GD: The FBI?
RTC: Hoover was a self-important little dictator, given his proclivities, a real bitch in men’s clothes. He was also over the line…
GD: Pardon?
RTC: The color line. Hoover was part black. Onward here. Many very powerful groups were not happy with Kennedy. We felt he could be manipulated by shoving a few pretty cunts in his face and leave the governing to us. After all, we had been running the country since Franklin the First bought the farm. But Kennedy turned out to be a lot tougher than we reckoned on. He backed off on the Pigs plan and they were either killed by Castro or put in nasty jails. Very angry people. And the Cubans in this country were the worst of all so we took note of their fury and used them.
GD: And the military?
RTC: Well, in ’61, they wanted to send troops to Laos and eventually to French Indo China. The frogs wanted us to protect their interest there, mostly the rubber plantations and the possibility of rich offshore oil deposits. We agreed to assist and then they became great friends with us in Europe. No, Kennedy refused to go along with this, at least in the beginning, and nixed sending troops to Laos. He was convinced to send some token forces to Viet Nam but later balked at increasing their number as the locals rebelled. We stood to lose a good deal in that country. Both money and face. We put the Diems into power and they were making trouble at one end and Kennedy, by his stupid idealism, was making trouble on the other. I was in charge of most of the ‘Nam business at work and I came to the unspoken conclusion that we could not win a guerrilla war there, especially when the Russians were arming the Cong. It was obvious that even ten million troops could not keep the lid on there for long but who was going to bell that cat? Not Johnson, who might have been a great power broker with Congress but who was useless as tits on a boar pig when it came to military ventures. Those of us who could see into the future, based on the present, knew it was an unwinnable situation but no one dared to make a move towards disengagement.
GD: Not to change the subject but your people put Castro in, didn’t you?
RTC: How clever, Gregory. Of course this happened. You see, the Company is so heavily compartmentalized that the right hand never knows what the left hand doeth. Yes, one of our sub-groups put him in, thinking he would clean up the really bad corruption…drugs and so on…and we could control that situation. Bad judgment there, Gregory but we close ranks and silence is golden. But the unforgivable sin as far as Kennedy was concerned was his going around us and establishing a personal contact with Nikita Khrushchev. Not done. All Presidents had to use us as firewalls or contacts. Presidents had to rely on us for their information and what would come of it if they dealt directly with some hostile head of state? This would erode our power and essentially relegate the CIA to being mere messengers. The power? As keepers of the flame, others had to bow to our power but if we lost that power, all of us would be back on the chicken farm. That was the final straw, believe me. And before that, don’t forget, Kennedy was not going to do the Army’s bidding and escalate the local anti-guerrilla campaign in Vietnam. The Army was planning on a massive expansion. There would be contracts with the private sectors that would enrich the men with stars on their shoulders and more jobs for their friends and more bases and so on. No, they wanted a controlled war there, way away from the continental United States. They, through us, could control the incoming news and so on but by not performing as he was expected, Kennedy drew the black spot. Either death or some other kind of removal. And I can recall that when Hoover learned of our house cleaning project, he jumped on board with the caveat that we also get rid of Bobby. John hated Bobby…
GD: John?
RTC: Yes, Colonel John Edgar. Franklin made him a Colonel but Hoover was pissed off that he wasn’t made a general at least so he never used the title but it was there. Anyway, we had no problem with Hoover because Bobby was telling his staff that Hoover was a fairy and John Edgar didn’t like that and when Bobby dug into Hoover’s past and discovered relatives as black as the ace of spades, he got livid with rage. The Kennedy family were living in a dream world their father had convinced them was real. Power can come from money, Gregory, but power has to include working with others who also have power. Dictators cannot function with powerful barons too close. Either kill them or replace them with ciphers. No other choice. So in a sense, Kennedy was going from bad to worse and plots were being hatched all over the place during the last year of his reign. We were certainly determined to stop him from breaking the CIA up and the Army was determined to have its profitable war and then there were the business people and the Mafia in the wings. Killing a sitting President is never easy and one has to move with great care in such matters. Too much talking at the wrong time and in the wrong place can wreck even the most ambitious plans. We knew what had to be done and the opening gambits were to secure the agreement of other power brokers. We got Johnson on board through the good offices of Abe Fortas[73] who would have sold the rotting corpse of his dead mother to the dog food people if they paid him enough. LBJ was a pill in the box in that he had some knowledge and lusted for the Oval Office. And again, Bobby was an irritant by calling him ‘Uncle Cornpone’ all over the Beltway. Johnson was used to power and did not like being ignored and marginalized so he smiled and kept quiet. And we certainly had Hoover and some of the top people in the Pentagon, the full support of the mob and a few other necessary organizations. The Mafia could get their gambling halls back again and a promise of a dead Bobby who was having his fun persecuting the very people who put his brother in the Oval Office.
