delivered an impassioned plea on his behalf. When Banister suddenly died, the ex-pilot evidently acquired part of his files. When he realized he was a prime suspect in Garrison's probe, Ferrie systematically disposed of his papers and documents for the years 1962 and 1963. But in photocopying the bibliography of a cancer paper he had written (at one time he had caged mice in his home on which he experimented with cancer implants), he inadvertantly overlapped the bottom portion of notes recording the dispositions. Included is the notation: "Copies of B's [presumably Banister's] microfilm files to Atlanta rite-wingers [sic]."
The Banister files were reputed to be the largest collection of "anti-communist intelligence" in Louisiana, and part were sold by his widow to the Sovereignty Commission, a sort of state HUAC, where a Garrison investigator was able to examine them. Banister's filing system was modeled after the FBI's, and contained files on both friends and foes. The "10" and "23" classification dealt with Cuban matters; 23-5, for example, was labeled Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front and 10-209 simply Cuban File. There was a main file, 23-14, labeled Shaw File, but someone had completely stripped it before Garrison's man go there.
The Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, which occupied what was grandiosely called Suite 6 at 544 Camp Street, was the coalition of
Cuban exile "liberation" groups operating under CIA aegis that mounted the Bay of Pigs invasion. Arcacha, the New Orleans delegate of the Miami-based organization, is a dapper, moustachioed man who had served in Batista's diplomatic corps. There are numerous witnesses who attest
that he was a confidant of Banister and Ferrie, and that his office was a way station for the mixed bag of Cuban exiles and American adventurers involved in the "liberation" movement. Late in 1962, the Front closed up shop, at which time Arcacha became a founder of the Crusade to Free
Cuba, a paramilitary group of militant right wingers. In March 1963, he moved to Houston, Texas. Early in his investigation, Garrison charged Arcacha with being a party to the munitions burglary with Novel and Ferrie, but by this time he was living in Dallas, where he refused to talk to the DA's men without Dallas police and assistant DA Bill Alexander present. When Garrison obtained an arrest warrant and sought to extradite him, Texas Governor John Connally would not sign the papers.
As for Oswald and 544 Camp Street, Garrison declares that "we have several witnesses who can testify they observed Oswald there on a number
of occasions." One witness is David L. Lewis, another in Banister's stable of investigators. In late 1962, Lewis says, he was drinking coffee in the restaurant next to 544 Camp street when Cuban exile Carlos Quiroga, who was close to Arcacha, came in with a young man he introduced as Leon Oswald. A few days later, Lewis saw Quiroga, Oswald and Ferrie together at 544 Camp Street. A few days after that, he barged into Banister's office and interrupted a meeting between Banister, Quiroga, Ferrie and Leon Oswald. It was not until he was interviewed by Garrison that Lewis concluded that Leon Oswald was probably Lee Harvey Oswald. Noting that the "natural deaths of Banister and Ferrie were strikingly similar," Lewis has slipped into seclusion.
(Part II)
[ CIA: THE COMMON DENOMINATOR]
ON OR ABOUT THE NIGHT of September 16, 1963, a nondescript Leon Oswald, the brilliant, erratic David Ferrie, and a courtly executive-type man
name Clem Bertrand discussed a guerilla ambush of President Kennedy in Ferrie's apartment. There was talk of "triangulation of fire ... the availability of exit ... one man had to be sacrificed to give the other one or two gunmen time to escape." Escape out of the country would be by a plane flown by Ferrie. This was the hub of the testimony of Perry Raymond Russo at a preliminary hearing for Clay Shaw, accused by Garrison of conspiracy in the assassination. Russo identified Leon Oswald as Lee Harvey Oswald, and Clem Bertrand as Clay Shaw.
What would bring three such widely disparate men together in the first place? One possible answer: the CIA.
On the fringe of downtown New Orleans, the building at 544 Camp Street is across the street from the government building which in 1963 housed
the local CIA headquarters. One block away, at 640 Magazine Street, is the William B. Reily Co. a coffee firm where Oswald was employed that pivotal summer. He worked from May 10 to July 19, earning a total of $548.41 (Commission Exhibits 1154). Despite this, he did not seem hard put to support Marina and their child. Nor did he seem particularly concerned about being fired. The personnel manager of the Reily Co. told the Secret Service that "there would be times when Oswald would be gone for periods of an hour or longer and when questioned he could not furnish a plausible explanation as to where he had been ..." (CE 1154).
Next door is the Crescent City Garage, whose owner, Adrian T. Alba, testified that Oswald spent hours on end in his waiting room buried in gun magazines (Warren Report, Vol. 10, p.226). Shortly before leaving the coffee firm, Oswald mentioned to Alba that his employment application was about to be accepted "out there where the gold is" -- the NASA Saturn missile plant at Gentilly, a suburb (Vol. 10, p. 226).
On the face of it, the idea that Oswald could get a job at a space agency installation requiring security clearance seems preposterous. He was a self-avowed Marxist who had tried to renounce his American citizenship in Moscow, married the niece of a Soviet KGB colonel, openly engaged in "Fair Play For Cuba" activity, and attempted to join the Communist Party, U.S.A. But Garrison points out that it is an open secret that the CIA uses the NASA facility as a cover for clandestine operations. And it is his contention that Oswald was a "witting" agent of the CIA.
There is a surfeit of indications of Oswald's status. One is the story of Donald P. Norton, who claims he was impressed into the Agency's service in 1957 under threat of exposure as a homosexual. In September 1962, Norton related, he was dispatched from Atlanta to Mexico with $50,000 for an anti-Castro group. He had no sooner registered in the Yamajel Hotel in Monterrey, Mexico, per instructions, than he was contacted by one Harvey Lee, a dead ringer for Oswald except that his hair seemed slightly thicker. In exchange for the money, Lee gave him a briefcase containing documents in manila envelopes. According to plan, Norton delivered the briefcase to an employee of an American oil firm in Calgary, Alberta, who repeated the pass phrase, "The weather is very warm in Tulsa."
Norton also contends he met David Ferrie earlier in his CIA career. In early 1958, he was tapped for a courier trip to Cuba and told to meet his contact at the Eastern Air Lines counter at the Atlanta airport. The contact was a singular appearing man who called himself Hugh Pharris or Ferris; Norton now states it was Ferrie. "Here are your samples," Ferrie remarked, handing Norton a phonograph record. "It is in the jacket." "It" was $150,000, which Norton duly delivered to a Cuban television performer in Havana. Norton asserts he went to Freeport, Grand Bahamas, on an Agency assignment late in 1966, and upon his return to Miami his contact instructed that "something was happening in New Orleans, and that I [Norton] should take a long, quiet vacation."
He did, and started to fret about the "people who have died in recent months -- like Ferrie." Then he decide to contact Garrison. Norton was given a lie detector test, and there were no indications of deception.
Garrison believes that Oswald was schooled in covert operations by the CIA while in the Marine Corps at the Atsugi Naval Station in Japan, a U-2 facility (interestingly, two possibly relevant documents, "Oswald's access to information about the U-2" [CD 931] and "Reproduction of CIA official dossier on Oswald" [CD 692] are still classified in the National Archives). Curiously, the miscast Marine who was constantly in hot water had a Crypto clearance on top of a Top Secret clearance, and was given two electronics courses. "Isn't it odd," prods Garrison, "that even though he supposedly defected to the Soviet Union with Top Secret data on our radar nets, no action was taken against him when he came back to the United States?"
Equally odd is Oswald's acquisition of Russian language ability. Although the Warren Report spread the fiction tha he was self-taught, and Oswald himself falsely told a New Orleans acquaintance that he had studied Russian at Tulane University, the likelihood is that he was tutored at the CIA's Atsugi station. Marine Corps records reflect that on February 25, 1959, at the conclusion of his Atsugi tour of duty, he was given a Russian language proficiency test (Folsom Exhibit No. 1, p. 7). A former Marine comrade, Kerry Thornley, deposed to Garrison that Oswald conversed in Russian with John Rene Heindel every morning at muster.
Oswald's "defection" to the Soviet Union also smacks of being CIA-initiated. In retrospect, the clearance of U.S. departure and reentry formalities seems unduly expeditious. When the Marine Corps post facto downgraded his discharge to less than honorable, Oswald indignantly wrote Secretary of the Navy John B. Connally, "I have and allways [sic] had the full sanction of the U.S. Embassy, Moscow USSR and hence the U.S. government" (Warren Report, p. 710). When an interviewer on a New Orleans radio station asked him on August 21, 1963 if he had had a government subsidy during his three years in Russia, the normally articulate Oswald stammered badly: "Well, as I er, well, I will answer that question directly then as you will not rest until you get your answer, er, I worked in Russia, er, I was er under the protection er, of the er, that is to say I was not under protection of the American government but I was at all times er, considered an American citizen..." (This is the original version as disseminated by the Associated Press. The version released by the Warren commission has been edited to delete the hemming and hawing and the apparent slip of the tongue, "I *was* under the protection..." [Vol. 21, p 639].)
Possibly the most cogent suggestion of Oswald's mission in the Soviet Union can be found in the testimony of Dennis H. Ofstein, a fellow-employee at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall Co. in Dallas (this is the photographic/graphic arts firm where Oswald worked upon his return from Russia; it receives many classified government contracts). Ofstein's smattering of Russian evidently set the usually phlegmatic Oswald to talking. "All the time I was in Minsk I never saw a vapor trail," Ofstein quotes him. "He also mentioned about the disbursement [dispersement?] of military units," Offstein continued, "saying they didn't intermingle their armored divisions and infantry divisions and various units the way we do in the United States, and they would have all of their aircraft in one geographical location and their tanks in another geographical location, and their infantry in another ..." On
one occasion, Oswald asked Ofstein to enlarge a photograph taken in Russia which, he explained, represented "some military headquarters and that the guards stationed there were armed with weapons and ammunition and had orders to shoot any trespassers..." (Vol. 10, p. 202). Oswald's
inordinate interest in the contrails of high flying aircraft, Soviet military deployment and a military facility involving an element of risk to photograph hardly seems the natural curiosity of a hapless ex-Marine private.
An intriguing entry in Oswald's address book is the word "microdots" appearing on the page on which he has notated the address and phone
number of Jaggers-Chiles_Stovall (CE 18, p. 45). Microdots are a clandestine means of communication developed by German intelligence
during World War II and still in general use among espionage agencies. The technique is to photograph the document to be transmitted and vastly
reduce the negative to a size that will fit inside a period. The microdot can be inserted in an innocuous letter or magazine and mailed, or left in a "dead drop" -- a prearranged location for the deposit and pickup of messages.
Thus it may be significant that Oswald obtained library cards in Dallas and New Orleans, and usually visited the libraries on Thursday. The possible implication of his visits was not overlooked by the FBI, which confiscated every book he ever charged out, and never returned them. A piece that may fit into the puzzle is the discovery by Garrison of an adult borrower's card issued by the New Orleans public library in the name Clem Bertrand. The business address shown is the International Trade Mart [Shaw's former place of employment], and the home address 3100 Louisiana Avenue Parkway, a wrong number, but conspicuously close to that of David Ferrie at 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. There may be a pattern here, since Oswald supposedly carried a card issued to Ferrie when arrested in Dallas.
Still another hint of Oswald's intelligence status is the inventory of his property seized by Dallas police after the assassination. Included is such sophisticated optical equipment as a Sterio Realist camera, a Hanza camera timer, filters, a small German camera, a Wollensak 15 power telescope, Micron 6X binoculars and a variety of film -- hardly the usual accouterments of a lowly warehouseman (Stovall Exhibits).
Upon his return from Russia, the man who subscribed to Pravda in the Marine Corps and lecutred his fellow Marines on Marxist dialectics set about institutionalizing his leftist facade. He wrote ingratiating letters to the national headquarters of the Communist Party, Fair Play for Cuba Committee and Socialist Workers Party (a copy of the famous snapshot of Oswald with a revolver on his hip, a rifle in one hand and the Party organ, the Militant, in the other was mailed to the SWP office in New York in April 1963.) Garrison believes the facade was intended to facilitate his entry into communist countries for special missions.
