Chapter Twenty
Three Minus Three Plus Three Is Three
If you can’t step into the same river twice and you aren’t the same man today that you were yesterday, continuity is a lie, but an accepted one–a suspension of recognition is pervasive–so it hardly matters if yet another car accident in Slovenia killed three people and three other people took over where they left off on whatever it is they were doing. It’s hardly worth a pause; certainly not a passing mention.
Chapter Twenty-One
Anonymous Note: Does This Answer Your Question, Todd?
1992 BORN 04.05.1936 – DIED (KILLED 07.06.1992)
-JUROVSKI DOL PRI LENARTU STILL UNSOLVED
ASSESINATION ON IVAN KRAMBERGER
ON ELECTIONS HE WAS COMPITING FOR A
PRESIDENT WITH OTHER THREE KANDIDATES
-NIKO NIHČE
-JOŽE PUČNIK
-MARKO DEMŠAR
HE GOT 18,5 % OF VOTES IN THE COUNTRY
THE MAN WHO WAS RECODNISED ASS AN
ASESIN (PIJAN LOVEC) WAS SENTENSD TO
12 YEARS BUT AFTER 5 YEARS HE WAS OUT.
THE DISTANCE WAS PROKSIMETLY 180m.
THAT WAS NOT THE ONLY ATACK ON HIM.
THE OTHER ONE HAPPENED IN VELENJE ON
- BY THE TITOV MEMORIAL.
IN OCTOBER 1990 HIS MONKEY ANČKA
WAS SLAUGHTERD.
A previously stated reluctance to rely on Slovene intelligence, so to speak, applies to solicited information. But when an anonymous note is slipped under the door of a secret office—which is naturally subsequently relocated, we certainly must take notice. Admittedly, the information is scant, and adds little to our previous knowledge. The attempt on Kramberger’s life in Velenje is new, and subsequent checking reveals that it is not necessarily untrue (A Slovene dictionary is insufficient for translation, but we can confirm that something out of the ordinary occurred in Velenje on that day and made news). As for the monkey, we have been unable to verify the information, which is not necessarily untrue simply because our informant got the name wrong. Ančka is a sweet name, but the monkey was called Count Belisarius, after the Byzantine general—and that has been verified. Interestingly, the anonymous note, obviously written by a Slovene with good English and good intentions vis a vis our hunt for the truth, assumes a scarcity of available factual information, which is indeed the case, even for a Slovene. We have been over every single Slovene source, mainly because there are so few. So we must judge the intent of this fellow; he was simply making sure we knew what there was to know. That being the case, along with the lack of embellishment, leads us to assume that Count Belisarius was indeed assassinated, which makes the instincts of Todd Fullmer appear nothing short of astonishing: refer to Chapter One.
At any rate, like a river, sometimes a topic or theme must widen before it narrows again. We know that when the river widens, it is likely to narrow and then proceed into a sea of either truth or obscurity, though some continue on only peter out, to dry up into desert washes, and others, like Slovenia’s and Italy’s Reka Reka, or Reka River, dive underground for 44 kilometers before emerging just in time to dash into the sea unrecognized (for many centuries at least). Our information, as you will soon understand, forces us to drop known cause and effect in order to include odds and ends, flotsam, yes, jetsam, no, you might say, in order to come to grips with the magnitude or minutiaetude of events. For we now have reason to connect Kramberger’s assassination, or to suspect the possibility of his assassination, with recent events in the simian world and similar clashes in the defunct world of the Byzantines, as well as some none too surprising Balkan shenanigans.
Pay very close attention to the following article.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chimp Attack Kills Cabbie and Injures Tourists
Chimp attack kills cabbie and injures tourists
Associated Press in Freetown
Tuesday April 25, 2006
The Guardian
Police are hunting 27 chimpanzees that escaped from a Sierra Leone preserve and attacked the occupants of a taxi, killing the driver.
Four other people among the group of local and American sightseers were mauled by the animals and needed hospital treatment, including a Sierra Leonean man whose hand was later amputated.
The US embassy warned Americans against visiting the Tacugama sanctuary, from where the chimps escaped.
A local police official said it was unclear why the chimps attacked; such attacks are unusual but not unprecedented.
If you’ve only read it once and are rushing to understand the implications and the connections with the present work, please take the time to read it again and give it some serious thought. Sorry for the condensation, or the condescension, if either apply. We feel that actually neither does. For it is typical of such a homo sapiens-oriented text to place such a high premium on brevity that what is howled between the lines may be both that much more deniable to the discerning and that much plainer to those receptive as the sleeping nose to the adventurous fly, if you will pardon the overt slanting of our prose. Or are you still in the dark? Another clue is provided from the notes Todd Fullmer’s editor finally provided, rescued from his Baltimore harbor-view rat’s nest, a place he apparently owned but did not frequent. Among Fullmer’s notes was his assassination song—the guy was an assassination expert, an assassination fanatic, an assassination obsessed freak—that begins with the following lines: Norbert Zongo plays the bongos Cause Stambulov has no hands The accompanying lines (The Kennedy dead have holes in their head/So they can’t be in the band) are beside the point but we provide them to please you with the final rhyme of the stanza—an orphaned rhyme can feel very much like an unresolved assassination.Sometimes to understand what a dead man would have one must try to think like that dead man. So the apes tried to tear off the hand of one guy, who later had it amputated. Coincidence? Didn’t Stambulov have both his hands torn off by the Macedonian/IMRO mob that assassinated him (his wife famously returning to the scene with the hands in a jar) (How do you shame people who would tear someone’s hands off?). Probably here the reader can’t put his stuttering objections into a single clear sentence. But try this on