Conversations With the Crow

by Gregory Douglas

  GD: Could be. You see a lot of weird yard monsters being carried around these days, Robert. Flat faces, drooling. Mongoloids. Of course, we don’t call them that any more. I think they say differently abled. But a Mongoloid idiot is still a Mongoloid idiot, no matter how you slice it. So correct now. Bloody twits. Don’t say this, can’t say that. Oh my, that is so demeaning. That’s what someone told me the other day when I called a fat woman a bloato. I apologized and called her a piggy instead. That didn’t go over very well, either. So many Mongoloids and so many jiggling fatties waddling around. If they kept their mouths shut, Robert, it would serve two valuable purposes. On the one hand, we wouldn’t have to listen to their babblings and on the other, they wouldn’t be feeding their enormous guts every waking hour. Well, the potato chip industry would suffer but then, on another negative side, they might live longer. Robert, as you were on board at the CIA during the formative years, could you address some points I am trying to research?

  RTC: I’ll try, if I can, Gregory.

  GD: OK. The CIA was originally started up by Truman in about ’48…

  RTC: Yes. Harry was not happy with the slanted intelligence the Army was providing so he set us up to counter the bs.

  GD: Yes. Gehlen told me about the fake Russian invasion plot of ’48. That’s when his organization of former Gestapo people, run by the Army, faked up the story of a pending Russian invasion to terrify Congress and the public so as to keep business going along on a wartime footing and keeping the Army from being disbanded.

  RTC: Basically true, Gregory. We had nothing to do with that.

  GD: The CIA took Gehlen over just after that fraud, correct?

  RTC: Yes, after that. We had nothing to do with that.

  GD: Mueller said that fake report was the real starting gun for the cold war. Would you agree?

  RTC: I would go along with that.

  GD: Russia had been bled dry during the war and much of her relatively primitive infrastructure had been ruined. Heavy loss in troops and so on. In other words, in 1948, Stalin not only was in no shape to confront the western powers on a military level nor really compete in the marketplace. Right?

  RTC: Right.

  GD: Now I agree that Stalin was engaged in extensive spying here and elsewhere during and after the war. But everyone spies on everyone else. Spying is not a military threat but wasn’t this domestic spying used to terrify the public into supporting a very expensive cold war? You were on the inside then, Robert. Between us and the phone taps, was Russia going to nuke us or start a land war in ’49 or even ’50?

  RTC: No, they were not.

  GD: So if that were the case, the CIA grew to such a powerful entity solely on the mistaken, deliberately mistaken premise that Russia, and later China, were going to attack us. Right?

  RTC: This is a rather sensitive area, Gregory, but I’m retired and old and overall, you are probably right. But they were spying on us. Bunch of traitorous Jews under Roosevelt were running rampant here. You must know that White[63] and even Wallace[64] were helping Uncle Joe with all of our secrets.

  GD: Yes, but annoying as this was, it was not a military threat. And with the great increase in domestic income as a result of the war, Communism had long ago lost its attraction for the poor and the various left wing politicians here. Right?

  RTC: Yes, but we are talking about a huge army of spies here then.

  GD: Ideological people. Poor. Give a man some money and a new television, and dreams of communism vanish as the waistline spreads.

  RTC: Yes but then don’t forget the very real threats to the west by Stalin and his successors.

  GD: But these were struggles for markets and natural resources, weren’t they? I mean not a real military threat. It had always been the dream in Moscow to capture the very technical and industrious Germany. That was when Lenin took off the fright wig. Always get Germany. I know about this because when Mueller took over the tiny Gestapo in ’35, he said there were about 20,000 active Communist Russian spies loose all over Germany. When he got through with them, there were about five left. Anyway, wasn’t the struggle then just an economic struggle like the one that started the First World War? Odd. Russia and the United States were engaged in a purely capitalist struggle for economic power. Not military power. Do you concur?

  RTC: Yes, it boiled down to that. I mean, we had our friends. People we knew as schoolmates, friends or neighbors. Business friends. Old Bill ran some aluminum company and he wanted us to secure bauxite sites in some country that Russia was also interested in. Of course we couldn’t use this as an excuse to topple some government and set up a US-friendly one so we tarted it up to say the existing government there was being run by Moscow and a Communist seizure was just a matter of time.