Ferrie's involvement with the CIA seems to stem mainly from his anti-Castro paramilitary activity, although there is a suggestion that he was at one time a pilot for the Agency. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he flew light planes commercially in the Cleveland, Ohio area, and was rated by his colleagues as an outstanding pilot. In the middle 1950s there is an untraceable gap in his career. Then he turns up as an Eastern Air Lines pilot. Although he supposedly obtained an instrument rating at the Sunnyside Flying School in Tampa, Florida, there is no record that any such school ever existed.
A clue to Ferrie's activities may lie in the loss of hair he suffered. A fellow employee at Eastern recalls that when Ferrie first joined the line he was "handsome and friendly," but in the end became "moody and paranoiac -- afraid the communists were out to get him." The personality change coincided with a gradual loss of hair. First a bald spot appeared, which Ferrie explained was caused by acid dripping from a plane battery. Then the hair began falling out in clumps -- Ferrie desperately studied medicine to try to halt the process -- until his body was entirely devoid of hair. One speculation is that he was moonlighting and suffered a physiological reaction to exposure to the extreme altitudes required for clandestine flights. Chinese Nationalist U-2 pilots reportedly have suffered the same hair-loss phenomenon.
One of Ferrie's covert tasks in the New Orleans area was to drill small teams in guerrilla warfare. One of his young proteges has revealed that he trained some of his Civil Air Patrol cadets and Cubans and formed them into five-man small weapons units, this under the auspices of the Marine Corps and State Department. Coupled with this is the information from another former protege that Ferrie confided "he was working for the CIA rescuing Cubans out of Castro prisons," and on one occasion was called to Miami so that the CIA could "test him to see if he was the type of person who told his business to anybody." In a speecdh before the Military Order of World Wars in New Orleans in late 1961, Ferrie related that he had trained pilots in Guatemala for the Bay of Pigs, and professed bitter disappointment that they were not used.
Clay Shaw, an international trade official with top-level contacts in Latin America and Europe, would have been a natural target for CIA recruitment. Gordon Novel, who was acquainted with Shaw, was quoted by the States-Item as venturing that Shaw may have been asked by the CIA to observe the traffic of foreign commerce through New Orleans. More persuasive is Shaw's membership on the board of directors of a firm called Centro Mondiale Commerciale in Rome. According to the newspaper Paese Sera of Rome and Le Devoir of Montreal, among others of the foreign press, CMC was an obscure but well-financed firm that was ousted from Italy by the police because it was suspected of being a CIA front. It transplanted its operation to the more friendly climate of Johannesburg, South Africa, where it still functions.
The same group that incorporated CMC also set up a firm called Permindex Corporation in Switzerland, but that company was dissolved by the Swiss
government when it was proved to be a conduit for funds destined for the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a group of right-wing French officers dedicated to "keeping Algeria French" by force of arms. The composition of the CMC group with which Shaw was associated is of more than cursory
interest, since it includes a former U.S. intelligence officer, now an executive of the Bank of Montreal; the publisher of the neo-Nazi National-Zeitung of Germany; Prince Guitere de Spadaforo, an Italian industrialist related by marriage to Hitler finance minister Hjalmar Schacht; and the lawyer to the Italian neo-Fascist Party. Through his attorney, Shaw has stated he joined the CMC board of directors in 1958 at the insistence of his own board of directors of the International Trade Mart of New Orleans.
ON AUGUST 1, 1963 the front page of the States-Item carried two news stories which, Garrison asserts, symbolize the bitter end of the paramilitary right's tolerance of John F. Kennedy. "A-Treaty Signing Set On Monday" was the lead to one story, disclosing that the test ban treaty was about to become reality and that a NATO-Warsaw bloc nonaggression pact was in the wind. "Explosives Cache Home Lent to Cuban, Says Owner's Wife," announced the lead to another story, telling of an FBI raid on a military training site and arms cache on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. Agents had seized more than a ton of dynamite, 20 100-pound bomb casings, fuses, napalm ingredients and other war materiel.
The whipsaw developments -- Kennedy's patent determination to effect a rapprochement with the communist nations on the one hand, his crackdown
under the Neutrality Act on anti-Castro paramilitary groups on the other -- triggered a rage against the President that would find vent in his assassination.
The true nature of the group raided at Lake Pontchartrain was not evident from the story. The FBI announced no arrests, and the wife of the property owner, Mrs. William J. McLaney, gave out the cover story that the premises had been loaned to a newly-arrive Cuban named Jose Juarez as a favor to friends in Cuba. (McLaney had been well-known as a gambler associated with the Tropicana Hotel in Havana before being ousted by Castro in 1960.)
According to information leaked to Garrison by another government agency, the FBI had in fact arrested 11 men, then quietly released them. Among those in the net was Acelo Pedro Amores, believed to be a former Batista official who slipped out of Cuba in 1960. Also caught was Richard Lauchli Jr, one of the founders of the Minutemen. Lauchli who possessed a federal license to manufacture weapons in his Collinsville, Illinois machine shop, was arrested again in 1964 when Treasury investigators, posing as agents of a South American country, trapped him in a deal to sell a huge quantity of illicit automatic arms. The other arrested were American adventurers and Cuban exiles.
Garrison believes that the assassination team at Dealey Plaza included renegade Minutemen operating without the knowledge of the group's
central headquarters. Free-lance terrorism has plagued Minutemen national coordinator Rober DePugh since the organization's inception, and there have been several abortive assassination schemes hatched by individual cliques.
For example, in 1962, a Dallas extremist using the pseudonym John Morris was given money by a Minutemen clique at the Liberty Mall in Kansas City
to subsidize the sniper slaying of Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. The plan called for Morris to escape in a plane flown by a Texas man, but DePugh got wind of it and aborted it. And a Cuban exile close to Guy Banister has told Garrison that in 1962 Minuteman Banister seriously discussed "putting poison in the air conditioning ducts in the Havana Palace and killing all occupants."
The latest plot to surface was formulated in Dallas in September 1966; its target was Stanley Marcus of the Neiman-Marcus department store, a pro-United Nations liberal who somehow has managed to thrive in rigidly conservative Dallas. According to an informant who was present, several
Minutemen decide to ambush Marcus outside of Dallas, because "another assassination in Dallas would be too much." Again, there was a leak and
the plan fell through. However, as the Warren Report might phrase it, such schemes "establish the propensity to kill" on the part of the radical right.
"Minutmen" has become an almost generic term for the paramilitary right, a far from homogenous movement. Some elements are driven primarily by race hatred and anti-Semitism, others by perfervid anti-communism, still others by a personal interest in overthrowing Castro and regaining property or sinecures in the Cuban bureaucracy. There is considerable cross-pollination, especially in the south. A graphic example can be found in rurual St. Bernard Parish, near New Orleans. A state police undercover investigator relates that inside a farmhouse which serves as a Ku Klux Klan regional headquarters are Nazi emblems and a shrine to Horst Wessel, and in back, behind a copse of trees, a rifle range and large cache of guns belonging to Minutemen.
There is intense factionalism inside the paramilitary right, and in recent years a power struggle for hegemony over the movement raged between DePugh of the Minutemen and the late George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazis. In a recent public statement DePugh commented that "fascism is the number one danger in this country today," and that the "fascists" are using anti-communism as a smokescreen to cover their own rush for power. I had occasion to talk to DePugh, and suggested to him that the guerrilla team that bushwhacked the President included Minutemen who had drifted into the Nazi orbit. "I'm inclined to agree," he said.
One of the most inexplicable entries in Oswald's address book is "Nat. Sec. Dan Burros, Lincoln Rockwell, Arlington, Virginia" (CE 18. p55). Other right-wing figures in the address book are Carlos Bringuier of the Cuban Student Directorate in New Orleans and retired General Edwin Walker of Dallas. Bringuier told the Commission that Oswald had approached him and offered to train Cuban exiles in Marine tactics, but he suspected Oswald was a plant.
An anti-Castro adventurer who trained in the Florida Keys prior to the assassination claims that by November 22, 1963 there was not one but several paramilitary teams gunning for Kennedy. They had been in contact, he said, with "wealthy backers who wanted to see Kennedy dead and had been given money to do the job."
(Part III)
[THE MAKING OF A PATSY]
ON JANUARY 20, 1961 TWO MEN approached Oscar W. Deslatte, assistant manager of the Bolton Ford Truck Center in New Orleans, and identified themselves as members of the Friends of Democratic Cuba. To help their cause, they wanted to purchase ten trucks at cost. Deslatte filled out a bid form, recording their names as Joseph Moore and Oswald. The young man calling himself Oswald said that if the trucks were purchased he would be the one to pay for them. This is the gist of an incident recorded by the FBI immediately after the assassination and dug out of
the obscurity of the Archives by Garrison researcher Tom Bethell (CD 1542).
Garrison has located the former Bolton Ford manager who was present at the time, Fred A. Sewell. He recalled that the younger "skinny" man
gave the full name *Lee* Oswald, and that "Joseph Moore" actually was a Cuban who gave a Cuban name on the bid form. What is puzzling about the
incident is that Lee Harvey Oswald was in Minsk, Russia in 1961, thus raising the question of who was impersonating him and why.
Any answer must necessarily be conjecture, but it may be significant to recall that Lee Harvey Oswald spent four days in New Orleans in September 1959 before departing on the first leg of his joureny to the Soviet Union aboard the SS Marion Lykes (CE 1963). Garrison has picked up indications that Oswald's decision to embark via ship *from New Orleans* was dictated by intelligence considerations. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that during the four-day period in the city he was inducted into a CIA group, an anti-Castro member of which would later use Oswald's name.
The genesis of the Friends of Democratic Cuba is not inconsistent with this theory. One of the incorporators of the organization was Guy Banister, the Minutmen/CIA type. Another was William Wane Dalzell who knew Ferrie and Arcacha, and was still another in the Banister coterie of sleuths. To a States-Item reporter he admitted he was CIA.
The Friends of Democratic Cuba was founded January 9, 1961, less than two weeks before the Bolton Ford incident. It was intended as a kind of American auxiliary to Arcacha's all-Cuban Revolutionary Front, and Arcacha was instrumental in its creation. Government advisors to the Friends, says an informant who was closely involved with the group, were a CIA man named Logan and the FBI's Regis Kennedy, who invoked executive privilege when questioned not long ago by the New Orleans grand jury looking into the assassination. The Friends were short-lived, and the Front slowly dissolved after the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. The die-hard remnants of these moribund groups formed the Free Cuba movement.
The Secret Service stumbled upon the Free Cuba group in its hectic post-assassination inquiries at 544 Camp Street, but apparently the T-men were completely sold on Oswald's left-wing orientation and never thought to connect him with a right-wing outfit. Learning that "Cuban revolutionaries" had occupied space at that address, Secret Service men talked to a Cuban exile accountant who said that "those Cubans were members of organizations known as 'Crusade to Free Cuba Committee' and 'Cuban Revolutionary Council.'" Arcacha, the accountant related, was authorized to sign checks on both accounts (CE 3119). He said that Arcacha continued with the Free Cuba group even after he had been ousted from the CRC (CE 1414). There is no record that the Secret Service questioned Arcacha about Oswald.
It was a grievous omission, for it is now manifest that Oswald was intimately involved with the Free Cuba group. One indication is implicit in the testimony of Mrs. Sylvia Odio, an aristocratic Cuban refugee. When Lee Harvey Oswald's picture was flashed on television after the assassination, she fainted. She explained to the Warren Commission that in late September 1963, three men appeared unannounced at her Dallas apartment seeking assistance for the anti-Castro movement. The spokesman gave a "war name" that sounded like Leopoldo; a second man was introduced as something like Angelo. The third man was introduced as Leon Oswald, and Mrs. Odio was certain he was the accused assassin.