for size: authorities are hunting 27 chimpanzees that escaped from a preserve. A preserve in this context, of course, means natural habitat, or as we speaking simians might say, a home. When is the last time you escaped from home? Fine, leave it. Let’s go on to the order of the sentence, the tricky use of the word ‘and’. This mob, this bloodthirsty IMRO chimp frenetico, escaped and attacked the cabbie and the tourists. So the assault occurred outside the preserve. But look at the next sentence: local and American sightseers? So the apes escaped and attacked a convoy outside the preserve? Lick our balls! What a load of shit! Now skip ahead: suddenly the chimps escaped from a sanctuary. A sanctuary. Suddenly the preserve is a sanctuary, a safe haven, a strategic hamlet—and the ungrateful apes took off and turned on their benefactors. Eat our caca. Finally, though we don’t know why the attack happened, we can say that it was not without precedent. Read between the fucking lines. A hand amputated, the American embassy gets involved, it’s a sanctuary, and the whole thing is a puzzle, but not without precedent. In other words, sotto voce soporific: don’t be alarmed. We’ll hunt the fuckers down and kill them, but don’t panic. See, if it was without precedent, if we all remembered Stambulov as the chimps would expect, assuming that like they we know our history, we would all get the message. Their warning unheeded, now the attack is on.What warning is that, you wonder.Here’s an excerpt from a missive we received from Skip Obscure on the subject: …but don’t expect anyone to listen to you. I’ve been warning people for the last year, since that episode in California where the Chimpanzee bit off the man’s nose and gouged out his genitals. It’s worse than talking about the ozone layer. I’m an alarmist conspiracy nut. Don’t people realize that monkeys gave us AIDS? Don’t they realize that nature isn’t through with us yet? AIDS was a colossal failure, bird flu is nothing but a red herring with wings. I’ve read more than fifty books about simians and it’s clear they are undergoing a rapid and dangerous change. Who killed Diane Fossey? Don’t make me laugh… Don’t we love the part about the winged herrings? Anyway, the significance of the bitten nose would be lost on anyone who doesn’t know his Byzantine history, the habit of the deposing emperors denosing rather than decapitating the outgoing—ask Heraclonas, the first to undergo this therapy. At the time, such behavior was considered humane, rhinometia being a sure method of preventing a man from even wanting to return to the throne. Any chimp would expect us to remember such a bizarre commonplace of one of our more notorious empires, so commonplace, in fact, that emperors learned to overcome it, the first of these being Justinian the Second, who had himself fitted with a golden nose before he returned to decapitate Leontius, who by now was missing his own nose, and Tiberius the Third, who had ordered the operation performed on Leontius. So don’t try to tell us that California attack wasn’t a warning, and don’t think we’re just going to sit
Chapter Twenty-Three No, Fuck You
You have no idea what you’re talking about. If you hadn’t been knocked in the head you would have written that he was torn apart by apes. If anyone is the ape around here it’s you and you don’t see you tearing anyone apart. Coming around?
Fuck you.
No: Fuck you! You weak link. Would that you were missing. You read that last chapter, if you can read, and you can’t help wondering what kind of tree you were being taken up. You can’t help wondering what was in your bananas. You know there is a fruit monkeys eat in Africa that works like an hallucinogen, but you know, too, that you have been dining separately, if you get your meaning. You read that last chapter and you have no idea what was going through your head—monkey business, madness, uneven prose! Killed like Trotsky, thank god—and you are not going to print the snatches of lunacy legible among the bloodstains, not even: …exterminate the brutes!…Doesn’t it turn your stomach to watch a writer turning into a fictional madman before your very eyes as you’re writing? And aside from the connect the dots bullshit—you just drop your finger a few times and you get: IMRO, rhinometia, caca, homo sapiens-oriented, frenetico, hands in a jar, denosing, Tiberius the Third, lick our balls [yours, my friend, yours], panic, chimp, tricky use of the word ‘and’, assassination song, ungrateful apes, chimps would expect, gouged out his genitals, Diane Fossey, AIDS, California attack, decapitating the outgoing, red herring with wings, Stumble off and die, escaped from a sanctuary (indeed), stuttering objections, hunt the fuckers down, don’t panic…You get everything but farting fish, you get a psychoanalyst’s wet dream, a surrealist’s Work That Doesn’t Need Editing, and what you don’t get more than anything you don’t get is what you were supposed to be doing: you don’t get Ivan Kramberger, you don’t get Todd Fullmer, you don’t get Mandrake Pizdamonavić following Fullmer out of the Hotel Balkan all the way to Kalemegdan, through the vast grounds inside the fortress walls, past the cannon display, all the way to the outer walls above the confluence of Sava and Donava, you don’t get him creeping up on a thoughtful Fullmer, fargitating, working his jaws, thinking Slovenia’s got one, Slovenia’s got one, am I being paranoid or has that guy been following me and is now creeping up on me; you don’t get Todd Fullmer letting the guy know he’s there by moving crabwise along the wall and looking askance near his direction, but because of mad dogs not directly in his eyes and not exhibiting fear—in fact you don’t get the rather important characteristic that Todd Fullmer, though careful, was practically fearless, though in this case—though how would you know it—he should have been damn scared, for he was no match for Mandrake Pizdamonavić, and was lucky that at that point in time this peripatetic nemesis was a Mandrake without mandate, something you were not, and you know it and you know you blew it, and you know it will not happen again because like whoever found Trotsky you obviously can’t stand the sight of your blood.
