Conversations With the Crow

by Gregory Douglas

  GD: Well, anyone can make stupid guesses and be right some of the time. The point is to be right all of the time.

  RTC: Well, we have a staff of creative writers who prepare dire predictions for the President based solely what we want him to hear. That’s when we want to invade some country for the oil or to frost the Russians. Who is going to question us? Especially if they have no idea what we tell the Oval Office? It does work most of the time. And we have the Times and the Post to support our views. Getting something done for us or our friends is fairly easy. Anyone who challenges us gets the full court treatment.

  GD: You run over him with a truck?

  RTC: No, we make a fool out of them and laugh them off the stage. And be careful they don’t try to do that to you, Gregory.

  GD: No, I am the one who makes fools out of them. You have to make a real savage attack on one of the front men for the others to back off. When I fry someone, they usually stay fried. I don’t want to tell my techniques but believe me, I have honed them to a razor edge and when I go after someone, they rarely are heard from again. But back to the aliens running around. You mentioned one case about the woman who wasn’t. Do you know of more?

  RTC: Yes, there is much more in the report. I just mentioned the one that I recalled. Oh, they’re there but what they are or why they’re here we don’t know. I think if they were going to turn some death ray onto us, it would have happened by now.

  GD: Well, one hopes.

  RTC: Oh, and Lee [25] is wondering about something you said about Pearl Harbor. You upset these people, Gregory, with your questions and poking. He’s a court historian and court historians take their orders from above. But I suppose you know this by now.

  GD: Oh, my yes, I’ve run into them along the way. Some official pays them to write a book supporting some officially approved theme or to attack someone who disputes it. There is no honor among thieves, Robert, none at all,

  (Concluded at 12:01 PM CST)

  Conversation No. 29

  Date: Tuesday July 30, 1996

  Commenced: 8:30 AM CST

  Concluded: 8:55 AM CST

  GD: Good morning, Robert.

  RTC: And the same to you, Gregory.

  GD: Robert, I know you were not in the CIA’s technical branch but I often wonder when I am on the phone, am I being listened to?

  RTC: You don’t have to be from the technical people to know the answer to that one. It’s not so much that you are being snooped on but that you can be observed by almost anyone at any time. We listened in on people and opened mail. That’s the reason why Jim was sacked but that was only an excuse. He was getting crazy. But as far as the telephone is concerned, yes, you could be listened to at any time. It’s not a bug on your phone so much as full and complete cooperation by the telephone people with various agencies. We did it, the FBI and the NSA do it and probably others as well. Your mail can be opened, addresses copied and so on. For instance, if you have a private Swiss bank account, we have the postal people copy down and forward to us the cover of any letter sent by a Swiss bank to an American addressee. We don’t have to open the letter to know it’s a monthly bank statement. And then we know where your account is. And the NSA listened in on each and every phone call overseas. You see, they tap into the communications satellites. Of course there are huge numbers of calls every day so their computers are set to pick out certain words. Like Abu Nidal for instance. Once a key word comes up, the conversation is taped and listened to later.

  GD: And the television sets can be used as a monitoring device but only if they’re connected to the cable TV system.

  RTC: I’ve heard that but then I rarely watch the garbage on television.

  GD: You can circumvent that simply by disconnecting your set from the cable system. Just take out the plug. Put it back later. Or, what I would do, would be to hold a really sizzling but totally fake disinformation conversation right in front of the set. You know…’the Russians really pay well for that information…’ and also ‘ yes the entire building has been mined. One push of a button and we can make the front pages of every newspaper in the world.’ Can you imagine the uproar on the other end? Of course you never are specific and just enough to drive them into a frenzy. I’ve done this a number of times but only twice did I ever find out what a huge stink I caused. Loved it then and I love it now. Oh yes, Bill told me the other day that he saved Bobby Inman [26] from exposure once. When I asked him from what, he shut down. Can you comment on this?