Unsure of the trio's true allegiance, Mrs. Odio was noncommittal. They left, after commenting that they had just arrived from New Orleans and were leaving shortly "on a trip." The next morning Leopoldo telephoned Mrs. Odio with a new sales pitch. "Leon" was an ex-Marine, he said. "He told us we don't have any guts, you Cubans, because President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs...It is easy to do. He has told us." When his listener became upset at talk of killing Kennedy, Leopoldo remarked that it would be just as easy to kill the Cuban Premier. Leon was an expert shot, he said, a man who "could do anything like getting undergound in Cuba, like killing Castro" (Vol. 11, pp. 367-389).
Just before the Warren Report went to press, the FBI located three men possibly identical with Mrs. Odio's provocative visitors. Some three weeks after the visit, Loren Eugene Hall and William Seymour had been arested by the Dallas police on a technical narcotics charge. Significantly, their arrest record bore the notation: "Active in the anti-Castro movement ... Committee to Free Cuba." G-men traced them and a companion, LawrenceHoward Jr, to the west coast.
Hall admitted to the FBI that he, Howard and Seymour had been to see Mrs.Odio, whose apartment he correctly located on Magellan Circle, "to ask her assistance in the movement," presumably the Free Cuba movement. But Howard, although conceding he was with Hall in Dallas in late September, flatly denied being at Mrs. Odio's. Seymour alibied that he was working in Miami Beach at the time; the FBI verified that pay records of a Miami Beach firm showed him at work from September 5 through October 10.
In a second session with the FBI, Hall recanted his admission and claimed he had been mistaken, a turnabout that did not seem to be viewed
too skeptically by the G-men. The Bureau closed its inquiry by observing that Seymour bore a striking resemblence to Oswald, a meaningless footnote considering that the pay records had been accepted as prima facie evidence that he was in Miami Beach at the relevant time.
With Seymour "out of the way," the Warren Commission had only to dispose of the possibility that it *was* Oswald at Mrs. Odio's. It did so by declaring it improbable that Oswald could have traveled to Dallas in the limited time between his departure from New Orleans and his crossing of the Mexican border. But the Commission reckoned from surface transportation timetables, and there is a suggestion he flew at least part of the way. Mrs. Horace Twiford of Houston stated that in late September, when Oswald telephoned her husband, he commented that he "had only a few hours" before "flying to Mexico" (CE 2335).
The post-assassination search at the Irving premises of Ruth and Michael Paine, with whom Marina had been staying, yielded another tie to the Free Cuba movement. Among Oswald's belongings in the garage was a barrel that had, said Deputy Buddy Walthers, "a lot of these little leaflets in it, 'Freedom for Cuba'" (Vol 7, p. 548). And at his celebrated press conference the night of the assassination, DA Henry Wade let it slip that "Oswald is a member of the Free Cuba Committee." He was immediately "corrected" by Jack Ruby who had mingled with the press: "No, he is a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."
Deputy Walthers added a final link. In a "Supplementary Investigative Report" dated November 23, 1963, he stated that he had advised Dallas Secret Service Chief Forrest Sorrels that "for the past few months at a house at 3128 Harlendale some Cubans had been having meetings on the week ends and were possably [sic] connected with the 'Freedom for Cuba Party' of which Oswald was a member." Three days later, when the Secret Service had evinced no interest, he wrote a wistful addendum: "I learned today that sometime between seven days before the President was shot and the day after he was shot these Cubans moved from this house. My informant stated that subject Oswald had been to this house before" (Decker Exhibit No. 5323).
Why Oswald's anti-Castro comrades decided to make him the patsy is open to conjecture. Perhaps he balked at going through with the
assassination. Perhaps they did not trust him and suspected he was an infiltrator. The most likely explanation is a pragmatic one: they needed a patsy and he was the ideal candidate. To make the assassination look like the work of an avowed Marxist and Castro sympathizer would have been a propaganda tour de force. "Even so," offers Garrison, "I think the big money backers of the plot were a little disappointed. Oswald was supposed to be killed trying to escape, and if those Cuban and Soviet visas he applied for but didn't get could have been found on his body, public opinion against Ruissia and Cuba would have been incited to a dangerous pitch."
In the weeks preceding the assassination, there are a number of instances of an Oswald double in Dallas who probably was instrumental in "setting him up." Gunsmith Dial D. Ryder told the Commission that in early November, someone giving the name Oswald brought in a rifle to have a telescopic sight mounted; he produced a repair tag in that name as confirmation (Report, p. 315). Garland G. Slack and other target shooters patronizing the Sports Drome Rifle Range reported that a man resembling Oswald had practiced there as late as November; the man made himself obvious, at one time incurring Slack's displeasure by firing on his target (Report, pp. 318-319).
An incident at Downtown Lincoln-Mercury is highly revealing. Immediately after the assassination, salesman Albert Guy Bogard reported to the FBI that a man giving the name Lee Oswald, who closely resembled the accused assassin, came into the showroom on November 9. Remarking that in several weeks he would have the money to make the purchase, he test-drove an expensive model on the Stemmons Freeway at 60 to 70 miles an hour. Both Bogard and another salesman, Oren Brown, wrote down the name Oswald so that they would remember him if he called back. A third salesman, Eugene M. Wilson, recalled that when the man purporting to be Oswald was told he would need a credit rating, he snapped, "Maybe I'm
going to have to go back to Russia to buy a car" (Report, p. 320).
Given a lie detector test by the FBI, Bogard's responses were those "normally expected of a person telling the truth." Nevertheless, the Warren Commission dismissed the incident by noting that Oswald supposedly could not operate an automobile and that on November 9 he allegedly spent the day drafting a lengthy letter to the Soviet Embassy. It evidently never considered the possiblity someone might be impersonating Oswald. But Bogard will never identify the impersonator. He stuck to his story in news interviews, and subsequently was beaten to within an inch of his life by an unknown assailant and arrested by the Dallas police on seemingly trumped-up bad check charges. He retreated to his native Louisiana, where on St. Valentine's Day 1966, he was found dead of exhaust fumes in his automobile.
The main ingredients of the patsy theory are wrapped up in a story that has gradually filtered out of Leavenworth Penitentiary. The story is that of inmate Richard Case Nagell, and paradoxically, the most cogent confirmation for it is the manner in which he wound up sentenced to ten years in federal custody.
Nagell was a highly decorated infantry captain in the Korean War who, he claims, subsequently became a CIA agent. It is a matter of record that in 1957 he was seriously injured in a plane crash in Cambodia, which tends to support his contention, since Cambodia was not exactly a tourist playground. On September 20, 1963, Nagell walked into a bank in El Paso, Texas, fired a gun into the ceiling, and then sat outside waiting to be arrested. He says he stage the affair because he wanted to be in custody as an alibi when the assassination took place. It was a desperate measure, he admits. But he had sent a registered letter to J. Edgar Hoover warning him of the impending assassination, which he says was then scheduled for the latter part of September (probably the 26th in Washington, D.C), and the letter had gone unanswered.
There is an incredibly brief FBI interview report stating, in part, that on December 19, 1963 Nagell advised, "For the record he would like to say that his association with Oswald (meaning LEE HARVEY OSWALD) was purely social and that he had met him in Mexico City and in Texas" (CD 197). Another report states that when the prisoner was being led from court on January 24, 1964, he "made wild accusations to newspaper reporters, accusing the FBI of not attempting to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy..." (CD 404).
That the charges may not be so wild is indicated by the fact that the government threw the book at Nagell, a first offender who says he expected to be charged only with discharging a firearm on government-protected property. Since his sentencing, he has been shuttled between Leavenworth and the federal medical center (a euphemism for mental institution) at Springfield, Missouri. While the government has suggested in court that his airplane crash mentally affected Nagell, the fact remains that he was given intelligence training *after* the crash. What Nagell alleges is damning not only to the FBI, but to the CIA. In brief, he says that the motive for the assassination was Kennedy's move in the direction of a rapprochement with Castro, which was a rank betrayal in the eyes of anti-Castro elements. As he puts it, an anti-Castro group in New Orleans and Mexico City, code name Bravo Club, decided to give Kennedy a "Christmas present" to be delivered September 26, a date that was postponed. A party was required. Two members of Bravo Club approached Oswald while he was working at the Reily coffee firm in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, and appealed to his ego in setting him up as the patsy. When the "delivery" site was shifted to Dallas, Bravo Club enlisted the aid of a Dallas "subsidiary," Delta Club.
Meanwhile the CIA got wind of the plans and sent several agents into the field to ascertain whether they were "for real." Nagell says he was one of the agents dispatched. Within a short time, he claims, he was pulled in. It had been verified that the plans were authentic, that "gusanos [anit-Castroites] were making the watch tick," and that the sum of the plot was right-wing in nature. Nagell says that he was instructed to "arrow" the patsy, that is kill him, after the assassination. At this point, he contends, he got cold feet and bailed out. "I would rather be arrested than commit murder and treason," he declared in a self-prepared petition for habeas corpus.
In the petition, Nagell asserts that he used the pseudonyms Robert Nolan and Joseph Kramer in the U.S. and three foreign countries under the authorization of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He states that the files of the FBI and the CIA contain information that Oswald was using the aliases Albert Hidel and Aleksei Hidel. He charges that the FBI illegally seized from him evidence crucial to his defense, such as notebooks containing the names of certain CIA employees, photographs, two Mexican tourist cards (one in the name Joseph Kramer, the other in the name Albert Hidel), and receipts for registered mail, including the one for the letter sent Hoover warning of the assassination.
When Nagell complains he has been "salted away" because of what he knows, he just might be making the understatement of the year.
The Catholic Church's Secret Sex-Crime Files
How a scandal in Philadelphia exposed documents that reveal a high-level conspiracy to cover up decades of sexual abuse
by: Sabrina Rubin Erdely
Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the former Archbishop of Philadelphia, was involved in the cover-up of multiple incidents of sexual abuse.
William Thomas Cain/Getty Images
The five co-defendants sit close enough to shake hands in the Philadelphia courtroom, but they never once acknowledge one another. Father James Brennan, a 47-year-old priest accused of raping a 14-year-old boy, looks sad and stooped in a navy sweater, unshaven and sniffling. Edward Avery, a defrocked priest in his sixties, wears an unsettlingly pleasant expression on his face, as though he's mentally very far away. He and two other defendants – the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, also in his sixties, and Bernard Shero, a former Catholic schoolteacher in his forties – are accused of passing around "Billy," a fifth-grade altar boy. According to the charges, the three men raped and sodomized the 10-year-old, sometimes making him perform stripteases or getting him drunk on sacramental wine after Mass.
Heinous as the accusations are, the most shocking – and significant – are those against the fifth defendant, Monsignor William Lynn. At 60, Lynn is portly and dignified, his thin lips pressed together and his double chin held high. In a dramatic fashion statement, he alone has chosen to wear his black clerical garb today, a startling reminder that this is a priest on trial, a revered representative of the Catholic Church, not to mention a high-ranking official in Philadelphia's archdiocese. Lynn, who reported directly to the cardinal, was the trusted custodian of a trove of documents known in the church as the "Secret Archives files." The files prove what many have long suspected: that officials in the upper echelons of the church not only tolerated the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests but conspired to hide the crimes and silence the victims. Lynn is accused of having been the archdiocese's sex-abuse fixer, the man who covered up for its priests. Incredibly, after a scandal that has rocked the church for a generation, he is the first Catholic official ever criminally charged for the cover-up.
"All rise," the court crier intones as the judge enters, and Lynn stands, flanked by his high-powered lawyers, whose hefty fees are being paid by the archdiocese. The implications of the trial are staggering for the church as a whole. In sheltering abusive priests, Lynn wasn't some lone wolf with monstrous sexual appetites, as the church has taken to portraying priests who have molested children. According to two scathing grand-jury reports, protocols for protecting rapists in the clergy have been in place in Philadelphia for half a century, under the regimes of three different cardinals. Lynn was simply a company man, a faithful bureaucrat who did his job exceedingly well. His actions were encouraged by his superiors, who in turn received orders from their superiors – an unbroken chain of command stretching all the way to Rome. In bringing conspiracy charges against Lynn, the Philadelphia district attorney is making a bold statement: that the Catholic hierarchy's failure to protect children from sexual abuse isn't the fault of an inept medieval bureaucracy, but rather the deliberate and criminal work of a cold and calculating organization. In a very real sense, it's not just Lynn who is on trial here. It's the Catholic Church itself.
