LETTER FROM MIKE -- PART TWO
…A really pretty woman just walked by outside with a man about my height, and this woman is pretty and perfectly proportioned but only about three and a half feet tall!
We went onto the military base the Presidio and meandered around toward the Golden Gate Bridge, which starts on Presidio ground and we finally got down to a place where you can't drive any farther, and there is an old, brick fort, Fort Funston, with iron bars across all the windows, rotted orange and brown by sea water. You look out and up and the Golden Gate Bridge is above you, stretching off a mile. The wind is so hard it feels like a big earthquake. We backed up and I swung into this sandy place that looked shadowy to block off wind and pee and I had just driven directly underneath the base of the bridge, and now it was this titanic, massive device in front of us, filling 2/3 of our sight, the famed "Golden" (actually orangish-red) bridge sticking up 300 feet as thick as a skyscraper. We had quite a hell of a view of the Golden Gate Bridge that everyone comes here to rave about and see. We seen it. Hell, I peed on it.
Underneath there, we looked out at the water beneath the bridge and after a long silence, I said "That's the suicide capital of the world, right out there" and my friend shuddered and said she'd thought something like that. I kept looking and said "I can see bodies falling right now, male and female," and she was going "OOOH!" "all ages, dresses whipped straight up over their faces" and she made me shut up.
You ought to look up General Mc or MacClellan or Lellan, from the Union Army in the Civil War. HE came close to being elected president against Lincoln in 1864, and he wrote to his wife and said to some other soldiers that he was going to be swept by public adulation into the position of dictator. It was partly to prevent MacLellan's election (by popularizing Lincoln) that the northern army pressed on and finished the war at rapid speed, really running the confederacy down in the last month before the election campaign. That's all that stopped a dictator from mounting a throne in Washington and ruling like Napoleon. They say he was very, very smart and inventive, too, in some areas. You couldn't outplan him, for one thing. HE was an engineer. Not a sanitation engineer, either. Nor a domestic engineer….
[…….To be continued…..]
Ed. Note:
So, as I mentioned in November, I took Mike's advice and rented the Oliver Stone movie JFK. Rented it and watched it, and it told a story about DC and the intelligence community being an established good old boys' club, pissed off about some spoiled rich kid upstart named JFK sashaying into their midst and laying down new policies, threatening to end wars (reducing profits from armament sales) and pry private fingers out of public coffers (like the federal reserve) and such, in ways most inconvenient. Oldest story in the world, as it turns out, and I wish I'd known how true it is when I was young and starting out in the world.
Folks get things how they want them, and somebody comes in to mess it all up. Not if they can help it. Sometimes, folks get things the way that works for them, and it happens to be a way that DOESN'T work for any of those less fortunate or powerful than they are. So what do they do to quell a revolt? Mouth loudly about it being time for a change, and then hope people are stooooopid enough to vote for whomever they point at, now that they have identified themselves as sharing the popular sentiment. "I'm sick and tired of the way things have been going." Says the rich guy who got rich and comfy by getting things the way they are. "And I'm not going to take it anymore." He says. "That's why I am going to vote for THIS guy in the next election -- because HE MEANS CHANGE!!!" And he points to one of his more obedient employees. But what if the crowds of dissatisfied and less comfy voters don't fall for it? What if they agree that change is needed, but couldn't help but notice THIS guy is not the agent of change he claims to be? They vote for Somebody Else. Somebody Else wins. Now the comfy dudes have an X factor in their midst. Quick -- Cram him in somebody's pocket. Oh! He's too rich to buy? Then threaten him. Oh! He comes from a long line of risk seekers? Then intimidate him! Oh! He's too arrogant to be intimidated? ….
Change him out. "I'll see your JFK and raise you an Oswald, three CIA covert operatives, one grassy knoll and a Jack Ruby. I win! Rake that LBJ over here! I'd love to go two out of three, but I've got some important juries to rig."
That following Saturday, I returned the DVD to Blockbuster. Got home and opened the garage door, and saw an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper with a paper clip on the corner, lying on the floor of the garage. It was kind of sleeting, so I hopped into the car and pulled in without investigating. Got out of the car with my hands full, and saw the piece of paper was at my feet, right where I stepped out of the car. Made a mental note to investigate first chance, and I unloaded the car into the house and shut and locked the garage door. Next day, there was that paper again, as I was hopping into the car to leave. Mental note: check out that paper when I get home today, FOR SURE. Grabbed it when I returned, and saw with a start that it had Michael's handwriting on it. Michael had copied an article about crop circles in the UK. He made notes in the margin saying something to the effect that the symbols showing up in that area of the UK are identical to hieroglyphs carved into some pyramid somewhere. I'll get back to it one of these days. I wasn't so much interested, as I was intrigued about why/how more Mike writing I didn't know existed managed to be waiting at my feet when I returned from dropping off the JFK DVD at Blockbuster. Almost like he knew I watched the movie……the movie he recommended? Hmmmmm…. Suddenly wondered what something was paperclipped to the back of the article, because the article began and ended on that page. It was only a one page article. I peeled back the first page, and had to go sit down. The second page was the Xerox of another newspaper article, from over fifteen years ago. It was the Associated Press story of 29-year-old Roscoe White coming forward with the family priest and giving a press conference claiming his father -- a CIA operative -- killed Kennedy. He said after his father died, he read the man's diary, and discovered his father's claims that he was one of three CIA operatives who shot Kennedy, and then rendezvoused with Oswald at a predetermined safe house. Roscoe's dad said another of the three operatives killed Office Tibbitt, which freaked Oswald into escaping from them and hightailing it to the movie theatre, where he was arrested. On reading the diary, Roscoe approached the family priest, who admitted his father had been discussing it with the priest for many years before his death. (Does the sanctity of the confession end at death?) Additionally, the priest allowed, it was reconfirmed in the man's final confession. (What is that law about the "dying utterance"?) So Roscoe contacted the Feds, and instantly experienced a home invasion and the diary was stolen. Talking it over, Roscoe and the priest, with the family's support, decided to take the only honest recourse remaining to them. They alerted the media, flopped it out there on the table, and then receded into the dim mists of history. Forgotten within five years.
Roscoe, here's to you. Thanks for the tip. Congratulations on the naïve innocence that led you to announce the diary's existence before it was in a safe deposit box or the offices of the Rolling Stone. Congratulations on the sense of personal accountability that goaded you to tell the World. Congratulations on your absence of a need to be believed. You heard it. You believed it. You shared it. You moved on.
And Mike? I've served in enough good old boys' clubs to believe this story You continue to amaze…..