Chapter Twenty-Four We’re Going to Go with Bugatti
Inescapably, anyone who speaks of getting the facts straight finds himself interviewing witnesses. It’s difficult to think of a worse way of getting to the bottom of anything but a morass. Take these snatches of a conversation in Logatec, a town not so very far from the capitol city of Ljubljana, not to mention a place where Kramberger visited several times, driving the car in question that no one seems authoritatively to be able to name: ‘Well, it was one of those old Fiats—what were they called? The ones with no passenger seat.’‘It was a cabriol, no back seat, one of those British jobs, MGB, maybe MGB-GT.’‘They say he assembled it himself, but they were sold that way, that you could put it together yourself. They’d deliver it to your door in boxes. The original design was Serbian, but the Germans bought the patent so it was sold under Opel, but it was really a Zastava, same designers—right, a Zastava…’‘Roadster.’‘Roadster.’‘Everybody called it a roadster, but every fancy dealer had a roadster so what does that tell you? Nothing. He built it himself, his own design, if it was anything it was a Kramberger Roadster. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It was slow, but never broke down, and once you saw him pull up with that ape hanging off the door—it was something I’ll never forget, I’ll tell you that much.’‘A Bugatti, no doubt about it, the original, first one, what’s his name, Diego, Diego Bugatti, first one Diego Bugatti ever designed. And Kramberger replicated it.’‘I don’t know—English, not Rover, but that other one, Stevens, or Stevenson, or Stevens and sons, Steven’s son, Steven and son, Stevens and son…they were all the same color. Who was that actress—Hedy Lamarr: that’s what she was killed in…’‘Bugatti, the kind you assemble yourself.’‘Bugatti.’‘What most people don’t know is that it was the original Volkswagon. Hitler had the guy who designed it shot because it wasn’t a family car, you couldn’t fit body guards in it. Stalin drove one right up to the Hitler-Stalin Pact, then he bought a regular Volkswagon.’‘I never saw it, but it was a Škoda, Czech made, solid, never break down. Hard on the back, took strong arms to handle, but you never saw one by the side of the road.’‘It wasn’t French, that’s for sure.’‘All I know is it wasn’t French.’‘I remember De Gaulle drove one when he was in Algeria, so ultimately the Katrica, the Renault 4, was based on it—they streamlined it, moved the wheels in, gave it a roof, but essentially it’s the same car.’‘I talked to a guy from Negova. He told me what Kramberger did was take an old Zastava in perfect condition and sliced the upper half right off it…’‘What? Bugatti. Big deal.’ So whatever it was, we’re going to refer to it as a Bugatti, and leave it at that.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Fullmer Files Fluff
No stalling tactic would work unless Fullmer filed an article, so he wrote one off the top of his head on way from Beograd to Ljubljana. On the train, besides writing, he visited the bar car and struck up a relationship with the barkeep. At the Serbian border with Croatia, the train was stopped for a long time on the Serbian side. ‘Where are we?’ he made the barkeep understand. ‘Shit’, he was told. ‘Shit, huh’. ‘Da, Shit’. Later he looked on his map and found that the town was actually called Šid, and the barkeep was not editorializing after all. Strange, thought Fullmer, how easily I accepted what I thought he said and meant. He had been spending a great deal of his life in a sort of gutter. So he wrote: One specimen on the assassination spectrum I find fascinating is the official version enthusiast. We conspiracy nuts are the ones who are supposed to be lunatics, and I accept that—lunacy has come to be embedded in the very definition of any phrase that includes the word ‘conspiracy’. That’s fine with me. Yet the official version enthusiasts deliver unto us the most rabid specters in the field. Most of my death threats—and I receive plenty, which is in a way odd in that I do in the end come down on the side of life—come from this subspecies, as if they are out to prove the merit of the lone gunman alibi by offering themselves as exemplars. None have made an attempt on my life that I know of, but then I am always on the go, often spending night after night at a different location like a paranoid tyrant.The majority of these letters, interestingly, are provoked by my articles on the Kennedy assassination, which would otherwise appear to be among the least controversial of assassination stories. Many letters cite the Warren Report as proof that I am raving mad, but more are along the lines of this unsigned note postmarked Buffalo: Hey Asshole,If you‘re so fucking smart why don’t you run for president. You’d never make it out of New Hampshire alive. You have my GUARANTEE. I took that note as a vote of no confidence, but I am nonplussed as to his reasoning. The article was little more than a rehash of the Zapruder film’s implications.In that same stack of letters I found this note from Chattanooga, which made me glad I was visiting my editor in New York at the time and on my way to Africa (Norbert Zongo): Fuckwad,I know you live in Baltimore. Do you have a will and testimony? Have you ever seen a man with his face blown off? Look in the mirror dead man. Well, I had obviously seen a man getting part of his head blown off, but I suppose that’s a qualitatively different thing. And of course it happens often enough in assassinations. There was Denver Mulgabanda in ‘Rhodesia’, of course, and Carmine ‘Birdsong’ Talentemente in Milano. I happen to believe that the intended message differs little from any mutilation—see Pierre Anga in the Congo.At any rate, what strikes me about the official version enthusiast is that they could listen in on NSA or CIA officials plotting the assassination of, say Jack Chirac, actually witness the killing, the triangulation of gunfire, the guns smoking in three different directions, and still believe the government version that a crazed, embittered Algerian asylum seeker who was about to be shipped home pulled the lone trigger.Let psychologists state the obviouses.Let psychologists deal with letters like this one from an American Zionist after I wrote recently about the ethics of what Israelis would like to call political assassinations: Dear Todd,I read your piece with care and in good will and sent it on to my uncle, who has friends in Mossad. You know that we Jews have a saying: An eye for an eye. Your article hurt my eyes. You also have two eyes. But not for long. I specifically requested that your torture begin with the removal of your eyes. After that electric shock will be applied to your genitals. Your penis will be surgically removed with great care so that you do not bleed to death and are fully alive when it is stuffed into your mouth. You know we are a peace-loving people and you know why it was necessary for us to migrate to our rightful home and holy land. Still, you work for the enemy. You will be released in Gaza to be among your friends. You will be blind and without a penis, which will still be in your mouth when we dump you in some pile of rubble there. If your friends, our enemies, do not kill you immediately, accusing you of being an undercover Mossad agent, for they are known to be clever enough to arrange just such an infiltration, eventually you will be forced to seek a work permit, a pass so that you can clean toilets for middle class people in Tel Aviv. I have another uncle with friends in the border patrol and visa issuance agencies. Your request will be denied.Call me ‘Steiny’
Chapter Twenty-Six
When is Fidel Going to Move out and Get an Apartment of his Own?
Obviously once in Ljubljana Todd Fullmer had to buy more time. His editor released to us the following misdirection ploy:
Dear M________,
I have long been haunted by a piece of the assassination puzzle that just doesn’t fit. Why did the Americans fail to get Castro. We know they tried—from the exploding pen to the tubercular wet suit. It was state policy for some time to assassinate Fidel and we all know it. But they failed. Why? Certainly, it seems obvious that they gave up after a while, taking a sort of when is Fidel going to move out and get an apartment of his own sort of approach. But that hardly explains it, do you think? Anyway, while I’m in Slovenia making preliminary enquiries into the assassination of Kramberger (I think I can get an interview with Nihče, if you know who he is), I think I’ll try to get a decent article out of the failure to assassinate, which can be just as interesting as a successful assassination, don’t you think?
TF
Okay, since Todd brought it up, why indeed did the U.S. fail to knock off Fidel? Is there a pro-Castro conspiracy in there somewhere? No one would know better than our correspondents Mack Beltsch and Skip Obscure.
Here’s what Mack thinks:
The United States has it seems accomplished a few notable assassinations of “leaders,” directly or indirectly; Lumumba in the Congo by the Eisenhower administration was the most deliberate apparently while there is some question as to Diem’s in south Vietnam on Nov 1, 1963, i. e. did Democratic President Kennedy realize that Republican Ambassador Lodge was running his “own” special CIA op here? According to most close to JFK the answer is no, that Kennedy believed “they” were sending Diem and kin to Paris, not to hehheh “hell.”