GD: Ungrateful.
RTC: Yes, indeed, very. We all need friends, Gregory, and deliberately harassing the Mafia in Chicago was very, very unwise. I point out that Jack Ruby was one of their enforcers there. Dare I say more?
GD: No, I don’t think so at this point.
RTC: Not at any point. And then having such wonderful people as the goat-loving Dr. Gottleib on the staff made it easy to give Ruby fatal cancer. Injecting active cancer cells during a routine jailhouse medical examination is the best way. A natural and unsuspicious death. Of course we could have easily given Jack a heart attack but cancer is more believable, especially in the hothouse atmosphere of post-assassination madness.
GD: How many of the loonies were yours?
RTC: God, without number. The Farrell woman is our best. She controls the library and she belongs totally to us. Oh yes, we started all kinds of confusing and idiotic stories and kept most people away. You read ‘Case Closed’ didn’t you. My, Herr Posner just loved and really believed the Warren Report, didn’t he? And the New York Times couldn’t wait to praise the hell out of that piece of crap and make Gerald rich. That’s how it’s done in a nutshell, Gregory, in a nutshell. I talked with the Times people myself and they were panting and eager to praise this to the skies. Just an example of how we work but we have gone over most of this before.
GD: If I felt pity for anyone in all of this, it was for Oswald.
RTC: In a larger sense, yes. A loyal intelligence operator set up as patsy and then iced before he could tell what he knew. And then we got rid of Ruby and that was that. Howard Hunt was involved in some of this and we had to kill his wife to keep him from shooting off his mouth when he got in trouble. An endless circle of betrayal and death, Gregory, but that’s how the game goes.
(Concluded at 2:38 PM CST)
Conversation No. 112
Date: Wednesday November 26, 1997
Commenced: 1:02 PM CST
Concluded: 1:38 PM CST
GD: Hello, Robert. Bought your tree yet?
RTC: Good day to you, Gregory. A bit early.
GD: Perhaps. Those plastic trees are so much better than the real ones. Why murder a perfectly innocent tree just to encourage reckless spending in the shops? Do trees, which are part of the great system, come into our homes, cut our children off at the feet and stick them up in the woods, covered with squirrel shit?
RTC: Now, Gregory, don’t mar the joys
of the season. Trees are traditional, after all.
GD: Well, so were burning witches at the stake but that finally died away. After that, our southern friends just burnt blacks up in the trees for entertainment.
RTC: Gregory, where is your Christmas spirit?
GD: In my liquor cabinet, that’s where. You know, Robert, I like fine art and really decent music. I love classical music and I have hundreds of recordings. Most of them are Baroque and of those, the majority are religious in nature. I have masses, motets, requiems, te Deums and so on. I greatly enjoy the music but I am not a fan of the Gospels, most of which is pure propaganda, written decades after the fact by people who could never have been period witnesses to any ministry that Jesus might have promulgated. The music stands on its own feet, not on the strength, or weakness, of dogma. And when I am in Florence, I love to walk through the galleries of the Uffizi and admire the grand art. Most of it is religious in nature because in those days, artists were not allowed to portray the nude human figure except in a religious connotation. Aside, it’s downright funny, looking at the Shroud of Turin fake because that particular Jesus has a nice scarf wrapped around his genitals.