  GD: Like Nicaragua?

  RTC: Exactly so.

  GD: Levi and Zentner had friends in Langley.

  RTC: Well, more like the Grace people but I follow. But why should Russia get its hands on valuable resources when we wanted them? Let’s face it, Gregory, the struggle for natural resources is the struggle for life.

  GD: But why not seek less damaging goals? Isn’t there enough to go around?

  RTC: Well, that’s the question. Planet is getting very small these days. Too many people need more products and whoever has the natural resources, at least as long as they hold out, has the upper hand. Now, thanks to us, we have the upper hand. We damned near got all the Russia oil and gas under Yeltsin but you can’t win them all.

  GD: But Reagan was the last gasp of all that, wasn’t he?

  RTC: When business sees itself as losing something they want, it will never be over.

  GD: But when the cold war was on, we struggled with Russia over the natural resources of Africa. Each of us took over this or that country and set up this or that tin horn dictator answerable to us, or them. And now that the cold war is over, thanks to Reagan, why Africa is no longer of any interest to either side. I predict that in twenty years, Africa, at least sub-Saharan Africa, will be a wasteland. There’s a lot of AIDS there now and once all the natives are dead, we can just walk in and take over the resources. No need for a war, Robert, just let nature take its course.

  RTC: Very ruthless, Gregory.

  GD: I study history, Robert. Use facts, not emotions.

  RTC: I hate to say this but Marx was right when he talked about the role of economics in history.

  GD: I’ve read Marx. Fine theories but stupid practices. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Right? Sounds almost Christian, doesn’t it? Of course both systems, Jesus and Marx, sound so noble and self-sacrificing on paper but they are Utopian and will never work. And the raging idealists are the first to be shot when the pragmatists come into power. Night following day. And Robert, in the end, who cares?

  (Concluded at 9:55 CST)

  Conversation No. 80

  Date: Thursday, April 17, 1997

  Commenced: 2:21 PM CST

  Concluded: 2:52 PM CST

  RTC: Good afternoon Gregory. Did you get your car back from the shop in one piece?

  GD: Yes, and it actually runs better now that they got the stroller out from under the engine compartment.

  RTC: Now, now, Gregory, somehow I can’t believe that. How could a stroller get under your car?

  GD: I like to run red lights, Robert, how else. And last night, I got a ticket for going twenty miles an hour.

  RTC: Normally, that’s not so fast.

  GD: Ah, but it was in the local mall.

  RTC: Gregory, you must have been at the coffee again.

  GD: What else? Glue is just too expensive. And when I used it in the past, my face kept sticking to the sheets. Oh, well, enough ribaldry so late in the day. And getting stuck to the sheets is a forbidden topic, I guess. Last week I dreamed I was eating an angel food cake and when I woke up, my pillow was gone. Enough, enough. How is life treating you?

  RTC: Good days and bad days, Gregory.

  GD: How
is Emily?

  RTC: Very good. Thank you for asking.

  GD: Not at all. I had a privileged childhood. We were taught to be polite. I have no idea what good that does but I have been conditioned.

  RTC: Bill Corson is thinking of running for Congress, by the way. Did he mention this to you?

  GD: No. Is he serious?

  RTC: Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell what is serious about Bill.

  GD: Kimmel should run. The ladies would flock to his standard.

  RTC: I think he’d spend most of his time on the platform discussing his grandfather and Pearl Harbor.

  GD: Yes. He is a little limited in his scope. I was involved with politics one time and it was a hysterical romp in the sheep pen.

  RTC: You ran for something?

  GD: A speeding bus. No, I ran for nothing but I helped out a friend of mine who wanted to unseat a local judge. Interesting sort of thing. Do you want to hear about it?

  RTC: Does this involve drag racing in the mall?