But then the Kennedys appear to have put in a lot of overtime on how to pop Fidel–especially Bobby the attorney general and plots moreover seem to have continued even after the “agreement” to never never again attack Cuba a la Bay of Pigs which was a primary point in Khrushchev’s “secret deal” with the Kennedys to remove those ridiculously dangerous missiles; but then Jack and Bobby had said no Cuban-American invasion but they never promised no more CIA machinations did they?
But sure the startling aspect of all this is not that the US plotted assassinations(since WWII this in itself is hardly “shocking”) but that the plots failed. In Oliver Stone’s 1991 JFK the drunken discussion presided over by Joe Pesci as “David Ferrie” has his character describing ways to “whack the beard” but Tommy Lee Jones as “Clay Bertrand-Shaw” notes “Castro has informers on every block” by which he’s referring to the notorious Committees to Defend the Revolution; now these were/are akin to neighborhood “crime watch” in American suburbs except that they’re not so much p. r. as actual Your Neighbor As A Spy (Spying On You — And Making Regular Reports).
So Castro very early established close control over the populace; unfamiliar “strangers” must be reported as well as “strange” behavior by the familiar. Probably the only way one could kill the comandante then would be Caligulan, i. e. shoot at close range, have a plan to get Raul as well and simply hope you’d not be slain immediately by the praetorian guard. The only comandantes to die of course were those out-of-favor with Fidel; even Che hunted down in Bolivia might have been “betrayed” by a Fidel op or at least Fidel was not shall we say “broken up”; Che was certainly more valuable to Castro dead than alive as was Trotsky to Stalin.
And maybe the Americans weren’t so enthused too; Cuba was minus missiles an embarrassment but not an “aircraft carrier” launched at the heart of uh Miami; rather attacking Cuba became a past-time for all those exiles less concerned with becoming rich as with taking revenge. The whole CIA-Bush family “dynasty” for example is bound to Cuban Florida up to that election dispute that returned a Bush to the presidency in 2001 — just in time for you-know-what. Lots of neo-conservative imperial power concentrated in one very strategic place Florida is and in “our” gulf (not “Mexico’s”); that way Castro’s existence became a great convenience in galvanizing the anti-communist post-Vietnam syndrome because the Sovs had by then become our fellow “detenteists” and the Chinese were supposed to be our new “friends” but Castro’s continuation was ever the avenue into central America and revived paranoia re: Sandinist Nicaragua and death-squad-prone Guatemala and El Salvador.
So in the CIA hall of mirrors a James Jesus Angleton type might discern that the appearance of assassination is useful in that it creates a more repressive, touchy Fidel but the “failure” to kill permits a perpetual fervent anti-communist community of recruits in Florida and a “reason” always to intervene south of the border: Allende in Chile was too “close” to Fidel, another Cuba etc. and now Hugo Chavez and”his” oil? So actually one “won” by “trying” to murder the tyrant — and by not doing it?
It could still be a clear case of not being able to do “everything” — for instance it would be easier to say assassinate Kennedy within the US hmmm? — but there’s the possibility I think of “failure” having become fortuitous from a real Machiavellian view, i. e. we didn’t because we didn’t want to?…
Not bad, not bad at all. Skip seems less sure of himself below:
Lyndon Johnson knew the mob and anti-Castro Cubans and the CIA worked hand-in-hand to get rid of JFK, but after the deed was done, LBJ made a decision to leave Castro in power. Those three components of the assassination were no doubt pissed at LBJ but what we’re they gonna do about it. Another assassination attempt, this time on LBJ? Hardly. Besides, they all were somewhat appeased that JFK was dead. LBJ knew that Castro was no threat, so why get rid of him? Besides, his brother Raul would just take over in any case. LBJ also had to worry about what the Russians might do, as well as world opinion, if it came out that the CIA had plans to kill Castro. LBJ had more important things on his mind-namely reversing JFK’s Vietnam policy and involving the US in Vietnam. We trust our readers to detect the flaws in the various arguments, like if Raul would replace Fidel so why bother, why did they bother? And then of course, there is the continuance of the slow beatification of Kennedy, which we trust the reader finds bizarre. He was tricked into the Bay of Pigs, after all that was Eisenhower’s baby, and of course had no idea that a coup in Vietnam would lead to a couple of assassinations. Naturally, if we accept these hypos, we wonder at the intense belief that Kennedy would have reversed the course of the war in Vietnam. Either he’s a dupe or he’s not, don’t we think? Unfortunately, Noam Chomsky won’t answer our e-mails.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Was Constantine a Serb
In Ljubljana, Todd Fullmer did his editor a favor and stayed at the least expensive hotel he could find near the center, the Park Hotel. His first task, as we know, was to get an interview with Niko Nihče, the Slovene politico who presided over that part of the earthquake in the nineties that left Slovenia bereft of Beograd administration, or, as some prefer to phrase it, Slovene independence. Nihče was the first Czar of Slovenia as a result, and therefore had the most to lose from a Kramberger election landslide, or victory. Why not simply ask him, Todd thought. Hey Niko, did you do it? Was it you? How’d you find the dupe. Of course that’s not how it would go, but really it wouldn’t be so far different. But Todd had a problem: how to contact and arrange for an interview with the by now retired Niko Nihče?
According to Todd Fullmer’s editor:
So he writes me he’s Ljubljana trying to get an interview with some Hoochie Koochie, and sends this time-killer of an article to get me off his back. You’ll notice it is not the failure to assassinate Castro article, but if you’re interested I can send you the missing piece of the puzzle, so to speak. Anyway, first see if you like this one. Much as I didn’t want to, cause I wanted the son of a bitch in Minsk, I actually did, and I published it to the vast indifference of our readership:
Was Constantine a Serb?
It seems to me that historical questions are generally treated as abstruse, yet while any event–an assassination, say–has its preponderance of contributing factors, such a thing as motive is often quite simple—to, say, remove a leader, to gain power, to prevent or perpetuate injustice, for good, for evil. So when I considered why the average informed historical mind is presented with the apparent contradiction that Rome ‘fell’ in 476.A.D., while the capitol of the Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople in 330 A.D., and Constantinople didn’t ‘fall’ until 1453, nearly a thousand years later, I became most curious, beginning with the question of why Constantine moved the capitol. Answering the question to my own satisfaction required a little more knowledge about Constantine himself. As soon as I learned that he was born in what is now Niš, where the best Drina cigarettes are produced, I knew I had my answer. Sometimes an historical quiestion of great might is solved by mere empathy.
