Shredded

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I tell you, the Hostage Crisis is a gift that keeps on giving. At the time the Embassy in Tehran was over-run, the last to be captured Americans on that awful 4th of November were a team of CIA officers who locked themselves in a vault in order to burn and shred sensitive documents, knowing that their actions might have provoked serious retaliation by the “Students.” When they finally gave up and unlocked the vault, they were confident that they had done their duty and protected the most sensitive secrets.

What actually happened next was an elaborate operation by the Iranians that went on for years. The thin strands of paper were laid out on the floor of the embassy and a laborious process began to number, index and reassemble them into the original documents.

They were releasing them as fast as they could, to buttress their claims
that prior to the take-over “the Great Satan” was trying to destabilize the new regime, and that certain Iranian moderates were in league with the Americans. The information was used to destroy groups like the Iranian Freedom Movement and the National Front. Individuals were targeted for destruction as well, including the Grand Ayatollah Shari’atmadari, and later President Abolhassan Bani Sadr and Premier Mehdi Bazargan. Their elimination from government solidified the position of Ayatollah Khomeini and his radicals.

I was keeping files on all of them, to try to keep track of what might happen next, and if a diplomatic solution short of war was going to do the trick. And of course, I had to keep Nick Danger bumbling along. In so doing, I was also tweaking the noses of some of the Navy’s social engineering programs. With the number of sailors needed in the post-Vietnam era, the Service was looking for ways to force the troops out of uniform and bring down the end-strength of the Fleet.

Just when another, much longer (if unacknowledged) one was just beginning. In fact, one side seemed to know it, even if we couldn’t admit it. For years the reconstructed documents continued to trickle out of Iran. I was working at the Fleet Ocean Surveillance Intelligence Center (FOSIC) in Hawaii in 1982 when we realized our secret-level products were on display in Tehran, all the little strips put back together and the locations of Soviet and PRC ships carefully highlighted, just as I had seen them at the time on USS Midway (CV-41).

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The ‘Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam’ published the documents in an astonishing series of seventy-seven volumes called Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den (Asnad-i lanih-‘i Jasusi). If you want to see some deathless prose from the Secret World, a sample is at this link:

https://archive.org/details/DocumentsFromTheU.s.EspionageDen

I am not going to bother to look. I already had to read them. Plus, I had to get on with my detective story. The ship was starting to pay attention. Not that there was anything else to do except work, eat and sleep.

This was that day’s installment, completely unshredded:

“THE ADVENTURES OF VIC SOCOTRA, PRIVATE DICK”

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TODAY’S EPISODE: “MEETING WITH THE FAT MAN”

I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I LAY UNCONSCIOUS IN THAT LITTLE CUBICLE. It was dark all the time. When I came to, my head throbbed like the thumb you just hit with a hammer. It took two Luckies to get my thoughts back together.

The front of my cranium was starting to feel like Ted Williams worked it over with a Louisville slugger. It was starting to get me mad – mad»at the Fat Man and determined to foil his foul plot to hi-jack the L.A. International Airport. He wasn’t trifling with just anyone, y’know. He was trifling with Nick Danger, Private Dick.

I made up my mind to locate the Fat Man, pronto.

This was going to take some ace sleuthing. I put my Luckies back in my shirt and worked up my Number Two grim expression – the one I save for special occasions.

I undid the dogs on the hatch and stepped out into the corridor. It seemed like it might be night. I didn’t see any scrubwomen around. They must have finished up this part of the large gray building early and knocked off for coffee.

I followed the corridor for a while, and it started to jink around. All the jinks had steel doors, hiding secrets.

The Fat Man was leaving nothing to chance. He could shut this building up like Fort Knox if he wanted. I came past some sort of a cafeteria entrance where a lot of denim-clad Joes were having food thrown onto steel plates.

I sleuthed on by, taking note of everything.

Later there was a long room with a low ceiling and dozens of guys, sitting around eating. I strolled through casually. Next to the wall was a steel door in the floor with a red cross painted on it.

I sauntered on by and looked down the narrow metal stairs.
“‘X” marks the spot,” I thought.

And I hit the jackpot. There was a crowd of guys down at the bottom, lined up at the heavy-duty scale. Most of them had their shirts off. I gave a low whistle. I had hit Big Casino. There wasn’t a single one of them under 2l0 pounds.

Bingo! Now all I had to do was put the pinch on my man and I was home free. I stepped down the ladder and realized how tough it was going to be. I was surrounded by fat men.
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I pinched the first one I bumped into. He squealed.

“All right, Bub, what’s the scam?” I growled.

“What on earth are you talking about?” he said.

“Oh, a wisecracker, eh?” I punched him in the kidney. “Now, out with it. What’s the bird’s-eye lowdown on this caper?”

“Weight control,” he moaned – and slid to the floor.

NEXT: “THE QUACK IN THE BACK”

Copyright 1980 and 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter @jayare303

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