The deluge of sexual-abuse cases in America's largest religious denomination began in 1985, when a Louisiana priest was sentenced to 20 years in prison after admitting to sexually abusing 37 boys. But it wasn't until 2002, when civil suits in Boston revealed that Cardinal Bernard Law had shielded rapist priests, that the extent of the scandal became widely known. In Germany, the church is overwhelmed by hundreds of alleged victims, and investigations are under way in Austria and the Netherlands. In Ireland, the government recently issued a scathing report that documents how Irish clergy – with tacit approval from the Vatican – covered up the sexual abuse of children as recently as 2009.
Battered by civil suits and bad press, the church has responded with a head-spinning mix of contrition and deflection, blaming anti-Catholic bias and the church's enemies for paying undue attention to the crisis. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops helped fund a $1.8 million study of sex-abuse cases against priests, but the results read like a mirthless joke: To lower the number of clergy classified as "pedophiles," the report redefines "puberty" as beginning at age 10 – and then partially blames the rise in child molesting on the counterculture of the 1960s. The church also insists that any sex crimes by priests are a thing of the past. "The abuse crisis," the study's lead author concluded, "is over."
That echoed statements by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who went on 60 Minutes declaring the scandal "nothing less than hideous" and then, with a sweep of his hand, announced, "That's over with!" Dolan, in turn, sounded a lot like Bishop Wilton Gregory, the former president of the USCCB, who framed the lie more eloquently: "The terrible history recorded here is history." That was in 2004, seven years ago.
Given how the innermost workings of Catholic culture have long been cloaked in secrecy, the case in Philadelphia offers a rare opportunity to understand why the cover-up of sexual abuse has continued for so long, despite the church's repeated promises of reform. The answer, in large part, lies in the mindset of the church's rigid hierarchy, which promotes officials who are willing to do virtually anything they're told, so long as it's in God's name. "It's almost like the type of stuff you see in cult behavior," says a former Philadelphia priest who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. "Someone on the outside would say, 'That's crazy.' But when you're on the inside, you say, 'It's perfectly right, because everything is divinely inspired.' If you have a monopoly on God, you can get away with anything."
Long before he became the guardian of the church's secrets, Bill Lynn was a boy with a higher calling. In the fall of 1968, after graduating from Bishop McDevitt High School in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Lynn arrived at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, a stately campus whose soaring chapels, somber libraries and marble sculptures with heads bowed in prayer gave off an aura of reverence, history and costly precision. Lynn, a friendly, overweight boy whose acne-scarred face was topped with jet-black hair, was ready to begin his eight-year path to priestly ordination, a process the church calls "formation."
At St. Charles, Lynn was plunged into an environment in which every moment was accounted for. Strict rules governed all aspects of life, especially the personal. Besides the obvious prohibitions on sexual contact – including with oneself, or even in one's imagination – no seminarian was allowed to get too close with his peers, since he was to concentrate on developing bonds with God and the church. Seminary is a form of military-style indoctrination, molding men to think institutionally, not individually. "It's like a brainwashing, almost," says Michael Lynch, who attended St. Charles for nine years but was rejected for priesthood after repeatedly butting heads with his superiors. Lynch recalls a priest barking at his class, "We own you! We own your body, we own your soul!"
The goal of priesthood is a lofty one: a man placed on a pedestal for his community to revere, an alter Christus – "another Christ" – who can literally channel the power of Jesus and help create the perfect society intended by God. To model that perfection and elevate themselves above the sinful laity, clergy adopt a vow of celibacy, which has served as a centerpiece of Catholic priesthood since the 12th century. It's a tall order to sculpt chaste, living incarnations of Jesus out of the sloppy clay of your average 18-year-old male. Even many of those who wind up being ordained fail to maintain their chastity: According to a 1990 study by psychologist Richard Sipe, only half of all priests adhere to their vows of celibacy. It is not just the sex-abuse epidemic the church seeks to deny, but sex itself.
"The real secret here is the sexual life of cardinals and bishops," says Sipe, a former Benedictine monk who specializes in treating clergy and who has followed the case against Lynn. "If you pull the string in a knitted sweater, you'll unravel the whole thing. This will unravel all the way to Rome."
Many seminarians dropped out of St. Charles; others, informed that they weren't priestly material, were "invited" to leave. Those who remained were the ones willing to surrender to the process of formation: men prepared to bend to the will of their higher powers, both earthly and divine. Such intensive focus on preparing for one's "priestly burdens," however, often meant that men emerged from the incubator of seminary ill-prepared for the complexities of life itself. In 1972, while Lynn was still at St. Charles, a landmark study called "The Catholic Priest in the United States: Psychological Investigations" found that three-fourths of all American priests were psychologically and emotionally underdeveloped, or even "maldeveloped." The attitudes of these grown men toward sex, the study concluded, were on par with those of teenagers or even preteens.
Lynn thrived in seminary, where he made an impression as an affable guy who always toed the line. At his ordination, he took a solemn oath of obedience to the bishop, sealing himself into the church's vertical framework, in which everyone is bound to the strata above them. He was assigned first to a parish in Philadelphia, then to a wealthy church in the suburbs. His parishioners liked him, and Lynn's deference to his senior pastor made an impression on the archdiocese. In 1984, when a job as dean of men opened up at St. Charles, Lynn was plucked to fill it. "The dean is there to make sure you're being formed properly," explains a former Philadelphia priest familiar with the appointment. "A dean is also the type of person you want your students to want to be. We wanted to replicate priests in the model we had already been creating – nice, compliant, faithful priests. So we put Bill Lynn there: a nice, compliant, faithful priest we wanted young men to look up to."
Over the next eight years, Lynn was a hands-on adviser. He'd wake seminarians who overslept for Mass, take them to task for missing household chores and monitor their spiritual progress. Lynn proved himself to his superiors as someone who didn't disrupt the status quo, someone who could be trusted. In 1992, at age 41, he was named secretary of the clergy, a position that effectively made him the human-resources director for the 400 or so priests in greater Philadelphia. It was a job that required the utmost loyalty and discretion. Lynn now reported directly to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. If a priest broke the rules or stepped out of line in any way, it would be Lynn's job to discipline him and inform his superiors. That, says the former priest familiar with St. Charles, is precisely why Lynn was chosen for the job: "They sure as hell weren't going to pick someone who was going to send priests to jail."
Every Catholic diocese has Secret Archives files – it's mandated by canon law as a repository for complaints against priests so scandalous that they must be kept out of the regular personnel files. Few outsiders know the secret archives exist, and only the most trusted clergy have access to them. In Philadelphia, the sole keyholders were the cardinal and his closest aides. The files were kept in a row of unlabeled, gray-green cabinets in a windowless room on the 12th floor of the archdiocese's Center City office tower. Inside was an exhaustive compendium of scandals dating back more than 50 years: priests with drinking problems, priests who had gotten women pregnant, aging stacks of confiscated pornography. Then there were the reams of carefully typed memos that discussed priests with what the archdiocese delicately referred to as "unnatural involvements" or "unusual patterns." Priests, in other words, who had sexually abused the children in their care.
One memo directed to Cardinal Bevilacqua in 1989 described a pedophile priest's evaluation at an archdiocese-owned hospital, in which the doctor "is of the very strong opinion that Father Peter J. Dunne is a very sick man" who should be removed from ministry; the memo warned that Dunne's problem was so acute "that we are sitting on a powder keg." Another file began with a sheaf of letters that Father Joseph Gausch, an active pastor, had sent another priest detailing his sex with an eighth-grade boy in 1948, three years after his ordination. Gausch called it "the closest approximation to an old-fashioned roll that I have had in years... and the subject was oh-so-satisfactory and (this is what makes the story) willin'." In both cases, the response from the cardinal was the same: secret therapy, then reassign the offending priest to a new parish and pretend nothing had happened.
In the thick file devoted to Father Raymond Leneweaver, who had been moved to four different parishes after admitting to molesting at least seven boys, officials fretted in 1980 that they had run out of places to send him "where his scandalous action would not be known." Scandal is a word that pops up throughout the Secret Archives files. The officials writing the internal memos almost never express concern for the victims – only concern over the risk to the church's reputation. If the risk was deemed low, an offending priest was simply reassigned to a different parish. If the risk was high, priests were shipped to a far-off diocese with the permission of the reigning bishop, a practice known as "bishops helping bishops."
Even in rare cases where word of a priest's crimes leaked out, the cardinal was reluctant to expose the priest. Leneweaver was such a case; his ministry career ended only after he resigned. "His problem is not occupational or geographical," wrote the cardinal at the time, "and will follow him wherever he goes." Having acknowledged the severity of Leneweaver's compulsions, the cardinal released him from the clergy but still chose not to inform law-enforcement officials of his crimes. With his clean record, Leneweaver, an admitted child-rapist, went on to take a job as a teacher at a public middle school in suburban Philadelphia.
Bill Lynn understood that his mission, above all, was to preserve the reputation of the church. The unspoken rule was clear: Never call the police. Not long after his promotion, Lynn and a colleague held a meeting with Rev. Michael McCarthy, who had been accused of sexually abusing boys, informing the priest of the fate that Cardinal Bevilacqua had approved: McCarthy would be reassigned to a "distant" parish "so that the profile can be as low as possible and not attract attention from the complainant." Lynn dutifully filed his memo of the meeting in the Secret Archives, where it would sit for the next decade.
Over the 12 years that he held the job of secretary of the clergy, Lynn mastered the art of damage control. With his fellow priests, Lynn was unfailingly sympathetic; in a meeting with one distraught pastor who had just admitted to abusing boys, Lynn comforted the clergyman by suggesting that his 11-year-old victim had "seduced" him. With victims, Lynn was smooth and reassuring, promising to take their allegations seriously while doing nothing to punish their abusers. Kathy Jordan, who told Lynn in 2002 that she had been assaulted by a priest as a student at a Catholic high school, recalls how he assured her that the offender would no longer be allowed to work as a pastor. Years later, while reading the priest's obituary, Jordan says it became clear to her that her abuser had, in fact, remained a priest, serving Mass in Maryland. "I came to realize that by having this friendly, confiding way, Lynn had neutralized me," she says. "He handled me brilliantly."
In his very first year on the job, Lynn received a letter from a 29-year-old medical student that would trigger the events that led to his arrest 19 years later. The student – whom the grand jury would call "James" – reported that as a teenage altar boy he had been molested by his priest, Father Edward Avery. The popular and gregarious Avery, nicknamed "The Smiling Padre," was considered hip for a priest; he moonlighted as a DJ at weddings and invited lucky boys for sleepovers at his house at the Jersey Shore. The med student included a copy of a letter he had written to Avery. "I have let too much of my life be controlled by this terrible wrong you committed," it read. "You had no right to hurt me the way you did. You have no right to hurt anyone else this way."
This was a code-red situation that Lynn had to get under control. He began by interviewing James, who described how Avery had molested him at the beach house, at the parish rectory and on a ski trip to Vermont, sometimes after plying him with beer. James said he wasn't looking for money – only an assurance that Avery would no longer be a threat to children. That was surely a relief: the risk of scandal was clearly low. Next, Lynn confronted Avery, whom he'd known in seminary. According to Lynn's memo, the priest admitted that some of the allegations "could be" true – but insisted it had been "strictly accidental" and that he had been so drunk at the time, he couldn't recall exactly what had happened.
