Straight Up |: August 2006 Archives

Here's an amusing item posted soon after the people re-elected the Bullshitter-in-Chief, thus keeping him on as master of his very own portable Green Zone. A reader reminded us of the item's value as pure entertainment. So we're re-posting it now for laughs, 'cuz after the Labor Day weekend it's back to the grind.

November 19, 2004

THE CIA PRANKSTERS

Since the Central Intelligence Agency is so much in the news these days -- what with the agency shakeup by the new CIA chief Porter Goss, his leaked "rules of the road" memo telling agency employees it's their job to "support the administration and its policies," and a possible compromise intelligence bill -- my staff of thousands thought it useful to recall some of the CIA's monumental gaffes and pranks of the past, which are either forgotten, little known, or just too weird to believe.

Let's start with the weird.

Because this blog purports to bring you news of arts and culture, here's the latest: Our staff of thousands has moved from its cramped Madhattan quarters to spacious 21st-floor digs with a panoramic view of downtown. Now we have room to spread out and, like true aesthetes, hang artworks on the walls.

The abstract painting by Liam O'Gallagher, an old friend who's pushing 90 these days, was a gift. He gave it to us a couple of years ago in Santa Barbara, where he's still painting. It hangs in the livingroom. The color photo, in an adjacent hallway, shows Willy Wyler cavorting on location in the Vatican while making "Roman Holiday." You can't actually see the image from here, so you'll have to take my word for it. The photo was enlarged from a tiny stereo-opticon negative.

Slate points out that today's frontpager in The New York Times print edition, about the evidence collected in the British investigation of the alleged airline bombing plot in London, doesn't appear on The Times' Web site.* Neither (fortunately) does this spread, which ran in the print edition of the Sunday NYT Magazine:

From long ago ...

The news from Havana brings to mind Verging on Cuba, an item posted way back on Nov. 10, 2003, about a panel discussion of what might happen after Fidel Castro dies. The panelists included Russell Banks, the novelist, who had recently spent an unusual amount time with Castro.

Asked why the U.S. embargo has failed after 40 years to accomplish its goal of forcing Castro from power, Banks said the single, most important factor was the creation of a proud, unshakable national mythology equalled by that of only two other nations in post-colonial history: the United States and Israel.

The national mythology developed in Cuba since the Revolution was and still is such a cohering force that despite any and all the disappointments, setbacks, miscalculations and brutalities visited upon them by Castro, by the Soviet Union's ill-fated support and by U.S. antagonism, Cubans believe in themselves as an identifiable people with an ingrained independence of spirit sturdier than any acquired ideology.