Once Diocletian established the precedent of ruling, in part, from outside Rome, a move of the seat of empire became conceivable. That’s a factor. Byzantium was much closer to the Christian holy lands—that, too, is a factor, as Constantine’s mother is known to have made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Byzantium had a naturally superior defensive position, another factor. But the motive? Constatine was from Niš, geographically, and at that time in many way, culturally, much closer to Byzantium than Rome. Why not accept that Constantine’s motives were very much like our own—in this case, attachment to one’s roots. Certainly we must factor in the grandiosity of a man who re-fashions a city and names it after himself; but Constantine did not choose Amalfi, did he? Nor Dubrovnik, Piraeus, Izmir, Salonika, Milano, Taranto, Messina, or Leghorn. He chose the combination of the best available city closest to home.
Now I have been taunted by those to whom I have revealed my thoughts, who ask me whether, then, Constantine was a Serb. One need only open an historical atlas to answer that question in the negative, which is the condemnatory point my nemeses intend to make. Yet one need only use a little common sense to answer Yes, of course he was a Serb—he was from Niš. Peoples do not rise as one and leave a region that others may replace them; they are displaced gradually, they intermarry, the combine love juices and genes. Those calling themselves Serbs today are Dacians, Illyrians, Vlachs, Croats, Bosnians, Turks, Avars, Bulgars—even Jews. Genetically speaking, those Serbs bombing the cultural stew of Sarajevo were bombing their own kind. So, yes, Constantine was a Serb, and I may go so far as to say that modern Serbs may do well to drop their squalid visions of a Greater Serbia (if any still have them), look back to their Constantine, and call themselves noble Romans.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sokollu, Sokollee, Sokollahahahahahaaaa
As to there actually being a case of a “lone nut”, I think the guy that tried to kill Andrew Jackson was one but I can’t think of any others though I’m sure there are some. But most assassinations of political figures are conspiracies.
–Skip Obscure
Letter from M__________ arrived. Enclosed please find, etc. His own comments were of as much interest as what we were pleased to find, an unpublished article on an obscure assassination in Ottoman times that is actually a brief treatment of the lone gunman theme, and perhaps accidentally an insightful, even groundbreaking historical fragment. At least his editor thought so. His own missive was fairly dripping with guilt. Yet we agree that the topic was too esoteric for his readership. Why the guilt? It’s as if publishing it would somehow have saved Fullmer’s life, which is hardly the case. Anyway, the article itself was actually still in the form of a letter, and by the time Fullmer himself could have written his final draft he was dead.
Dear M__________,
Never mind Castro for now [the Castro piece, already published? What the hell–ed]. Searching for Mr. Kučan has led me to a greater examination of the history of this place [the precise cause and effect here eludes me, I wish you better luck—ed], not Slovenia, per se, but the Balkans. As you know, much of our readership is a sort of voyeuristic opposition, generally believers in such oddities as the lone gunman theory. The kinder correspondents write that they would find me more believable if just on occasion I would subscribe to such a theory—solitary madman kills RFK, rather than a Manchurian brainwashee; and certainly I would like to please them, I have no stake in any particular non-conspiratorial assassination, what the hell do I care?, but the context, the facts, the stray pieces, the extra-bullets, the conflicting witness reports, the disappearing witnesses, the sealed files, the missing minutes, the odd recantations, always prevent my throwing them a bone—and of course, Andrew Jackson wasn’t killed.
Even my more obscure readings here about centuries old assassinations credited to lone swordsmen and such are suspect. A case I find particularly illuminating is that of the great vizier, Sokollu. As you are probably aware [I was not—ed], the position of vizier was often so precarious that a ten year period would see up to 15 different ones employed. Maybe even more. Yet Sokollu, vizier to Suleiman the Great or Magnificent and his successors lasted thirteen years in the position. 13 years. I believe that’s the record. Yet while in his late seventies and still vizier he was killed, assassinated by a pensioner whose pension had been cut off—that is, a disgruntled ex-employee a lone gunman, so to speak.
So the history books tell us.
But to comprehend the circumstances, one must know a little of the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire, particularly about the janissaries and the devširme system, which was the peculiarly Ottoman form of drafting/pressganging chosen Balkan stock, raising them as Turkish infantrymen. Ottoman history is bursting with the obstreperous hijinks of these soldiers who so often ran rampant, deposed both sultans and viziers, though occasionally a draftee of the devširme program rose to a position of great importance to the empire. There was Piale Pasha, who was instrumental in taking Famagusta in 1570. He was a Croat. And not to make too long a list, Sokollu was another, a Bosnian. I’ve written of Constantine’s birthplace, Niš, and the likelihood of its importance. I’ve, incidentally, heard recently at a Serbian bar here in Ljubljana one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, I inquired and found it was called ‘The Lost Ring of the Tzar Konstantin’—the use of tzar should not throw you off, for Istanbul is called Carigrad (the C pronounced ts) in Slovene. They didn’t think Constantine was Russian. Anyway, what I want to lead up to is the question whether it is really likely that the janissary corpse could so easily and entirely be assimilated even though they were essentially kept apart from other ranks of turks? I mean, they were like a club—their symbol was a big black kettle. In other words, could not their virtually perpetual unruliness be viewed as a sort of rebellion? Have any histories taken this approach? My research combined with my hunch says no. Is it simply that their mayhem could not be noted as subversion simply because it was not cohesive? Two factors: 1) Cohesion requires leaders, yet the best potential leaders were assimilated; 2) In such an empire overt cohesion would meet with absolute repression, implying that perhaps there were leaders, yet they remained underground. If even half of what I’m saying is near the truth, then such a one as Sokollu, in this light, would seem to be little more than a highly talented quisling, the worst kind of enemy to the Bosnian people and the janissary corpse. Now do you really believe a pensioner with a grievance got to him, and got to him without the aid of conspirators? And consider this: could it be that the increasingly rebellious janissaries were finally crushed early in the 19th century—an event often referred to in history books as a necessary revamping of the army in order to compete with the increasingly powerful western armies (if that’s the case, what a grand failure) just as the century of great Balkan revolt began? [all I could say was Gee, I don’t know—I mean he deserved to be read and this deserved to be thought over, and it is, I think you’ll admit mighty convincing, maybe even brilliant, but the truth is I don’t know a fucking thing about this shit. But it served the purpose of keeping me off his back for a while, and served the magazine well, because his next temporization was a piece on 9/11, which he had hitherto refused to write about though his fans fairly clamored for his opinion. I include that article, in case you find it of interest—ed]
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A Bone for Numerologists
Okay conspiracy theorists, tighten your seat belts and I’ll take you for a ride. Many of you fans—and some of you uncouth redneck sharpshooters—have wondered over my silence over what you all call 9/11, and some of you have even accused me and PS of being part of the mainstream media’s conspiracy of silence regarding the attack on New York and the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Like you I have read thousands of pages that raise interesting questions and most certainly at the very least condemn the official version to the scrap heap vaults where such as the Warren Commission report is kept in efficacious perpetuity. But you should have realized that as an assassination correspondent I have to approach the issue with an assassination angle. And now that my Castro article has opened the floodgates of non-assassination assassination angles, I may do so. The question, of course, is why was Osama bin Laden not assassinated. We know that the Sudanese would have welcomed it when he was troubling their big burg, and we know also that they offered to turn him over and the U.S. declined, and we further know that when he was in Khartoum the U.S. could easily have gotten to him. And, of course, in the early days of the Afghan war U.S. forces could have hemmed in with ease.