According to church protocol, an admission of any kind meant a priest must be sent for medical care. So Lynn recommended that Avery seek treatment at St. John Vianney Hospital, a facility in the leafy Philadelphia suburb of Downingtown that maintained a discreet inpatient program that treats sexually abusive priests. Cardinal Bevilacqua approved the request, but the bureaucratic wheels moved slowly: Avery remained in the pulpit for another 10 months before he was hospitalized for his secret therapy. After his release, his doctors prescribed that he be monitored by an aftercare team consisting of Lynn and two other priests. But the church did not take the recommendation seriously. The team did not meet for more than a year – one priest later testified that he didn't even know he was on the team.
Avery's doctors also recommended that he be kept away from teens and other "vulnerable" populations. Instead, the church assigned Avery to a new residence with plenty of exposure to kids: St. Jerome, a parish in northeast Philadelphia that included an elementary school. (The rectory had an empty bed because its previous resident, Rev. Bill Dougherty, had been quietly moved to another parish after being accused of abusing a high school girl.) Officially speaking, Avery didn't work at the parish – he simply lived there, with an assignment as a chaplain at a nearby hospital. With encouragement from Lynn, he became a regular presence at St. Jerome, serving Mass and hearing confessions. He took on more DJ jobs than ever, booking gigs almost every weekend. "He seemed mesmerized, focused, as if he became a different person DJ'ing," recalls Rev. Michael Kerper, who split shifts with Avery at the hospital. Kerper, under the impression that Avery had been moved to a low-pressure chaplain job after a nervous breakdown, worried that Avery was risking another collapse by spreading himself so thin. One day, when Avery failed to show up at the hospital while on call, Kerper wrote the archdiocese to express his concern. He addressed his letter to Monsignor Lynn.
Lynn surprised Kerper by calling him directly and telling him to mind his own business. "You're not going through the proper channels," Lynn snapped. "You're not his supervisor." Avery was permitted to continue working as a DJ and pitching in at St. Jerome. The following year, according to the grand jury, Lynn received an e-mail from James, who was looking for assurance that Avery had been reassigned to "a situation where he can't harm others... for my peace of mind, I have to know." Lynn reassured James that the archdiocese had taken proper steps. Then Lynn met with Avery and instructed him to be "more low-keyed." In doing so, says the grand jury, Lynn helped set the stage for the horror that came next.
"Billy" was a 10-year-old student at St. Jerome School in 1998, and an altar boy just like his older brother before him. A sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks, Billy was outgoing and well-liked. One morning, after serving Mass, Rev. Charles Engelhardt caught Billy in the church sacristy sipping leftover wine. Rather than get mad, however, the priest poured Billy more wine. According to the grand jury, he also showed him some pornographic magazines, asking the boy how the pictures made him feel and whether he preferred the images of naked men or women. He told Billy it was time to become a man and that they would soon begin their "sessions."
A week later, Billy learned what Engelhardt meant. After Mass, the priest allegedly fondled the boy, sucked his penis and ordered Billy to kneel and fellate him – calling him "son" while instructing him to move his head faster or slower – until Engelhardt ejaculated. The priest later suggested another "session," but Billy refused and Engelhardt let him be.
A few months later, while Billy was putting away the bells following choir practice, he was taken aside by another priest: Father Avery. According to the grand jury, Avery told Billy that he had heard all about the boy's "session" with Engelhardt – and that Avery's own "sessions" with him would soon begin. Billy pretended not to know what Avery was talking about, but his stomach lurched. Later, after Billy served a morning Mass with Avery, the priest led him to the sacristy, turned on some music and told him to do a striptease. When Billy dutifully started shedding his clothes, Avery instructed him to dance to the music while undressing. Then the Smiling Padre sat back and watched the awkward performance before taking off his own clothes and ordering the naked boy onto his lap. He kissed Billy's neck and back, telling him that God loved him. Then he allegedly fondled the boy, fellated him, and commanded Billy to return the favor, culminating in Avery's ejaculating on Billy and congratulating him on a good "session." A second session allegedly followed weeks later when Avery, finding Billy cleaning a chalice after a weekend Mass, ordered the boy to strip. The priest then fellated Billy while making the boy masturbate him to climax.
Billy never told anyone what had happened. But from then on, he made sure to trade assignments with other altar boys to avoid serving Mass with Father Avery. After summer break, when Billy returned to St. Jerome and entered the sixth grade, he was assigned a new teacher, Bernard Shero. His abuse seemed to be a thing of the past, something best forgotten.
One day, according to the grand jury, Shero offered Billy a ride after school. Instead, they stopped at a park about a mile from Billy's house. "We're going to have some fun," Shero told him. He ordered Billy into the back seat, helped him undress, and then allegedly fellated and anally raped him, managing to insert his penis only partway because of Billy's screams of pain. Then Shero made Billy perform the same acts on him. "It feels good," he repeated over and over. Afterward, he made Billy get out of the car and walk home.
Before long, Billy began to change in disturbing ways. He often gagged or vomited for no reason and became increasingly sullen and withdrawn. He stopped hanging out with his friends and playing sports. He started smoking pot at 11; by his late teens, he was addicted to heroin. Billy spent his adolescence cycling in and out of drug-treatment programs and psychiatric centers, once spending a week in a locked ward after a suicide attempt. His parents, who later took out a mortgage on their home to pay for Billy's care, were beside themselves, clueless as to what had sent their sunny child into such a downward spiral.
When his mother found two books about sexual abuse stashed under his bed, Billy brushed off her suspicions. The books were for an assignment at school, he told her, and refused to say anything more.
Billy's alleged abuse at the hands of the Philadelphia priests might have remained a secret, if not for the church's inept attempt at spin control. After the abuse scandal in Boston broke open in 2002, every Catholic diocese in America had rushed to reassure its parishioners. Philadelphia was no different: Cardinal Bevilacqua declared that in the previous 50 years, his archdiocese knew of only 35 priests who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse. That was news to Lynne Abraham, the city's district attorney at the time, since not a single one of those 35 cases had been reported to her office. When Abraham asked the archdiocese's law firm for details, it refused to cooperate. In the face of stonewalling, Abraham moved for a grand-jury investigation and assigned a team of prosecutors nicknamed "The God Squad" to probe the archdiocese's handling of sex-abuse claims.
The God Squad had no idea what they were in for. The archdiocese fought the investigation at every turn. "It was like trying to infiltrate a racketeering organization," recalls former Assistant District Attorney Will Spade. "Most of these guys just seemed to be in the wrong professions. They weren't kind or understanding or any of the things a priest should be. They were just thugs."
The grand jury subpoenaed the church's internal records. Compelled by the court, the church's lawyer began meeting with prosecutors at a Dunkin' Donuts midway between the archdiocese's headquarters and the DA's office, handing over the Secret Archives files piece by piece. "I felt like I was living in a detective novel," says Spade. Though the prosecutors had been anticipating some sort of internal records, they were taken aback at the very existence of the secret files. "I always thought it was funny, them calling it the Secret Archives files," he says. "You morons! If they're so secret, why are you even calling it that?"
When the secret archives were finally unlocked, prosecutors were stunned to find thousands of documents that detailed the hundreds of victims who had allegedly been abused by 169 priests. "There was so much material, we could still be presenting information to the grand jury today if we followed every lead," says Charles Gallagher, a former Philadelphia deputy district attorney who supervised the investigation. "We ultimately had to focus."
In 2005, the grand jury released its 418-page report, which stands as the most blistering and comprehensive account ever issued on the church's institutional cover-up of sexual abuse. It named 63 priests who, despite credible accusations of abuse, had been hidden under the direction of Cardinal Bevilacqua and his predecessor, Cardinal Krol. It also gave numerous examples of Lynn covering up crimes at the bidding of his boss.
In the case of Rev. Stanley Gana, accused of "countless" child molestations, Lynn spent months ruthlessly investigating the personal life of one of the priest's victims, whom Gana had allegedly begun raping at age 13. Lynn later helpfully explained to the victim that the priest slept with women as well as children. "You see," he said, "he's not a pure pedophile" – which was why Gana remained in the ministry with the cardinal's blessing.
Then there was Monsignor John Gillespie, who was not sent for medical evaluation until six years after Lynn began receiving complaints about him. Therapists subsequently reported that Gillespie was "dangerous" – but Lynn was more concerned about the priest's insistence on apologizing to his victims. To keep the scandal from becoming public, Gillespie was ordered to resign for "health reasons." Cardinal Bevilacqua then honored the priest with the title of pastor emeritus – and allowed him to hear the confessions of schoolchildren for another year.
"In its callous, calculating manner, the archdiocese's 'handling' of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself," the grand jury concluded. Immoral didn't mean illegal, however, and the grand jury found itself unable to recommend any prosecutions, in part because the statute of limitations on all of the abuse cases had run out. But the nightmare had been revealed, and the Philadelphia faithful recoiled in shock.
Perhaps no one was more disturbed than the new parishioners of Lynn, who had been quietly reassigned to a plum job as pastor of St. Joseph's, a rich suburban parish. The job was essentially a promotion: Lynn's predecessor had just been ordained a bishop and given a diocese of his own. A kind and jocular pastor, Lynn had swiftly become beloved in the parish, always happy to pitch in at events held by the Home & School Association or to host dinner parties in his rectory. Stunned by the grand-jury report, parishioners were at a loss to square the unfeeling church official who had manipulated innocent victims with the compassionate pastor whom they knew. In the rectory dining room, one woman confronted Lynn in tears.
"How did you do this?" she demanded, sobbing. "Why did you do this?"
Lynn looked her right in the eye. "Don't believe everything you read," he said firmly. "I put them in treatment. I took care of the families."
The first of the 63 priests listed in the grand jury's catalog of abusers was Father Avery. By then, Avery had been placed on administrative leave – but he still remained in the ministry, more than a dozen years after the allegations of sexual abuse against him had first surfaced.
Once again, it was the most powerful word in the secret archives – scandal – that spurred the church to take action. As the grand jury was preparing to release its report, Cardinal Justin Rigali "urgently" petitioned Rome to take the extreme step of defrocking Avery against his will. "There is a great danger of additional public scandal so long as Father Avery remains a cleric," he wrote, explaining that accusations against Avery had been in the papers and that his files had been subpoenaed. The Vatican needed to remove Avery from the priestly rolls, the cardinal urged, to avoid "additional scrutiny."
Rigali needn't have worried. According to the grand jury, Avery was persuaded to request a voluntary defrocking, thanks to a severance payment of $87,000. The laicization process of transforming a priest back into an ordinary civilian, which usually takes years of canonical trials, was completed in less than six months.
With Avery disposed of, Cardinal Rigali went about calming Philadelphia Catholics. The archdiocese retained a consultant to help it improve the handling of victim complaints. A centerpiece of the reform was an independent clergy-review board that evaluated accusations of abuse. It was a terrific idea, one that would inject transparency and accountability into the process by taking cases out of the shadowy archdiocese and putting them into the unbiased hands of others. In practice, however, the archdiocese simply cherry-picked cases to send to the board – a fact that board members themselves learned only after the secrecy was revealed by the grand jury last February. "The board was under the impression that we were reviewing every abuse allegation received by the archdiocese," board chair Ana Maria Cantazaro complained in an essay for the Catholic magazine Commonweal.
In the few cases that were actually submitted to the panel, the grand jury found that "the results have often been worse than no decision at all." Using lax standards developed in large part by the canonical lawyers, the board dismissed even highly credible allegations. The results of those decisions could be devastating. In 2007, a man named Daniel Neill complained that he had been abused as an altar boy by Rev. Joseph Gallagher. According to a lawsuit filed against the archdiocese, Neill gave three statements to an archdiocese investigator – only to be informed that the review board didn't believe him. Devastated, Neill killed himself in 2009. After the grand-jury report, the archdiocese finally reversed itself by suspending Gallagher.
Under another reform instituted by the archdiocese – the Victim Assistance Program – abuse survivors like Neill could receive counseling paid for by the church. "I urge anyone who was abused in the past to contact our Victim Assistance Coordinators, who can help begin the healing process," Cardinal Rigali declared. In reality, the grand jury found, the program was used as a way to discourage victims from calling the police and, even more insidiously, to extract information that could later be used against the victim in court. In a recent lawsuit against the archdiocese, one victim recounts how, in return for any assistance, the church pressured him to sign an agreement that "prohibited" the archdiocese from reporting the abuse to law enforcement. "All along, they were acting like they wanted to help me," says the victim, "but really they just wanted to help themselves."