  GD: No, actually it doesn’t but it had its roots in my friend, Marvin, and his Ferrari. He was going too fast in it and had a few drinks under his belt so the local cops grabbed him. The judge in his case, a local power, was nasty with him and Marvin loathed the man. Also, I note, Marvin had a lot of money. We knew each other, and he was aware that I could get things done in let’s say unorthodox ways. We had the same lawyer. Anyway, the judge, who was part of our local power elite, had been on the bench for centuries and was a permanent fixture. He was up for the standard reelection and Marvin wanted him booted off the bench. We made a deal, Marvin and I. I would get rid of the judge and Marvin would pay my out of pocket expenses plus whatever he thought proper if I was successful. Now, we had some young attorney running for the job. He had no money and the sitting judge had all the local money behind him. How to unseat him.

  RTC: You had one of your nasty friends shoot him?

  GD: Now, you’re trying to use CIA tactics here, Robert. No, I was not going to shoot him or even run over him with someone else’s car on a rainy night. First, I went to see the young candidate. I asked him, in private, that if I got him elected at no expense to himself, would he throw out Marvin’s conviction for drunk driving and he laughed and agreed.

  RTC: Did he?

  GD: We’ll get to that in good time. Well, the first thing I did was to design a bumper sticker telling voters to vote for the judge. All perfectly straightforward. Took it to Frisco to a professional printer along with a phony purchase order I had drawn up using a letterhead from the judge’s reelection campaign. They printed 20,000 stickers and billed it to the judge. Next, I went to some of my Teamster friends for whom I had done a recent and significant favor and in return, we took all of these stickers and had the boys put them on the back of every car they could find in parking lots and other public places. Now note, I did not say on the rear bumper. They put them on the back trunk lids of the cars. Ever try to get a bumper sticker off, Robert? They stick like shit to a blanket. Many very angry citizens, Robert, many. Now, that was the first thing I did. The second was to write up a letter to every citizen in the town, telling them the reasons to vote for the judge. I ran off thousands at a girl friend’s church mimeograph service. For free, of course. Then we stuffed many thousand envelopes, sealed them and stuck labels on the front. I had the judge’s campaign office stamped with a rubber stamp on the front top and I had bought gummed labels for every registered voter in town. That I also billed to the judge. The stamps I had to buy. Now the overall theme of this mailing sounded as if it were written by a participant in the Special Olympics and the terrible sketches accompanying it were equally awful. We marked them as third class postage but sealed the envelopes, Robert, making them first class mailings. We, Marvin and I, dropped thousands of these into the main post office late at night and then a day later, we had so much fun. You see, the letters had postage due because they were not third class and notices were left for residents absent at work. The day after this, we drove past the local post office and I would have sworn that it had been snowing. There were vast snowbanks of ripped up letters all over the front lawn and sidewalk in front of the building as thousands of citizens flocked down there to pay their two cents only to discover really awful campaign trash.

  RTC: (Laughter)

  GD: Marvin did enjoy it too. And the next thing we did was to hire a sound truck to drive all over town early Sunday morning with a loud appeal for anyone hearing to vote for judge so and so the next week. My, my, so many irate late sleepers, wrenched from the arms of Morpheus, or their idiot sister, and having to listen to the message. Oh yes, we charged that to the judge as well. Let’s see now…yes, and then we got a couple of ladies I know to do a number. See, they would stand at bus stops in town around four in the afternoon, a block apart. One would get on the crowded commute bus and at the next stop, the other would. My, they would recognize each other and start a nice dialog that could be heard from one end of the bus to the other. They discussed the coming election and one said she would never vote for the incumbent judge because her cousin in the sheriff’s office had told her that the distinguished jurist had a fifteen year old black girl out in La Honda for weekends of endless fun. And they would then get off the bus, one stop at a time, and repeat the act again.

  RTC: Now that’s really evil, Gregory.

  GD: Oh, I thought so at the time. But creative and very, very deadly. See, when people hear something like that, they repeat it, Robert, but they don’t want to say it was gossip heard on a bus to they tell their co workers or family members that an unnamed high level police official told them. And so the good work prospers. And I rather like what I did on the day before the election. You see, in that town, you could get a permit from the city and bag the parking meters, paying for the daily take in return for free advertising….