  RTC: Probably the homosexual issue. They are very sensitive to that one.

  GD: Why? And is Inman a faggot?

  RTC: Now, now, I’ll let Bill discuss this with you. My information would only be second hand. And it has been long felt that if an agent were a fairy, he could be gotten at by the Russians and blackmailed or set up and turned.

  GD: Well, that makes sense but there are so many people like that in DC that it would be difficult not to find a few in various agencies. I think it must be the military bases with their legions of muscled hustlers that draws these people. And, of course, one gets into an agency and of course has to have company.

  RTC: Yes. The Jews are the same way. You let one in and pretty soon, the office looks like a synagogue. And it’s always us against them. The same way with the fairies. That’s the main reason why I object to having them on board.

  GD: But the problem with Inman….

  RTC: Back in 1980 there was a fairy scare over at NSA. Real McCarthy purges, finger pointing, anonymous letters and so on. A number of the top brass there were scared shitless lest they, too, got exposed. Bill knows some of this and he has known Inman for a long time. There was an ugly incident when he was in law school. I was told that Bill was able to shut the matter down. That is one of the reasons Bill has such good rapport in certain circles.

  GD: He’s blackmailing them?

  RTC: In a sense. During the Carter days, Bill could pretty well get what he wanted from certain highly placed intelligence people. I think I should leave it at that, Gregory. Talk to Bill about this if you like but I doubt he’ll tell you anything and, yes, you are right. Washington is indeed full of those people. A lot in Congress, the military, especially the Air Force and various agencies. The FBI is rather picky but we and NSA have quite a few queers on board. The NSG has more than its share. And if you go into some of the faggot bars here, you might see a number of the prominent dancing around in mesh stockings and wearing really bad wigs.

  GD: Oh, I’ve seen these in San Francisco. The wigs look like dead cats. They don’t look any more like women than my dog but who argues with self-delusion? Five kids and a wife at home and into the lavatories with the holes in the partitions after work. During the week, his name is George but on Saturdays, his name is Phyllis.

  RTC: (Laughter) Yes, we are overrun here.

  GD: Well, at least you can’t dump that one on Clinton although God knows that the weird Christian freaks might try. My God, they hate him and as far as I am concerned, these bone headed twits are far worse than the queens. They believe in the strangest things and are really obnoxious swine. They believe the world is only six thousand years old, that Noah’s ark came to ground at 5,000 feet on a mountain side and God only knows what other myths. I mean, Robert, if another religious cult arose that worshipped the Easter Bunny, it wouldn’t any more unbelievable than the Evangelicals. By the way, did you know that Crisco’s main production plant in New Jersey burned down last night? Yes. Millions now living will never fry.

  RTC: (Laughter) Ah, Gregory, I can see why so many hate you so much.

  GD: Well, one day, it will come out that Heini Mueller, head of the Gestapo and number two man on the wanted Nazi escapee list was living right near you and visiting the White House.

  RTC: We may have to wait a while before that gets to be public knowledge. My God, the Hebes would scream so loud we would have to stuff hundred dollar bills into their mouths like a mama bird shoving worms into her babies. They are such arrogant and deman
ding people.

  GD: Yes, God’s chosen people, Robert. I wonder what God chose them for? Probably to wait in line for the showers somewhere in Poland.

  RTC: If that’s true, Gregory, God should have finished the job.

  (Concluded at 8:55 AM CST)

  Conversation No. 30

  Date: Tuesday, August 6, 1996

  Commenced: 11:10 AM CST

  Concluded: 11:47 AM CST

  GD: Ah, good morning to you, Robert. How is life treating you today?

  RTC: Good morning, Gregory. There are good days and bad days. I’m not sure about today.

  GD: Certainty is illusion, Robert. I was talking to an old friend of mine last night. He’s down at Norfolk. Was Navy but retired. I went to school with him. King’s Point and then the NSG.

  RTC: King’s Point is Merchant Marine.