When Billy, the altar boy allegedly passed around by Avery and others, sought help in 2009, the archdiocese's victim coordinators once again took measures to protect the church. Instead of immediately offering to take the case to the police, the grand jury found, a coordinator named Louise Hagner and another staffer showed up at Billy's house, where they pressured him into giving a graphic statement. Returning to her office, Hagner wrote up her notes – including her observation that she thought Billy had pretended to cry – and informed the church's lawyers that Billy intended to sue.
At least one good thing came out of Billy's case: When his allegations were finally brought to the district attorney's office, his case, which falls within the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution, became the foundation of the grand jury's current investigation. Even the Vatican itself appeared to take drastic action: On September 8th, Cardinal Rigali will be replaced by Charles Chaput, the charismatic archbishop of Denver. The Vatican insists, however, that Rigali's resignation has nothing to do with the scandal. Indeed, Pope Benedict XVI has shown nothing but support: In April, when the pontiff needed a special envoy to appear on his behalf in the Czech Republic, he chose none other than Rigali for the honor.
As for Cardinal Bevilacqua, under whose watch Billy and other children were allegedly abused, the grand jury regretfully noted that it could not recommend criminal charges in the current case, since it lacked direct evidence against the cardinal. Bevilacqua, now 88, has rejected responsibility for the abuses that occurred during his tenure. When he testified before the grand jury in 2003, Bevilacqua conceded that any move involving the reassignment of accused priests was "ultimately my decision." But he was quick to stress who was really at fault: In every instance, he insisted, he had "relied on my secretary of the clergy's recommendations if anything was necessary to be done." With Bevilacqua insulated from prosecution, the district attorney grabbed at a lower-level bureaucrat, one the cardinal himself had hung out to dry: Monsignor Bill Lynn.
Lynn stands in the courtroom in Philadelphia, having been sworn in by Judge Renée Cardwell Hughes. Hands clasped, his face pulled into a frown of concentration, the monsignor proceeds to answer a series of routine questions: He holds a master's degree in education. He takes medication for high blood pressure. He has never been treated for mental illness or substance abuse. He understands that the charges against him carry a maximum penalty of 28 years in prison.
Then the judge comes to what she considers the most pressing point: Does Lynn truly understand the risk he faces by allowing the church to pay his legal fees? If Lynn's attorneys are paid by the archdiocese, their loyalty to their benefactor may put them at odds with his needs as a defendant in a criminal trial.
"You have been charged. You could go to jail," Hughes says gravely. "It may be in your best interest to provide testimony that is adverse to the archdiocese of Philadelphia, the organization that's paying your lawyers. You understand that's a conflict of interest?"
"Yes," Lynn replies.
The judge massages her temples and grimaces, as though she can't believe what she's hearing. For 30 minutes straight, she hammers home the point: Do you understand there may come a time that the questioning of archdiocese officials could put you in conflict with your own attorney? Do you understand that you may be approached by the DA offering you a plea deal, in exchange for testimony against the archdiocese? Do you realize that is a conflict of interest for your lawyers?
"Yes, Your Honor," Lynn continues to insist cheerfully, though his voice grows fainter as the minutes tick by. In one final plea for rationality, the judge asks if Lynn would like to consult with an independent attorney for a second opinion. He declines and returns to his seat, looking flushed and unhappy.
Lynn's lawyers, citing a gag order on the parties in the case, declined to allow him to comment for this article. The archdiocese also refused to comment, citing its emphasis on what it calls "moving forward." So far, Lynn's attorneys have simply argued that the case should be dismissed: Because charges of child endangerment are normally reserved for people directly responsible for kids – parents, teachers – Lynn's remove from the victims means his prolonged efforts to cover up the crimes were not technically illegal.
The court has rejected that argument, and the trial against Lynn and his co-defendants – all have pleaded not guilty – is scheduled to begin this winter. It may include videotaped testimony from Cardinal Bevilacqua, as well as the release of some 10,000 potentially incriminating documents. Lynn must know on some level that the church could be using him as a shield one last time in its systematic campaign to hide decades of monstrous abuses against children. But his willingness to sacrifice himself – his unswerving obedience to his superiors, even in the face of criminal charges – is what makes him such a loyal and devoted servant, all the way to the bitter end.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Excerpts
L.A. confidential
A former LAPD detective says Chief Bernard Parks had evidence of the scandal a year before it was revealed, but kept it from the district attorney -- and the public.
LOS ANGELES -- The meeting that could have prevented the Los Angeles Police Department's blockbuster Rampart scandal took place in Chief Bernard Parks' office at the department's Parker Center headquarters in the second week of September 1998. Officer Rafael Perez, whose tales of police brutality, unjustified shootings and false arrests would later trigger the worst scandal in LAPD history, had been arrested two weeks earlier on charges of stealing cocaine confiscated as evidence. But so far, none of Perez's chilling story had become public.
On that September day two years ago, Detective Russell Poole, the Robbery-Homicide Division veteran who had sniffed out Perez and personally arrested him, met with LAPD brass to brief them on another investigation. This one involved a disturbing station-house beating that happened to take place at Perez's station, Rampart Division.
Had Chief Parks listened to Poole that day, the LAPD might have cleaned up the troubles at Rampart before they became a national scandal. Instead, Poole charges, the chief made him suppress the evidence of corruption he had uncovered -- a pattern of protecting bad cops that the respected veteran detective says was common practice under Parks, despite his pledge to clean up the department. A full year would pass before the scandal finally erupted in the headlines, when Perez cut a deal for leniency and the media rushed to tell the tale of the Rampart Division's so-called rogue cops.
At the Parker Center meeting, Poole explained the details of the beating case to the chief and other assembled brass. Officers Brian Hewitt and Daniel Lujan Jr. of the Rampart station had picked up a local man named Ismael Jimenez, who was reputed to be a gang member, and brought him to Rampart headquarters without apparent cause. There Hewitt punched the handcuffed, helpless Jimenez until he vomited blood. Lujan and another officer, Ethan Cohan, knew what happened but apparently helped cover up the beating.
Jimenez's complaint about the beating triggered an LAPD investigation, which was referred to Detective Poole. Poole's Robbery-Homicide Division handled all major crimes in L.A., as well as police shootings and other complaints of violence by LAPD officers.
But Poole's investigation revealed something far bigger than the details of the Jimenez beating. He uncovered an alarming pattern of misbehavior on the part of Rampart cops assigned to the anti-gang CRASH unit (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums), who routinely detained, intimidated and sometimes assaulted gang members and gang associates without cause. Poole found that at least four lawsuits were pending against Rampart officers. One beating victim, Gabriel Aguirre, said his arm was broken by Officers Cohan and Perez.
Poole learned from interviews with gang members that Rampart cops frequently rousted them without filing log entries or gang intelligence index cards, a red flag to a seasoned investigator like Poole, indicating officers were probably engaged in activities they'd rather not record. Those who complained were targeted for retaliation, Poole learned: Jimenez himself had been picked up without probable cause as retaliation for the filing of a prior complaint against the police. After the beating, several Rampart cops showed up at the hospital where Jimenez was treated to intimidate him.
There were other disturbing signs of corruption: Gang members told Poole they were constantly being pressured by Rampart cops to provide them with clean -- untraceable -- guns. In fact, Jimenez claimed Officer Hewitt beat him because he wouldn't find him a gun. Poole wasn't sure what to make of those claims until he served a search warrant at Officer Perez's home, where he found a cardboard box marked "CRASH, Secret, Confidential." Inside were half a dozen replica toy and pellet guns, all of which looked very real. They turned out to be "laydown" guns -- guns the CRASH officers used to plant on suspects, to justify violence against them.
And there were increasingly obvious connections between a growing number of bad cops: Perez's friend and former partner, David Mack, had been arrested less than a year earlier for the armed robbery of a bank. Mack, who later admitted to being a member of Los Angeles' notorious Bloods street gang, was in turn connected with Kevin Gaines, another cop with troubling gang ties whom Poole had investigated. Mack was also suspected of having been involved in the unsolved 1997 murder of gangsta rapper Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls, which Poole also investigated.
At the Parker Center meeting, which included Poole's supervisor, Lt. Emmanuel Hernandez, a commander and two deputy chiefs, Poole presented Chief Parks and his top brass with a timeline of events demonstrating a pattern of brutality and misconduct at Rampart. He didn't mince any words: "Chief, it's more than just this case. It goes a lot deeper than that. You've got a group of vigilante cops at Rampart Division."
Everybody in the room fell silent, Poole vividly recalls. Also present were his partner, Detective Beatriz Cid, and another member of the special task force that was formed to investigate the Perez case, Detective Brian Tyndall. Poole pressed on, telling Parks that to present a solid case to the district attorney's office in the Jimenez beating, he needed to reinvestigate some other complaints that had been filed against Rampart officers, including one that charged Perez with assault with a deadly weapon. Some of these complaints, which involved some of the same officers, had languished or not been properly investigated.
But according to Poole, Parks cut him off. "No!" the chief barked. "Limit your investigation to the Jimenez case. Don't add any of that."
Shocked and disturbed, Poole went to work on his report.
But when he tried to limit his focus to the Jimenez case, he found he couldn't. The beating was a retaliatory act, and the D.A. needed to know that. In fact, the D.A. needed to know everything Poole had uncovered. Poole knew that keeping information out of a criminal report could constitute a crime, obstruction of justice.
Poole ended up producing a 40-page report on the Jimenez matter, plus an eight-page timeline of complaints against Rampart cops. He felt certain his work would provide the district attorney's office with an airtight case to prosecute officers Hewitt, Cohan and Lujan and open up another case against Perez -- as well as trigger a much-needed probe of the Rampart Division.
But Poole's report never saw the light of day. Lt. Hernandez chided Poole for ignoring Parks' instructions. "He said, 'We can't hand this in. The chief doesn't want this,'" Poole recalls. Hernandez ordered Poole to give him the report, and the computer disk it was stored on. (Poole provided a copy to Salon.) His 48-page work was then replaced with a two-page report written by Lt. Hernandez and Detective III Supervisor Ron Ito, which was sent to the D.A.
Poole refused to put his name on it. "I told them, 'I'm not going to be involved in that.' I knew it was wrong, because I had dealt with the D.A.'s office many times on murder cases. You give the D.A. everything -- the good, the bad and the ugly. If I were caught doing that, I'd go to prison for obstruction of justice."
Not surprisingly, given the dearth of evidence in the two-page report, the district attorney's office declined to press criminal charges against officers Hewitt, Lujan and Cohan. Poole then decided to go over his lieutenant's head, complaining to higher-ups, who heard his tale but did nothing. The veteran detective realized the decision had already been made at the top, by Parks himself, a notorious micromanager -- there was no bucking it.
"It was always, 'No, they don't want to go there,' and 'We just want to concentrate on this,'" says Poole. "Fact was, they did not want the stigma of another major scandal, which was in the brewing."
Poole began to feel that his clashes with his superiors were hurting his career. He failed to receive a long-promised promotion to detective level II, despite repeated glowing reviews from supervisors. He left the investigative task force and went back to South Bureau Homicide, where he had spent eight years as a detective. There, he watched quietly as Perez's first trial was bungled and ended in a mistrial in December 1998, and as the D.A.'s office twice rejected filing criminal charges in the Jimenez beating because of a lack of evidence.
Then Perez turned state's evidence before his second trial in September 1999, and Poole watched as the LAPD's pattern of protecting bad cops became a national embarrassment.
The following month, Poole resigned from the department he had served with distinction for 19 years. "The issues and circumstances have to do with how some investigations I was involved in were handled," he wrote in his resignation letter, dated Oct. 25, 1999. "My concerns were addressed to my superiors, but were swept under the rug."