RTC: Yes, well, it kept people happy for a long time, Gregory.
GD: Yes and then we had the French Revolution, didn’t we? Yes, I suppose I ought to get a tree, which is pagan in origin by the way, and hang up wax figures on it of my enemies, with knitting needles thrust up their fundaments.
RTC: My, I feel sorry for the poor tree with all that weight on it.
GD: Now, Robert, not everyone hates me. I mean you don’t hate me, do you?
RTC: No, I don’t but I know quite a few people who wish you would take a long walk on a short pier.
GD: Dare I guess the names, Robert?
RTC: Do we have the time?
GD: ‘Had we but world enough, and time…’ Just a quote remembered dimly from my wonderfully rich days spent in my local high school. Yes, one of the bright spots in my life, Robert.
RTC: I take it you had problems there with them.
GD: No, Robert, they had problems there with me. Robert, you know, I am a peaceful person by nature. I am reflective. I love animals, but of course not sheep in the carnal sense, and good music, and better wine and my own cooking. I always minded my business as a child and was very courteous and civilized to my elders and even to most of my peers. Ah, but that was when I was a child. As I grew older and realized what vileness covered the earth, I grew increasingly disenchanted. But I never instigated anything against anyone, ever. But I never permitted anyone to attack or, worse, dishonor me, Robert. Never. And I had trouble in school because I did not socialize and I had a really vicious, but educated, tongue. If I was mocked, my retorts drove people to weeping and distraction. I played no favorites, Robert. I was democratic there. Teachers, parents, siblings, peers, whatever. They started it and I finished it. And if they were too big and too strong to attack directly, there was always the indirect attack. They might never know that it was I who ruined some pathetic aspect of their sheep-like lives but I always knew and I liked to treasure such moments. Our friend Heini Müller found no fault with this and in fact used to tell me I was one of the most entertaining scoundrels he ever met. And Heini was quite decent too, head of the Gestapo as he had been, but even he was not as creative as I was and in interrogations issues, I could beat him hands down and Heini was very, very good.
RTC: That he was. The few times I dealt personally with him I was very favorably impressed with not only his abilities, his forensic abilities, but also his character.
GD: I don’t think I am going to ask you about my character, Robert.
RTC: No, don’t worry about that, Gregory. You have plenty of character but our friend Heini was right. You are very medieval in your approach to the problems of life. You know, that’s why you could never have really worked for us. I mean if we told you to blow someone up, you would cheerfully do it if you agreed with our motives but if you didn’t, you would balk. No, we can’t have that. You have distinct abilities but no one but yourself can do anything with them, can they?
GD: Of course not. On the other hand, if I like you, I will certainly blow things up on your behalf. Or in your case, build a death ray for you to use on your Swiss neighbors. Take the meaning I am sure.
RTC: I have not complained, have I?
GD: I would hope not. I rarely have blown anything up, Robert but there was one exception. It was quite awful if you stopped to think about it but no one ever did.
RTC: Have I heard this one?
GD: No. I don’t talk about it.
RTC: Anyone killed or maimed for life?
GD: No, but there was some damage done. Mostly to property and, as King Ronald the First said, there was collateral damage.
RTC: Yes, Reagan’s pet phrase when one of our assaults on an unfriendly person was successful. What was your collateral damage?
GD: Yes, we all have our memories, Robert, thoughts to warm us on cold winter nights like a fat woman in the sack. Lots of warm blubber to comfort you. Nothing else to comfort me, believe me.
RTC: (Laughter) What do you have against fat people?
GD: Fortunately, nothing attached to my body, Robert.
RTC: Your explosive venture?