  GD: I know. They have a reserve commission and they can activate it if they want to. He did. Nuclear vessels surface and then the NSG. He was the Naval Attaché in the Dominican Republic. Worked on the Trujillo assassination. But that’s not the issue now. We got to talking about AIDS and since he had quite a bit of sherry, he told me quite a story about how that originated. I thought you might have some input on that. Want me to go on?

  RTC: Why not?

  GD: Well, according to him, the Navy had an experimental medical station down in Haiti. They were down there because there was a huge pool of very poor locals they could use as subjects in tests. He said that they were developing something that would lower a person’s resistance to the point where a common cold would put them out of action for weeks.

  RTC: Go on. What then?

  GD: Well, they hit on a virus that does this, experimented with the locals and when they were sure it actually worked, somehow they got this into local whores whom the Cuban government then shipped over to Angola to service their volunteers fighting there.

  RTC: I’ve heard stories about that.

  GD: But somehow, the virus mutated into something far more serious. The HIV thing. And they didn’t care if all the Cubans died, or the whores either, but it seems that some the younger Haitians got this and when American gays made excursions down there for some cheap black cock, they got it, too, and you can see where that went. Then, my friend said, after they found out what had gone wrong, the Navy shut down its facility, disposed of their volunteer locals by taking them out on boats and dumping them into the water. Anyway, that’s what he said, and I believe him. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.

  RTC: There is something to that. Your friend had best be very quiet or he’ll end up taking a one-way boat trip. And I would be careful not to put any of that into one of your books. If you take my drift.

  GD: No, it wouldn’t fit in with the Mueller material. It is true, then?

  RTC: Basically it is. Take note that it didn’t start out to kill off all the homos, although the Christians thought it was a wonderful thing, but your friend was right when he said it mutated. I was never in that part of the agency but one hears things or talks to colleagues. I mean there was only the intention to interfere with the combat capabilities of enemy troops, not liquidate social outcasts. When we learned about this, the burn bags were used overtime at Langley.

  GD: Were your people part of it?

  RTC: In a sense. The Navy supplied the tactical, and we supplied the strategic. They produced the weapon and we, the targets. We were planning to use this on the Russians.

  GD: Well, I know something about that aspect. You know about General Ishi? [27]

  RTC: Oh yes, I do indeed.

  GD: His Japanese military units had a BW lab up in Manchuria and they used to develop the plague and God knows what else. Poisoned thousands of Chinese, wanted to loose the plague against their Russian neighbors and used Allied POW’s as lab specimens. Most of them died of plague and other nasty things.

  RTC: Ah, the redoubtable Dr. Ishi. After we took over Japan, he was caught along with his staff and they were planning to try him for very ugly war crimes but MacArthur, acting on specific orders from the Pentagon, rescued him, set him up with a big lab in Tokyo and back they went to developing the bubonic plague. I guess they were going to use it on the Russians if all else failed.

  GD: That I know all about. Not the Japanese but using the plague against the Russians. There was a German Army doctor, a Dr. Walter Schreiber[28], who was a specialist in communicable diseases. He developed a form of the plague and the military used it to clean out the overcrowded Russian POW cages. Cost too much to feed and guard them. The rationale was that they never used them in the West. Roosevelt, as you might know, was planning to use mustard gas against the Germans in Russia until the Bari raid blew up a boat-full of mustard gas, and when Hitler learned of this, he threatened to let nerve gas loose on London and Washington. Amazing how quickly FDR backed off.

  RTC: You do your homework, don’t you?

  GD: Oh yes. Schreiber came over to us in Berlin after the war and we vetted him and sent him to San Antonio to set up a lab there to cultivate the plague. Again, we planned to use it against the Russians. I don’t know what the Russians did to infuriate our sacred leaders, but I don’t think they would have deserved that. Schreiber got outed and had to be shipped back to Germany.

