(Action in Abbottabad: Team SIX in action in the film “Zero Dark Thirty.” AP Photo/Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Jonathan Olley)
I have only seen two movies this year, and as we end the first calendar quarter, I doubt if I will see that many more. I was interested in “Zero Dark Thirty,” for personal and professional reasons and rented it when I got back from Willow.Colorado springs
I fell asleep in the assault phase of the Team SIX mission to kill bin Laden. I managed to retain some memory of the laborious and somewhat tiresome journey of Maya-the-Analyst, since I had a bit part in the change to the rules of engagement, which had, in the opinion of many of us at Langley, become regrettably restrictive in regard to the treatment of murderous assholes.
I remember George Tenet’s “The Gloves Are Off” memo to the workforce at the Other Government Agency, and watched the Hollywood depiction of enhanced interrogation with professional interest.
The film rental is good for only 24 hours, so as I type I am monitoring the film from the beginning, searching for the moment of the last conscious thought from last night. It is a hunt sometimes as complex as the one for the master terrorist himself.
So, I am multi-tasking this morning. I had been in sort of a festive mood after work, tinged by fatigue. It had been a long and uncertain week, filled with a sort of vague anxiety about several things. Honestly, I never have had the trifecta of professional, national and personal upheaval coinciding like this- or at least not since the weeks and months immediately after 9/11.
I was doing taxes as I listened to the struggle. Around the edges of work I have been engaged in tax-filings for several entities, only one of whom is actually alive. First there were Mom and Dad’s personal return, then mine, in two parts: one for the business that generates no income and then the personal, which was markedly smaller than last year.
No problem. Still have a job. Anyway, I did the online thing on Thursday evening that got TurboTax Timmy Geithner in such trouble and then put it aside with the intent of reviewing the lies for plausibility and transmitting the completed return on Friday.
The software warned me that I was at high risk for an audit, and had momentary uncertainty as I considered whether a receipt that read: “1/2 semi trailer of household goods” would be viewed as legit.
Screw it, I thought. It is true and I mashed the button.
With the mandatory drill done and the receipts and W2s and 1099’s filed neatly, I turned to the matter of the estate.
I had a couple gnawing data points that added to the aversion stress: one, I heard (far too late) that estate taxes must be filed within nine months of death of the principal.
We are way beyond that, and having had a couple minor brushes with the IRS in previous and tougher tax years, that the Feds (and local courts, for that matter) still hook interest rates of 15% on disputed funds.
So, the reserve I had in the escrow account potentially was way insufficient to cover the liability. With everything else, it made my stomach knot. But it was time to engage and get the IRS and Satan behind me.
Should go to a professional, I thought, but I started to analyze the problem like Maya-the-Analyst in the film that lurched along through Rawalpindi and Jalalabad toward the compound in Abbottabad. I started with the IRS itself.
The instructions for estate filing are among the most complex in the tax code, but my spirits were buoyed by this bit of verbiage: “Most relatively simple estates (cash, publicly traded securities, small amounts of other easily valued assets, and no special deductions or elections, or jointly held property) do not require the filing of an estate tax return. A filing is required for estates with combined gross assets and prior taxable gifts exceeding $1,500,000 in 2004 – 2005….”
The amounts go up from there, but I did not pay any attention. Mom’s estate is far below the reporting threshold.
I am free. Well, free from taxes if not from Death.
(Maya-the-Analyst at FOB Jalalabad, portrayed with relentless intensity by Jessica Chastain.)
Which is what was happening on the flat-screen. I got done with the first pot of coffee of the day as Team SIX was headed up the staircase, and I stopped trying to do three things at once and turned my attention to the raid.
I guess it was realistic- the controversy during the initial release was about how much tradecraft had been disclosed in the course of the hunt for the hiding-in-plain-sight terror mastermind.
I liked the touch by which the SEALS double tapped anyone who was down. Sensible. They double-tapped bin Laden, too, which I found gratifying, and a demonstration of professionalism. I wondered idly if anyone was going to file taxes for the asshole, or if his estate was large enough to drag in a trust lawyer.
It was a large and complicated film, I thought. The issues were intricate and controversial, yet the story was essentially the banal business of delivering selective death, a system of which I was a proud participant for more than thirty years.
From that perspective, the impact of the film was dispersed in a much more personal manner than director Kate Bigelow intended.
Sitting in the brown chair, now fully awake, I thought the movie was of a piece with “Hurt Locker” and “Blackhawk Down.” We have some elite killers in our employ, and we have used them endlessly in wars that may (or may not) have been necessary. We will have to wait for history to sort that out. Was Iraq necessary for the Arab Spring?
Would it have been better not to have done it? What on earth do we do about Afghanistan, a conflict in which we appear to be headed toward a Soviet-style and ignominious end? What on earth is this astonishing intelligence and operational war machine we have created?
The controversies in the film? Torture? Sorry, no sympathy for dirt-bags and killers.
Dogged analysts? Well done, Mia. Nice assessment. I also understand why she did not make GS-14.
Personal reaction? I am not getting on anymore C-130s or helicopters of any sort. I am done with the National Security State, though I fear it is not quite done with me.
This has been an interesting decade, don’t you think?
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com