"I was really hurt, betrayed, angry," recalls Poole. "I'd had a year of sleepless nights over this. I couldn't live with the fact that a department I loved for so many years asked me to keep information away from the D.A.'s office. I thought, I'm not going to be put in a position where I have to lie in a court of law. That's why I'm gone -- for the sake of my kids, my family, my own well-being."
Before he left, Poole met with the LAPD's internal affairs office and told it his story. After he left, he went to the D.A.'s office and told it as well. He also supplied prosecutors with his documents.
Now, a year after his resignation, Poole is going public with his charges. He has provided Salon with extensive documentation of his claim that Chief Parks and other top LAPD officials covered up the Rampart scandal and often refused to investigate corrupt police officers.
As Salon went to press, Poole sued Parks, the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles for, among other things, violating his First Amendment rights to publicly report the criminal activity he witnessed, as well as violating state labor statutes protecting whistle-blowers.
Requests for interviews with Chief Parks and other top LAPD brass as well as Parks' co-workers were denied. "Unfortunately, they will be unable to comment due to ongoing investigations," said a department spokesperson. Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti's office, which has for many months been preparing a conspiracy case against Rampart CRASH cops, also refused to comment on Poole's charges or its pending case. But a number of confidential sources confirmed that the D.A. has Poole's information.
"Russ Poole's day will come," says one knowledgeable source in the Los Angeles legal community, who asked not to be identified. He characterized Poole's allegations as "a mine in the water -- and the chief knows it."
"If [Poole's] information is true, serious charges could result, including indictments for obstruction of justice," says a Los Angeles County official who also asked for anonymity. "That's about as serious as anything that could happen."
Poole's charges are politically explosive because the LAPD and the district attorney's office have been feuding over who's to blame for the Rampart scandal, with each side claiming the other didn't take the warning signs of corruption seriously enough.
In fact, after the Rampart story broke, Chief Parks criticized District Attorney Garcetti for not filing charges against Officer Hewitt for his role in the Jimenez beating. "They [the LAPD] were happy the D.A. rejected that case until Perez spilled his guts," says an incredulous Poole. "Now they're trying to blame Garcetti for not filing a case. Well, I know for a fact the D.A. didn't have all the information. That's why they didn't file charges."
Now the D.A.'s office is seeking additional interviews with Poole about his allegations, says his attorney, Leo Terrell. But for now, Terrell has put them off. After months of waiting for law enforcement officials to act, Poole's busy talking to his legal team and the media. "Now they're threatening him with a subpoena," Terrell chuckles.
It's not the way he imagined it, but Russell Poole is relieved his story is finally being told.
The Rampart Division polices one of the most densely populated urban areas in the West, home to tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants and at least 30 gangs. Officer Rafael Perez's confession to the D.A., which ran more than 3,200 pages, alleged that Rampart gang unit CRASH officers were as out of control as the gangs they policed.
According to Perez, he and his colleagues engaged in evidence planting, false arrests, witness intimidation, beatings, theft, drug dealing and perjury. Rampart cops dropped gang members out of windows and used them as human battering rams. They set up bachelor pad apartments where they had sex parties with hookers, drug dealers and informants. Perhaps the most chilling admission by Perez was that he and his partner shot an unarmed gang member, paralyzing him for life, and then framed him for assault. So far, 30 officers have been suspended or fired in the ongoing Rampart probe and 40 more are under investigation.
The D.A.'s office, which is preparing criminal indictments, is also reviewing hundreds of cases possibly tainted by Rampart officers' false testimony. So far, more than 100 cases have been overturned and more are likely to follow. City officials are bracing for a wave of lawsuits that some say could bankrupt the city. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department has forced the LAPD into a consent decree that cedes departmental oversight to the federal government.
And the shocking revelations keep coming. Recently, the Los Angeles Times reported that one of Perez's ex-girlfriends claims she saw Perez and David Mack murder two people at the Rampart cops' crash pad. She also claims she witnessed "a major cocaine transaction" between the two cops. Investigators from a joint FBI/LAPD corruption task force told the Times "there is some corroboration." Perez's credibility, which has already been seriously undermined by other witnesses, could be totally destroyed if these allegations prove to be true.
Throughout the fall of 1999, Detective Poole watched as daily headlines verified what he had told Chief Parks a year earlier. Worse yet, he watched as Parks took credit for "exposing" the Rampart mess -- a scandal that in fact might never have been revealed if Perez had simply kept his mouth shut and done his time. Poole also decided he couldn't remain silent. If he did, wouldn't he be part of the coverup?
Poole has a box of documents to back up his story, but the credibility of his allegations against Parks and the LAPD's brass comes down to his reputation. Testimony from his colleagues and numerous citations in his file point to a stellar police career. One of the Robbery/Homicide Division's elite, Poole was regarded by his peers as one of the LAPD's best detectives.
The son of a 27-year L.A. County sheriff, Poole never wanted to do anything but be a cop. He joined the LAPD in 1981 and became a detective trainee three years later. Before being picked for RHD in 1996, he spent nine and a half years as a homicide investigator at South Bureau and Wilshire Division. He served as primary investigator on 135 murder cases (taking a case all the way through trial), and assisted on 500 more.
Poole took on some of L.A.'s highest profile homicides, including the murder of Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, and Bill Cosby's son Ennis. He was evidence coordinator for the 1997 police firefight with the heavily armed robbers of the North Hollywood Bank of America, the largest crime scene in the history of the LAPD, an entire square mile. One LAPD evaluation report described Poole as "truly a crime scene expert" and cited his "motivation, dedication, investigative capabilities and crime scene expertise" in the solving of "several complicated murders" that "would have surely remained unsolved without Detective Poole's efforts."
The evaluations in his file are filled with glowing praise: "courteous," "professional," "a definite asset to the department," "sincerely cares," "sympathetic and extraordinary in dealing with victims," "excellent interviewer and interrogator," "hard working," "loyal, productive, thorough and reliable," "first rate," "diligent," "goes that extra mile," "exemplary dedication to duty," "compassionate." One squad leader concluded: "You can only hope that everyone assigned to your squad will be of the caliber and character of Officer Poole."
Lt. Sergio Robleto, now retired, was Poole's supervisor at South Bureau Homicide. Sixty-five detectives at his division handled as many as 429 homicides in one year -- three times the workload of other divisions. Robleto describes Poole as "honest, hardworking, thorough, caring, one of the best." He laughs at the notion that Poole might be mistaken in his recollection of his discussions with Chief Parks and other LAPD officials about the Rampart case. "Everything he does he writes down," says Robleto. "You're not going to catch him lying!"
Robleto says he reviewed hundreds of murder investigations at South Bureau Homicide, dozens of which were handled by Poole. "Sometimes you get a bad feeling that somebody might be stretching it or something like that. Not with Russ," says Poole's former supervisor. "He never did that. I never found anything wrong with any of his investigations."
"The department lost one of their best when Russell Poole resigned," concludes Robleto.
Allan Walsh, a former Los Angeles deputy district attorney who worked with Poole on a number of murder cases, is even more effusive: "Russell Poole is one of the most talented and skilled investigators, most honest and forthright detectives I have ever known. During my career, I had contact with every single big-time LAPD homicide detective. He was the best -- from dealing with victims to handling witnesses to following up leads. There isn't anybody whose honesty, character and principles I would vouch for more than Russell Poole."
Deputy D.A. George Castello, who also worked on murder cases with Poole, concurs. "He was one of the best detectives I've come across. He got to the bottom of an investigation, followed through and put a solid case together. He's a guy you could really count on -- a solid, level-headed detective who does not exaggerate, who is extremely credible."
Since leaving the LAPD, Poole has lost the friendship and support of most of his fellow cops, who are unaware of the circumstances behind his unexpected resignation. Now 44, married with three kids and happily engaged in a new career, he initially felt he had put everything behind him by resigning from the department. But as the Rampart scandal continues to unfold, he believes he has one final duty to perform for his department: He has to get his story on the record.
Poole is the only Rampart investigator to go public with his account of how the LAPD handled the probe. Throughout his tour with the Rampart task force, he charges, his superiors refused to investigate dirty cops, even when obvious clues pointed to them. What happened when he tried to investigate cops at Rampart Division, Poole says, was typical of the way the LAPD handles complaints against cops.
Critics have long decried how Chief Parks manipulates his department's disciplinary process to keep its dirty laundry hidden. Parks once ran the LAPD's Internal Affairs Division, so he knows the drill well. IAD investigators have a pattern of taking "compelled statements" from cops suspected of corruption, in which they are forced to answer IAD questions or lose their jobs. Cops can be fired for what they reveal, but they can't be prosecuted, because their statements to the IAD cannot be used in criminal proceedings.
Parks has fired more than 100 officers since he became chief, most for offenses unrelated to Rampart. Sources say many of these cops were guilty of crimes or had criminal associations the public will never know about because they were never brought to trial. In effect, the process allows the chief to sweep his dirt out the back door without anybody knowing about it.
"The D.A. does not file charges against officers because the department doesn't give them all the information," Poole says. "Internal Affairs files enough to get a person fired, but then the D.A. doesn't have enough to go after him because they used compelled statements. And the department knows that."
Because he immediately realized the Jimenez beating was a criminal case -- "assault under the color of authority" -- Poole says, "I didn't use compelled statements. I read people their rights. Their attorneys were shocked: 'Aren't you going to compel my client to answer?' they'd ask. 'No.' I interviewed and taped people and put together a solid criminal case, with everything documented. When I turned in the report it was too revealing."
Poole also prepared photos, charts and computerized diagrams for his Rampart report. "When you go the D.A., you have to paint a picture for them," he says. "That's exactly what I did. And I didn't write half of what I should have in my report because I was ordered not to. The D.A. looked at the two-page report they gave him and he couldn't figure out what happened. They can't sift through dozens of interviews and put everything into context. That two-page report didn't help them at all."
Officers Hewitt, Lujan and Cohan, the Rampart cops accused in the Jimenez beating, were all brought before a board of rights, a departmental disciplinary hearing. After the board acquitted Lujan, the department called Poole to testify at the hearings for Hewitt and Cohan. "It was evident the board captains did not have all the information," Poole recalls. Following Poole's testimony, Hewitt and Cohan were dismissed from the force. Poole was told a deal had been made not to pursue criminal charges. "Losing their jobs is punishment enough," a commander told him.
To this day, Poole seethes at the memory of his suppressed report and the full-scale Rampart investigation it should have inspired: "I demonstrated a pattern of ongoing activity that needed to be investigated in its totality rather than individual incidents. And the chief knew from experience that if Perez was stealing and dealing cocaine, we had to be naive to think no other officers were involved.
"But it started snowballing and the chief didn't want anything to do with a big conspiracy at Rampart Division -- the reason being that all the managers would get burned, not just the police officers. There was a major supervision problem, starting with the sergeants up to the lieutenants, captains, commanders, deputy chiefs and the chief for not bringing this forward.
"These young, unsupervised officers at Rampart were embarrassing the entire department," he continues. "We needed to get rid of everyone involved. There was a conspiracy going on. If you didn't get with the program at Rampart, you were crucified. They'd dig into your personal life and rumors would get spread around that you were a lying scum. That's why there was a code of silence. The good officers saw what was going on and transferred out. That's why they had so many transfers at Rampart. I saw that something was wrong and I brought it forward. But then my own chief suppressed it."
The scandal only came to light when Perez decided to cop a plea for leniency. (He is serving a prison term of only five years for his rogue police career.) Yet by allowing Perez to trade information for immunity, the LAPD and D.A.'s office gave the dirty cop power over how the investigation proceeded.
"Now, Perez is calling the shots," Poole complains. "The worst thing the D.A. could have done was to give immunity to Perez. But the D.A.'s office was duped. Had the D.A.'s office had all this information from the beginning, they would never have given that deal to Perez. They could have gotten him on 25-to-life. Now Perez and his attorneys are running the show."