  RTC: Drew Pearson[29] was the man who did that.

  GD: Whatever. Well, the Brits practiced BW when they gave the Indians smallpox-laced blankets back in the eighteenth century, but Mueller and I were discussing Schreiber’s project. Mueller was very angry when he heard this and rounded Schreiber up. Had to let him go. Orders from on high. Mueller said that there were no Customs agents at the borders to stop the spread of such filthiness right back from whence it came. But he told me about a CIA plan to ruin the Asian rice crop. That failed but only barely. It would have spread and ruined everyone’s rice crop. He said that creatures that dabbled in such things should be shot out of hand or they would destroy everyone, good or bad. I suppose the definition of good or bad depends on your politics, but the whole thing should be forbidden by law.

  RTC: I believe it is, but only in theory.

  GD: But they put the story out that AIDS came from monkeys in Africa and other funny stories.

  RTC: Well, now it’s raging in Africa and they estimate that in ten years, everyone there will be infected. Of course, there is something to be said about depopulating Africa. They’re a bunch of incompetents who are sitting on very valuable natural resources, such as gold and uranium and when they all die, the treasures are there for the finding.

  GD: That’s a bit cynical but true. But what about the American homosexuals?

  RTC: The Christians and the far right would be in favor of exterminating them all. However, that having been said, we would lose so many really valuable public servants, not to mention all the florists and interior decorators.

  GD: Thank God I’m not a Christian. They’re such filthy bigots. If they ever get into power here, I’ll move to some cleaner place.

  RTC: I don’t see that happening, Gregory.

  GD: I have no problems with the mainline faiths but the extremists are flat-out nuts and we don’t need that rampant and fanatical bigotry.

  RTC: But it could be useful.

  GD: But you can’t really control it. I’ve known a few Jesus freaks and, believe me, they are as nutty as they come. Most of them try to hide it from us sane ones but once in a while, it leaks out. It would be entertaining if the head of the Navy’s medical branch caught AIDS from his cousin or how about the DCI?

  RTC: Now, now, Gregory, you must realize that accidents happen. Try not to be too judgmental about such things.

  GD: It’s bloody difficult not to.

  RTC: Look, Africa is full of people who are only a generation or two out of the jungle. They ran out the white people, who set up the business structure, and now they are running around with spears, eating each other. Why be concerned if they pass away and give the civilized part of the world access to their unused natural resources? After a
ll, that’s why we killed off the head of the UN. He was interfering with the uranium business in the Congo so we had a little aircraft accident. We basically shot him out of the air. And that put an end to his meddling in important matters. Uranium, I don’t need to remind you, is vital for our weapons programs. Balance that against one meddling Swede and I don’t think there’s much of a problem.

  GD: Well, for him…

  RTC: Against the common good? You need to consider the practical priorities, Gregory. Believe me, we had no intention of causing AIDS. Our goal was to render a battlefield enemy incapable of combat, that’s all. These things sometimes happen and there is no reason at all to dwell on unexpected and certainly not planned consequences.

  GD: Ah, remember that Lenin once said you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Of course, it didn’t originate with him and I know it won’t end there but you take the point because you articulate it. But I have to agree with Mueller when he tore into such projects. And if you know the Bible, remember that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword. Wars once were conducted by gentlemen with a certain amount of civility but those days are gone. Democracy, not kings, now rules and civility is dead.

  RTC: You sound like a monarchist, Gregory.

  GD: In many ways I am, Robert. I recall my German grandfather saying that democracy was government of the mentally misfit by the mentally mediocre and tempered by the saving grace of snobbery. Grandfather was usually right I remember once at one of his formal family dinners when one of my idiot aunts was going on about her constant attendance at the local Methodist church and her choir practices. My grandfather turned to me and told me, so the whole table could hear, that I ought to take a lesson in piety from my aunt. I recall saying, and I am not being funny here, that it seemed to me that there was considerable madness in aunt’s Methodism.