So why didn’t they?
Recently Osama released a tape, supposedly, that told us all that brother Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, was innocent in that he was not chosen to participate in the operation because he sucked in the cockpit. Now what does this tell us, this tape? First, that Osama again, though in the early stages more believably denying involvement in the attacks, admits—tacitly, which is as effective as it gets—that he co-ordinated them. Second, that the feds are on the right track.
So this latest audio release, which the U.S. immediately announced it had ‘no reason is not authentic’ even though every other communication from bin Laden took weeks to verify, would seem to condemn conspiracy theorists to the maniac fringe. In other words, the tape is a phony—and, as we more than half-suspected all along, Osama is Mossad/CIA/NSA bought and run all along.
From the beginning of the New York crime, I have said privately that when a crime is committed one first looks around to see who stands to gain from it. The obvious answer here is the revived Reagan cabal. For instance, look at that war criminal Negroponte: never jailed for running arms to Contras, he has now held several high offices for which he is only qualified by having remained a good Reaganite soldier, who did his most difficult and best work while Nancy was running her Alzheimer husband’s White House.
More generally, and more nefariously, and far more destructively, this cabal has taken the opportunity to wage war on Afghanistan and Iraq (and secretly in Yemen and Iran and who knows where—except we do know where not: Saudi Arabia—where most of the hijackers are said to be from).
And of course Israel has gained by proxy. They fear no nation so much as Iran—nobody with any sense was afeared of Hussein, Saddam—and now Iran has been placed at the center of a controversy that strangely occludes North Korea, by all reasoning a far more dangerous entity.
So what happened on September 11, 2001? What story explains all the contradictory and complex elements? It must begin with the non-apprehension and non-assassination of Osama bin Laden and the assumption that he is a Mossad/CIA/NSA operative (a very few in the FBI knew about it). The hijackers had to be dupes: that is, brown non-Christians/non-Jews. The mentioned organizations will kill their own countrymen, but not their own people. No Mossad agent died that day, you can be sure of that.
Osama organized it, the ops in Israel and the U.S. in on it every step of the way. They helped where necessary (e.g., with bin Laden’s health, with the quashing of the intelligence reports from their own fringes, agents in the field not to be trusted as cynical long view types, specifically agents in Arizona and Minnesota), especially on the day of, when they opened the gates of the fortress to let the invaders in—Air Force stand down orders and well-timed diversionary exercises. (You have all heard that amazing tape in which a rather unauthoritative voice of authority in reference to scrambling planes says ‘We’re going to have to make a decision within ten minutes’, and the other guy says, ‘uh, everybody left the room’. Everybody left the room? So in essence, the plot succeeded because those in charge of defense communications were on coffee break?)
The rest is Bush regime history. My launch pad being that if Osama were the demon he is said to be, long said to have known to be, and not a creation in charge of creating a second cold war atmosphere essentially for corporate gain overseen by American Empire and domestic upper hand, he would have been shot dead long ago.
My anti-climax is that I myself was once in Khartoum when Osama was living there, and I can tell you quite assuredly that even I could have gotten to him—I saw him several times. But I report assassinations, I don’t commit them.
So in the CIA hall of mirrors a James Jesus Angleton type might discern that the appearance of assassination is useful in that it creates a more repressive, touchy Fidel but the “failure” to kill permits a perpetual fervent anti-communist community of recruits in Florida and a “reason” always to intervene south of the border: Allende in Chile was too “close” to Fidel, another Cuba etc. and now Hugo Chavez and”his” oil? So actually one “won” by “trying” to murder the tyrant — and by not doing it?
It could still be a clear case of not being able to do “everything” — for instance it would be easier to say assassinate Kennedy within the US hmmm? — but there’s the possibility I think of “failure” having become fortuitous from a real Machiavellian view, i. e. we didn’t because we didn’t want to?…
Not bad, not bad at all. Skip seems less sure of himself below:
Lyndon Johnson knew the mob and anti-Castro Cubans and the CIA worked hand-in-hand to get rid of JFK, but after the deed was done, LBJ made a decision to leave Castro in power. Those three components of the assassination were no doubt pissed at LBJ but what we’re they gonna do about it. Another assassination attempt, this time on LBJ? Hardly. Besides, they all were somewhat appeased that JFK was dead. LBJ knew that Castro was no threat, so why get rid of him? Besides, his brother Raul would just take over in any case. LBJ also had to worry about what the Russians might do, as well as world opinion, if it came out that the CIA had plans to kill Castro. LBJ had more important things on his mind-namely reversing JFK’s Vietnam policy and involving the US in Vietnam. We trust our readers to detect the flaws in the various arguments, like if Raul would replace Fidel so why bother, why did they bother? And then of course, there is the continuance of the slow beatification of Kennedy, which we trust the reader finds bizarre. He was tricked into the Bay of Pigs, after all that was Eisenhower’s baby, and of course had no idea that a coup in Vietnam would lead to a couple of assassinations. Naturally, if we accept these hypos, we wonder at the intense belief that Kennedy would have reversed the course of the war in Vietnam. Either he’s a dupe or he’s not, don’t we think? Unfortunately, Noam Chomsky won’t answer our e-mails.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Was Constantine a Serb
In Ljubljana, Todd Fullmer did his editor a favor and stayed at the least expensive hotel he could find near the center, the Park Hotel. His first task, as we know, was to get an interview with Niko Nihče, the Slovene politico who presided over that part of the earthquake in the nineties that left Slovenia bereft of Beograd administration, or, as some prefer to phrase it, Slovene independence. Nihče was the first Czar of Slovenia as a result, and therefore had the most to lose from a Kramberger election landslide, or victory. Why not simply ask him, Todd thought. Hey Niko, did you do it? Was it you? How’d you find the dupe. Of course that’s not how it would go, but really it wouldn’t be so far different. But Todd had a problem: how to contact and arrange for an interview with the by now retired Niko Nihče?