  RTC: Jesus

  GD: So I bought some bread bags in Frisco and had another printer up there indicate that there was free parking that day, courtesy of the reelection campaign for the judge. Naturally, people parked and felt they could stay there all day, thanks to the judge and his friends. I got my Teamster friends and we bagged every meter in town. Along came the parking cops who looked at the bags and then called in to check. When they found the bags were fake, they tore them off and ticketed the cars.

  RTC: Oh lovely, Gregory. I always said we should have put you on the payroll.

  GD: I don’t take blood money. Interesting election results. The challenger spent about $200 on silly ads but a whopping 90% of the electorate turned out and about the same amount voted him into office in a stunning landslide. They voted their annoyance. I understand the judge’s people had some terrible bills they challenged. Anyway, Marvin got his conviction overturned.

  RTC: Did he make it good to you?

  GD: Well, I gave him my out of pocket expenses, mostly stamps, and told him as for anything additional, I would leave it up to his generosity. He gave me a check for the stamps and another sealed envelope. Of course I didn’t open it because that would be in bad taste and after he took me out to a wonderful, and very, very expensive French dinner, I went home and opened the second envelope. Five hefty figures, Robert, five figures. I call that sowing seeds of kindness.

  RTC: You missed your calling, Gregory.

  GD: A wardheeler or a parson, Robert?

  RTC: Not much difference in the end.

  GD: Yes, and that’s where the judge got it.

  (Concluded at 2:52 PM CST)

  Conversation No. 81

  Date: Sunday, April 20, 1997

  Commenced: 9;10 AM CST

  Concluded: 9:27AM CST

  GD: Just to let you know, Robert, I was able to sell the two drawings I got from Mueller.

  RTC: Very good, Gregory. Did you get your price for them?

  GD Yes. Fine Chagall trash. I can understand why Hitler burned a lot of this but it does sell. Mueller must have had a warehouse full of this. Much of it came from Jewish collections in P
aris and Amsterdam and to my mind, just artistic trash. Same school as the idea that Myron and Estelle bought the Picasso because it matched their rug. Taste up the anus. A friend of mine was in Paris and visited the Rothschild palace there. The building was a beautiful place but the gaudy garbage inside looked like the parlor of a Tijuana whorehouse.

  RTC: (Laughter) Well, there’s no disputing tastes, is there?

  GD: No, but art is art and junk is junk. Stolen junk but junk the same.

  RTC: What about the Polish piece?

  GD: That Raphael? It’s safe now. When Heini died, his wife begged me to get it out of the house before someone saw it so I was of assistance. ‘Portrait of a Gentlemen.” Looked more like a Hollywood makeup artist if you ask me but a beautiful piece. Well, Frank looted it and the Leonardo from the Poles in ’39 and they got the ‘Lady with the Ermine’ back but the Gestapo had bagged the Raphael and Mueller took it at the end week of the war. The Germans were looking for portable treasures, you know. , and after the war into the hands of its liberators for precisely the same reason. Many paintings, sculptures, rare books, manuscripts and other valuables have never surfaced in public since the war ended in 1945.The Raphael belonged to the wealthy Polish Czartoryski family. Hans Frank, the Governor of the former Polish territory. Frank brought the painting back to Germany since he had to evacuate his post as the Soviets advanced into Poland. The Raphael was taken from Frank by the Gestapo, and the Americans seized the Da Vinci and later returned it to the Poles. The Raphael painting, “Portrait of a Gentleman,” is still listed as missing.

  RTC: I understand we got our hands on boatloads of stolen art. Wasn’t Mueller selling it as I recall?

  GD: Yes. He got the Rothschild coins, which consisted of a collection of over 2,000 rare gold coins taken from the Vienna branch of the Rothschild family and kept at the Hohenfurth monastery in Czechoslovakia for safe keeping. These coins were taken from the Linz collection in the last month of the war by Dr. von Hummel, Bormann’s secretary, and Dr. Rupprecht, curator of Hitler’s armor collection and an acquaintance of Müller. The collection was transported by car to Berchtesgaden and vanished from sight.