The Rampart case was not the first time Poole had been prevented by his department from investigating bad cops. The trail to Rampart began a year before Perez was arrested, when Poole and his partner at Robbery/Homicide, Fred Miller, were assigned to investigate the March 1997 Studio City shooting of LAPD officer Kevin Gaines. Gaines was killed in a "road rage" dispute after he brandished a gun at another motorist.
That motorist happened to be an undercover cop, Detective Frank Lyga, who pulled out his own gun in self-protection and shot Gaines through the heart. While investigating the shooting, Poole learned that Gaines had a history of bullying and intimidating motorists and attacking cops. At the time of his death, he was already being investigated by Internal Affairs for calling in a phony crime report and staging a confrontation with the responding officers. Had he not been killed, according to Internal Affairs documents, he would have been fired from the department. (The license plate on Gaines' car read "ITSOKIA," which was widely believed to be a taunt to Internal Affairs.)
Poole also learned that Gaines had ties to L.A.'s gang scene. He had been living with Sharitha Knight, rap star Snoop Dogg's manager and the ex-wife of imprisoned Death Row Records mogul Marion "Suge" Knight. He was living large in the L.A. and Las Vegas nightclub fast lanes, sporting expensive clothes, cars and girlfriends. Poole turned up a credit card receipt showing that Officer Gaines had recently dropped nearly a grand for lunch at Monty's Steakhouse in Westwood, a Death Row hangout.
An informant told Poole that Gaines and other cops were moving money and drugs for Suge Knight. Gaines told many of his friends he was being followed by the FBI. A Death Row insider informed Poole and his partner that Gaines and another cop, David Mack, were "confidants" of Knight's who were frequently seen at Death Row functions. Informants reported that both Mack and Gaines were Blood gang members who worked for Knight, who was also a Blood.
Despite what he uncovered, Poole's LAPD superiors prevented him from investigating Gaines any further. "He was dead, and they didn't want to know anything more about him," says Poole. "Here he is at some gangster hangout buying lunch for $952. Don't you think the department should want to find out a little more? I wanted to do a financial investigation on Gaines. You know what the department said? 'No, he's dead. This case is closed.'"
Chief Parks also kept evidence about Gaines from public view by agreeing to a settlement with attorney Johnnie Cochran, who filed a $25 million wrongful death suit against the city on behalf of Gaines' family. Despite strong evidence that Lyga was acting in self-defense, the Cochran suit alleged that Lyga was "an aggressive and dangerous police officer" and implied there was a racial motivation to the shooting. Officer Lyga is white, while Gaines was black. Lyga urgently wanted to fight the suit, but city attorney James Hahn structured a deal so that the three plaintiffs -- Gaines' wife and two daughters -- each received compensation below the $100,000 monetary threshold that required City Council approval.
City Council member Laura Chick called this backroom deal "deplorable and unacceptable." The judge called it "political." Frank Lyga, rather than having his name cleared, was hung out to dry, as the public was led to believe the city was covering for him. In fact, the LAPD and City Hall were burying embarrassing information about Officer Kevin Gaines. (Lyga remains on the job, having been cleared of any wrongdoing at two departmental board hearings.)
Poole's superiors also didn't want him to investigate Officer David Mack, or Mack's best friend and former partner, Perez. Mack was arrested in December 1997 for the armed robbery of $722,000 from a Bank of America on Jefferson Boulevard. Two masked accomplices of Mack's remain at large and the money remains unaccounted for. Mack was later convicted and sentenced to 14 years. Perez, another cop who was living way too large, celebrated with Mack at a Vegas hotel after the heist. (In testimony to the D.A.'s office, Perez acknowledged partying with Mack in Vegas after the robbery, but says he didn't know about his friend's crime.)
Perez finally got caught in the first place as a result of connections made by Russell Poole. A special task force, including Poole, had been formed to investigate Perez because IAD suspected him of stealing 6 pounds of cocaine evidence that disappeared in March 1998 from a police storage room.
While conducting a close audit of narco-evidence, the task force found something interesting. On Feb. 6, 1998, an additional 2 pounds of cocaine evidence, submitted by narcotics detective Lyga, had been stolen from the downtown Evidence Control Unit. This drug theft occurred one month after Lyga was cleared in his final board hearing on the Gaines shooting. Somebody ordered up Lyga's evidence, using the specific division report number, and had it delivered to Rampart station. When task force detectives talked to the property manager, she identified the caller as Perez -- who had signed out the dope at Rampart under yet another name.
Poole and his fellow investigators concluded that Perez had targeted Lyga's cocaine haul as an act of retaliation for killing Gaines. As Poole would learn, retaliation was the Rampart Way. Over the next six months, task force investigators tailed Perez and concluded that he was dealing drugs through a girlfriend. Poole finally slapped the cuffs on Perez in August 1998 and charged him with stealing a total of 8 pounds of cocaine and some police radios.
A year later, when Perez made his deal with the D.A.'s office, he denied knowing anything about the crimes of his friend Mack. He also denied knowing Lyga. "I don't even know who Lyga is," he told his interrogators.
"He's lying," says Lyga, who worked with both Perez and Mack a few years before the Rampart scandal broke. For a while, Lyga supervised a narcotics operation that Perez worked on. "There's no way he doesn't remember me," says Lyga.
One of the biggest crimes Poole says he was prevented from adequately investigating, for fear the trail would lead to a cop, was the murder of Notorious B.I.G. While investigating the Gaines shooting, Poole received a tip that the rogue cop might be involved in the killing of the rap star, who was shot one week before Gaines himself was shot dead. Poole conferred with detectives at the LAPD's Wilshire Division station and before long he was given the Notorious B.I.G. case as well. He and his partner eventually pursued over 250 leads in the case, some of which involved Mack.
Once again, they were kept from following those leads because they implicated a cop. "They told me, 'We're not going to get involved in that.' Their attitude was, 'Mack had already gone down for bank robbery. Let's not get involved in more controversy.'"
After he resigned, Poole attempted to go public with his story of the suppressed report, and the LAPD's failure to investigate cops, by going to the L.A. Times. But selective reporting by the Times landed him in the middle of a bizarre media firestorm.
Reporters Matt Lait and Scott Glover chose to write only about the Biggie killing, revealing some but not all of the 20 clues that Poole had uncovered linking Mack and his friend, Amir Muhammed (also known as Harry Billups), to the crime. Lait and Glover ran a story saying the LAPD was looking for Muhammed/Billups as a suspect in the Biggie killing. But months later, another L.A. Times reporter, Chuck Philips, wrote that the LAPD was in fact not looking for Muhammed. (Philips located Muhammed, who said he was a mortgage broker who had nothing to do with the crime). Brill's Content online jumped on the story of the dueling Times stories, and in the ensuing imbroglio, Poole was identified as Lait and Glover's source -- and dismissed in one local weekly as a "disgruntled" former cop.
But Poole's entire story had not been told. In fact, he'd explained to Lait and Glover that the LAPD wasn't looking for Muhammed/Billups -- not because he'd been cleared, but because of his ties to a cop, David Mack. Muhammed and Mack were neither exonerated nor proved to be involved in the killing, Poole says, because the LAPD cut its investigation of them short. And Lait and Glover's partial telling of his tale, Poole says, obscured the truth. "They'll say I'm disgruntled," says Poole. "Well, anyone who was placed in my position would be disgruntled. I left because the department literally wanted me to lie and keep things from the D.A.'s office."
Poole says he expects to be attacked by the LAPD for going public with his charges. He predicts that the department will try to undermine his credibility and even smear his reputation. He believes that Chief Parks has already circled the wagons. The police officials who attended his September 1998 meeting with Chief Parks will be muzzled, says the former detective. (They all refused to comment for this story.) Asked who could confirm his recounting of the meeting, Poole responds, "Beatriz Cid, my partner, would be your best chance. I can't believe she would lie about it. But she also won't be able to comment. Nobody will. Not unless the D.A. first grants them immunity."
Detective Cid is now working at the LAPD's Hollenbeck Station. Approached there at the front desk and asked about Russell Poole's allegations, Cid became frightened and defensive, waving the reporter away. "It's not for me to say. I can't say anything. I can't comment about anything," she said, before walking away.
Law enforcement experts outside the LAPD who were asked to review a copy of Poole's report told Salon it seemed solid and credible. Scott Landsman, a nationally renowned police expert and recently retired LAPD training officer, concluded that it is "thorough and professionally done. Nothing looks manufactured or trumped up. He did everything by the book and the evidence pops up by itself. That's how a good investigation is done."
Landsman also said that if Poole's superiors thought the report was not up to department standards, the proper procedure would have been to send it back to him to do it over. "By no means should it have been withheld from the D.A.," says Landsman. Other LAPD sources concurred.
According to Joseph McNamara, a retired police chief of San Jose and Kansas City who has written extensively about the LAPD, the department's handling of Officer Perez is a textbook case of damage control getting priority over the truth. "They should have run a sting operation after they got him," says McNamara. "They could have spread the net. Instead, they nailed one guy and that's the end of it. Time and time again they do that and let some of the worst bastards get away. Then, when the guy rats out everybody else, he makes a deal and gets off easy. That's the terrible ethical immorality of what they do over and over." According to Poole, they did it over and over: with Kevin Gaines, David Mack, Rafael Perez.
A research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, McNamara is author of the forthcoming book "Gangster Cops: The Hidden Cost of America's War on Drugs." He testified before the L.A. City Council after the Rodney King riots, calling for then Chief Daryl Gates to resign and sat on the screening board that helped select Gates' successor, Willie Williams.
McNamara says the LAPD suffers from an institutional, militaristic attitude about control -- of information as well as of the streets. "It's a very macho organization and it always has been," says McNamara. "It isn't something that was formed by Parks." Despite reform efforts, he says, the LAPD culture hasn't changed. "Both Williams and Parks missed the boat. They had a mandate to do that. You need to constantly fight against the tendency of the police to become a secret, closed organization."
McNamara says the problem is not unique to the LAPD. "I've discovered 'Rampart' characteristics in almost every major police department in the country," he says. "There's no way that can exist without a strong code of silence. The mayor and police chief put their spin on the scandal for damage control, describing it as a few rotten apples, when in fact it's endemic. The chief reason is the lack of political accountability "
According to retired LAPD Deputy Chief Steve Downing, "The corruption of Rampart would have been uncovered and brought to an end at least a year earlier if the natural leads in the cases of Gaines, Mack and Perez had been followed. Firing 100 cops is no badge of courage," says Downing, referring to the 100 officers Chief Parks has dismissed during his tenure. "Have those cops been further investigated? Where did all these crooked cops come from? That's the question nobody will address."
However bad things are at the LAPD, however, McNamara believes the city is making matters worse by entering into a consent decree with the Justice Department. "The federal government doesn't know how to run anything, especially police departments," says McNamara. "The record of federal law enforcement agencies is even worse. This tendency to give all power to the feds makes things worse and you spend more money. The tradition of local policing is really a sacred one for a free society, but we seem willing to trade it away. The FBI is not accountable like a local force. Willie Williams got fired and L.A.'s new mayor will probably fire Bernard Parks. On a local level, at least there is some degree of control and accountability. But who controls the Justice Department? No one."
It's hard to believe any entity would handle the scandal worse than Parks and the LAPD did. "Rampart was staring [the LAPD] right in the face for years," Poole says. "They knew the seriousness of what was going on but they just let it go. Their excuse was that these [gang members] were terrorists running the streets. But it turned out the cops were worse. They were running their own little enterprise and taking the law into their own hands. It comes down to a lack of leadership. The supervisors had no courage. They all knew this stuff was happening, but nobody had the courage to say, 'Wait a minute!'
"From Day 1, this investigation was always about containment, not about exposing the truth," Poole charges. "Because they suppressed my report and purged documents from the D.A.'s package, I believe they are guilty of obstruction of justice. Plain and simple. All the way up to the chief of police. Had I or any other officer tried to do what the chief and my superiors ordered me to do, they would be in jail right now for obstruction of justice."
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