According to Todd Fullmer’s editor:
So he writes me he’s Ljubljana trying to get an interview with some Hoochie Koochie, and sends this time-killer of an article to get me off his back. You’ll notice it is not the failure to assassinate Castro article, but if you’re interested I can send you the missing piece of the puzzle, so to speak. Anyway, first see if you like this one. Much as I didn’t want to, cause I wanted the son of a bitch in Minsk, I actually did, and I published it to the vast indifference of our readership:
Was Constantine a Serb?
It seems to me that historical questions are generally treated as abstruse, yet while any event–an assassination, say–has its preponderance of contributing factors, such a thing as motive is often quite simple—to, say, remove a leader, to gain power, to prevent or perpetuate injustice, for good, for evil. So when I considered why the average informed historical mind is presented with the apparent contradiction that Rome ‘fell’ in 476.A.D., while the capitol of the Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople in 330 A.D., and Constantinople didn’t ‘fall’ until 1453, nearly a thousand years later, I became most curious, beginning with the question of why Constantine moved the capitol. Answering the question to my own satisfaction required a little more knowledge about Constantine himself. As soon as I learned that he was born in what is now Niš, where the best Drina cigarettes are produced, I knew I had my answer. Sometimes an historical quiestion of great might is solved by mere empathy.
Once Diocletian established the precedent of ruling, in part, from outside Rome, a move of the seat of empire became conceivable. That’s a factor. Byzantium was much closer to the Christian holy lands—that, too, is a factor, as Constantine’s mother is known to have made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Byzantium had a naturally superior defensive position, another factor. But the motive? Constatine was from Niš, geographically, and at that time in many way, culturally, much closer to Byzantium than Rome. Why not accept that Constantine’s motives were very much like our own—in this case, attachment to one’s roots. Certainly we must factor in the grandiosity of a man who re-fashions a city and names it after himself; but Constantine did not choose Amalfi, did he? Nor Dubrovnik, Piraeus, Izmir, Salonika, Milano, Taranto, Messina, or Leghorn. He chose the combination of the best available city closest to home.
Now I have been taunted by those to whom I have revealed my thoughts, who ask me whether, then, Constantine was a Serb. One need only open an historical atlas to answer that question in the negative, which is the condemnatory point my nemeses intend to make. Yet one need only use a little common sense to answer Yes, of course he was a Serb—he was from Niš. Peoples do not rise as one and leave a region that others may replace them; they are displaced gradually, they intermarry, the combine love juices and genes. Those calling themselves Serbs today are Dacians, Illyrians, Vlachs, Croats, Bosnians, Turks, Avars, Bulgars—even Jews. Genetically speaking, those Serbs bombing the cultural stew of Sarajevo were bombing their own kind. So, yes, Constantine was a Serb, and I may go so far as to say that modern Serbs may do well to drop their squalid visions of a Greater Serbia (if any still have them), look back to their Constantine, and call themselves noble Romans.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sokollu, Sokollee, Sokollahahahahahaaaa
As to there actually being a case of a “lone nut”, I think the guy that tried to kill Andrew Jackson was one but I can’t think of any others though I’m sure there are some. But most assassinations of political figures are conspiracies.
–Skip Obscure
Letter from M__________ arrived. Enclosed please find, etc. His own comments were of as much interest as what we were pleased to find, an unpublished article on an obscure assassination in Ottoman times that is actually a brief treatment of the lone gunman theme, and perhaps accidentally an insightful, even groundbreaking historical fragment. At least his editor thought so. His own missive was fairly dripping with guilt. Yet we agree that the topic was too esoteric for his readership. Why the guilt? It’s as if publishing it would somehow have saved Fullmer’s life, which is hardly the case. Anyway, the article itself was actually still in the form of a letter, and by the time Fullmer himself could have written his final draft he was dead.
Dear M__________,
Never mind Castro for now [the Castro piece, already published? What the hell–ed]. Searching for Mr. Kučan has led me to a greater examination of the history of this place [the precise cause and effect here eludes me, I wish you better luck—ed], not Slovenia, per se, but the Balkans. As you know, much of our readership is a sort of voyeuristic opposition, generally believers in such oddities as the lone gunman theory. The kinder correspondents write that they would find me more believable if just on occasion I would subscribe to such a theory—solitary madman kills RFK, rather than a Manchurian brainwashee; and certainly I would like to please them, I have no stake in any particular non-conspiratorial assassination, what the hell do I care?, but the context, the facts, the stray pieces, the extra-bullets, the conflicting witness reports, the disappearing witnesses, the sealed files, the missing minutes, the odd recantations, always prevent my throwing them a bone—and of course, Andrew Jackson wasn’t killed.
Even my more obscure readings here about centuries old assassinations credited to lone swordsmen and such are suspect. A case I find particularly illuminating is that of the great vizier, Sokollu. As you are probably aware [I was not—ed], the position of vizier was often so precarious that a ten year period would see up to 15 different ones employed. Maybe even more. Yet Sokollu, vizier to Suleiman the Great or Magnificent and his successors lasted thirteen years in the position. 13 years. I believe that’s the record. Yet while in his late seventies and still vizier he was killed, assassinated by a pensioner whose pension had been cut off—that is, a disgruntled ex-employee a lone gunman, so to speak.
So the history books tell us.