GD: Just trying to set me up, Robert? Tape recorder whirring? No, not you. That’s why I open my heart to you. Explosives? In my senior year of high school, I was considered quite a negative person by almost everyone. I had my little games, like the soap in the stock pot story, but no one ever suspected me because, believe it or not, I was a sweet-faced child who looked ten years younger than I was and who was very, very considerate and polite to people. At least generally. Anyway, some of the teachers, who had gotten very tired of my comments directed to them in class decided that while I had earned my diploma, I ought not to be given it in public. Why? Because of my satires and sallies. They would poke at me in class with what they pathetically thought was sarcasm and I would riposte with a thrust into their livers. No, they despised me so while I could get my diploma, they did not want me to get it at a graduation ceremony.
RTC: Very nasty, Gregory. Are you sure you hadn’t committed some atrocity unmentioned here?
GD: No. I am a private assassin, not a public one. I never got caught and was never suspected. On the other hand, I can cheerfully report that I was often accused of things I had never done and when I was discovered to be totally innocent of the charges, never apologized to. I used to get even for such things.
RTC: And the graduation? You spoke of explosives. Did you blow up the school?
GD: No, just a part of it. There was a patio off of the main corridor of the school. It was called the Honor Court and could only be entered by janitors and honor students. The rest of us were forbidden to go into it. It was a Spanish-style patio with four walls but open to the sky. There were bamboo plants around the place and a really ugly fountain in the center. A ceramic cherub holding a dolphin that shot a steam of water up out of his mouth. The anus would have been much more interesting an exit but they chose the mouth. Anyway, this ugly statue that would only excite a myopic pedophile had a basin below it, a basin filled with ugly, piebald carp which the honor students were permitted to feed. And on the surrounding walls of it were small bronze plates with the year of a graduating class on it. ‘37’ or ‘’42’ and so on. A solemn ceremony year after graduating year as the class valedictorian and others of the sainthood of the perfect of God entered the patio and the plate for that year was solemnly tapped into place with the handle of an even more sacred trowel, one that had been used to tamp for twenty years. I think they kept it locked in a safe in the main office until it was needed. Anyway, one of the walls of this sacred grove was blank, another had the glass windows of the chemistry laboratory in it and yet another one had glass windows looking onto the corridor. The main corridors through which passed hundreds of students, all of whom were forbidden to enter the sacred grove. When I was told I
could get my diploma but was not wanted at the graduation ceremonies because I was a very negative person and reflected badly on everybody except the janitors, I got rather angry. Now I had no use for most of the students and certainly none of the teachers but I felt that I had as much right to walk up the aisle and get my diploma as anyone else. I really did and in this case, my family was upset with the school, not with me. It didn’t do any good so I was told that my father would take me out to a very nice French restaurant in lieu of my attending graduation ceremonies. Dishonor, Robert, dishonor. That I never tolerated so I prepared a nice surprise. On the other side of that corridor was the outside auditorium where the graduation ceremonies would take place. I went to an establishment that, in those days things were much freer than they are today, that sold dynamite and I bought a case of 75% sticks, a box of caps, a crimper and the longest roll of 5 seconds per inch fuse I could get. I took the stuff home and made the dynamite into a sort of a long shawl by tying the sticks together at the tops and bottoms. Each stick is formatted to take an explosive cap so I rigged the whole thing up, wrapped it in a blanket and smuggled it into the school on the eve of graduation. It was safe enough because all the janitors and teachers were out in the rapidly-filling auditorium so I had no trouble wrapping the fat punk with a long blanket of destruction. I shoved the fused cap into one of the sticks and lit the other end. No one saw me come and no one saw me go. And I was home about two minutes or so, talking with my family who were getting ready to take me out to my consolation dinner, when we all heard a massive explosion. It rattled the windows but my father, who knew everything, assured us that it was a sonic boom. Of course he was wrong but who was I to correct him? Not I, certainly. Anyway, we left for the restaurant and we had to pass near the school. My, my, roads blocked off, police cars, fire trucks with lights blazing and so on. A detour and curiosity on my father’s part. I would loved to have enlightened him but there are times, Robert, times when silence is golden. We had a lovely consolation dinner and on the way back, we had to pass down the highway past the school, except we couldn’t. It seems the buildings were on fire so we went home and I took a nice shower and put some Bach on the record player.
Conversations With the Crow Page 58