But to comprehend the circumstances, one must know a little of the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire, particularly about the janissaries and the devširme system, which was the peculiarly Ottoman form of drafting/pressganging chosen Balkan stock, raising them as Turkish infantrymen. Ottoman history is bursting with the obstreperous hijinks of these soldiers who so often ran rampant, deposed both sultans and viziers, though occasionally a draftee of the devširme program rose to a position of great importance to the empire. There was Piale Pasha, who was instrumental in taking Famagusta in 1570. He was a Croat. And not to make too long a list, Sokollu was another, a Bosnian. I’ve written of Constantine’s birthplace, Niš, and the likelihood of its importance. I’ve, incidentally, heard recently at a Serbian bar here in Ljubljana one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, I inquired and found it was called ‘The Lost Ring of the Tzar Konstantin’—the use of tzar should not throw you off, for Istanbul is called Carigrad (the C pronounced ts) in Slovene. They didn’t think Constantine was Russian. Anyway, what I want to lead up to is the question whether it is really likely that the janissary corpse could so easily and entirely be assimilated even though they were essentially kept apart from other ranks of turks? I mean, they were like a club—their symbol was a big black kettle. In other words, could not their virtually perpetual unruliness be viewed as a sort of rebellion? Have any histories taken this approach? My research combined with my hunch says no. Is it simply that their mayhem could not be noted as subversion simply because it was not cohesive? Two factors: 1) Cohesion requires leaders, yet the best potential leaders were assimilated; 2) In such an empire overt cohesion would meet with absolute repression, implying that perhaps there were leaders, yet they remained underground. If even half of what I’m saying is near the truth, then such a one as Sokollu, in this light, would seem to be little more than a highly talented quisling, the worst kind of enemy to the Bosnian people and the janissary corpse. Now do you really believe a pensioner with a grievance got to him, and got to him without the aid of conspirators? And consider this: could it be that the increasingly rebellious janissaries were finally crushed early in the 19th century—an event often referred to in history books as a necessary revamping of the army in order to compete with the increasingly powerful western armies (if that’s the case, what a grand failure) just as the century of great Balkan revolt began? [all I could say was Gee, I don’t know—I mean he deserved to be read and this deserved to be thought over, and it is, I think you’ll admit mighty convincing, maybe even brilliant, but the truth is I don’t know a fucking thing about this shit. But it served the purpose of keeping me off his back for a while, and served the magazine well, because his next temporization was a piece on 9/11, which he had hitherto refused to write about though his fans fairly clamored for his opinion. I include that article, in case you find it of interest—ed]
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A Bone for Numerologists
Okay conspiracy theorists, tighten your seat belts and I’ll take you for a ride. Many of you fans—and some of you uncouth redneck sharpshooters—have wondered over my silence over what you all call 9/11, and some of you have even accused me and PS of being part of the mainstream media’s conspiracy of silence regarding the attack on New York and the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Like you I have read thousands of pages that raise interesting questions and most certainly at the very least condemn the official version to the scrap heap vaults where such as the Warren Commission report is kept in efficacious perpetuity. But you should have realized that as an assassination correspondent I have to approach the issue with an assassination angle. And now that my Castro article has opened the floodgates of non-assassination assassination angles, I may do so. The question, of course, is why was Osama bin Laden not assassinated. We know that the Sudanese would have welcomed it when he was troubling their big burg, and we know also that they offered to turn him over and the U.S. declined, and we further know that when he was in Khartoum the U.S. could easily have gotten to him. And, of course, in the early days of the Afghan war U.S. forces could have hemmed in with ease.
So why didn’t they?
Recently Osama released a tape, supposedly, that told us all that brother Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, was innocent in that he was not chosen to participate in the operation because he sucked in the cockpit. Now what does this tell us, this tape? First, that Osama again, though in the early stages more believably denying involvement in the attacks, admits—tacitly, which is as effective as it gets—that he co-ordinated them. Second, that the feds are on the right track.
So this latest audio release, which the U.S. immediately announced it had ‘no reason is not authentic’ even though every other communication from bin Laden took weeks to verify, would seem to condemn conspiracy theorists to the maniac fringe. In other words, the tape is a phony—and, as we more than half-suspected all along, Osama is Mossad/CIA/NSA bought and run all along.
From the beginning of the New York crime, I have said privately that when a crime is committed one first looks around to see who stands to gain from it. The obvious answer here is the revived Reagan cabal. For instance, look at that war criminal Negroponte: never jailed for running arms to Contras, he has now held several high offices for which he is only qualified by having remained a good Reaganite soldier, who did his most difficult and best work while Nancy was running her Alzheimer husband’s White House.
More generally, and more nefariously, and far more destructively, this cabal has taken the opportunity to wage war on Afghanistan and Iraq (and secretly in Yemen and Iran and who knows where—except we do know where not: Saudi Arabia—where most of the hijackers are said to be from).
And of course Israel has gained by proxy. They fear no nation so much as Iran—nobody with any sense was afeared of Hussein, Saddam—and now Iran has been placed at the center of a controversy that strangely occludes North Korea, by all reasoning a far more dangerous entity.
So what happened on September 11, 2001? What story explains all the contradictory and complex elements? It must begin with the non-apprehension and non-assassination of Osama bin Laden and the assumption that he is a Mossad/CIA/NSA operative (a very few in the FBI knew about it). The hijackers had to be dupes: that is, brown non-Christians/non-Jews. The mentioned organizations will kill their own countrymen, but not their own people. No Mossad agent died that day, you can be sure of that.
Osama organized it, the ops in Israel and the U.S. in on it every step of the way. They helped where necessary (e.g., with bin Laden’s health, with the quashing of the intelligence reports from their own fringes, agents in the field not to be trusted as cynical long view types, specifically agents in Arizona and Minnesota), especially on the day of, when they opened the gates of the fortress to let the invaders in—Air Force stand down orders and well-timed diversionary exercises. (You have all heard that amazing tape in which a rather unauthoritative voice of authority in reference to scrambling planes says ‘We’re going to have to make a decision within ten minutes’, and the other guy says, ‘uh, everybody left the room’. Everybody left the room? So in essence, the plot succeeded because those in charge of defense communications were on coffee break?)
The rest is Bush regime history. My launch pad being that if Osama were the demon he is said to be, long said to have known to be, and not a creation in charge of creating a second cold war atmosphere essentially for corporate gain overseen by American Empire and domestic upper hand, he would have been shot dead long ago.
My anti-climax is that I myself was once in Khartoum when Osama was living there, and I can tell you quite assuredly that even I could have gotten to him—I saw him several times. But I report assassinations, I don’t commit them.
rickharsch 