Yams On Parade

Placid Jamie could barely contain herself, waiting for the Lovely Bea to arrive at the Amen Corner. She had something she wanted to give us, and was very mysterious about it.

Old Jim leaned over to me at Willow, pushing his Bud long-neck aside to get closer.
“I want to talk about yams.”

“What about them,” I asked suspiciously. “Nasty things. They are orange, you know.”
“No, I have ben asked to provide a Halloween dish for the big feast that Chanteuse Mary and I are going to attend.”

“Oh, that is easy. For a Halloween recipe, you don’t want to cook them. That way they still have a solid mass when you throw them at the trick-or-treaters.”

“I meant Thanksgiving, you jerk. The holidays are all starting to run together.”

“I can’t believe it either. I put up a wreath today. I never put up decorations before Turkey Day. It is like I feel like a retailer with the compressed number of shopping days between the feast and Christmas.”

“I just need a recipe that is simple, not too spicy, and easy to put together.”

“Let me think.” I looked over at Jasper behind the bar, and asked him if I could borrow one of the several pens he had clipped to the open neck of his black shirt. He lid one out, with a white paper napkin, my usual Willow stationary.

I was still jotting notes when Bea made her customary entrance, kissing us all, as Jon-without dragged a stool over for her. Once she was seated and had ordered The Usual, Jamie produced several little gray silk bags and slid them down to bar to us. Chanteuse Mary was the first to open hers, and laughed out loud when she saw what was in it: a Christmas tree decoration for 2013. On the front was the year, and on the back was the inscription “The Amen Corner.”

She had one for me, too, and I marveled at it. “Where did you get these done?” asked Jim.

“ShutterFly did the whole thing. All I had to do was upload the photos.”

“Technology will never cease to amaze me,” I said, looking at the montage of pictures and we talked about the days each one was taken.

“Best Christmas decoration ever,” I said. “Does this mean I have to get a tree?”

Jon-Without said he might actually do that, and The Lovely Bea just beamed.
When exactly enough Happy Hour white had been consumed, I slid the sweet potato recipe over to Jim.

“Bon appetite,” I said. “Yams on parade.”

“Asshole,” he responded.

Ingredients
2 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans, divided
Cooking spray
2 cups miniature marshmallows

Preparation

Preheat oven to 375°.

Place the sweet potatoes in a Dutch oven (No, not the one when you pull the overs over your head to trap vile gases to surprise Mary, a heavy cook pot), and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes or until very tender. Drain; cool slightly.
Place potatoes in a large bowl.

Add sugar and next 3 ingredients (through vanilla). Mash sweet potato mixture with a potato masher. Fold in 1/4 cup pecans. Scrape potato mixture into an even layer in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup pecans; top with marshmallows.

Bake at 375° for 25 minutes or until golden.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Compliance

(Jon-without sets up an impromptu phone booth and compliance space inside the front door at Willow last night. Photo Chanteuse Mary).

Yesterday’s story regarded the round of severe budget cuts that are coming to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.

It prompted a couple thoughtful replies, which naturally I ignored.

Hahaha- no, the points were well taken and I agree with them.

For good or ill, the Congress is the body responsible for setting budget priorities, and of course I support that. There are enough problems abroad in the land involving gigantic new programs that seem to be funded out of thin air.

And another experienced observer noted that “Re: China, Iran, Russia, NK, AQ, et alia, there is plenty of money to defend our country against these threats individually or collectively if DoD, the IC, and Congress are willing to put priorities and money against the threats and not the theater of national security.”

I agree with him, too. What I was trying to say was that if we unilaterally draw down capabilities in the face of some tough adversaries, we need to try to do it intelligently.

That means deep vertical elimination of capabilities and organizations, which is what I intended to get across.

I was part of the shadow bureaucracy after leaving the real one. The reason that legion of contractors exists is to perform the functions that the government could not do because of the idiotic way we cut capabilities after the Cold War.

Literally, the Community hired no new blood for over a decade, and when the need arose, it was the contracting community that had the expertise. The Government no longer could do the job.

I will go you one better. The thicket of regulations required to ensure everyone is following the arcane and complex world of Federal regulations is a real issue. At any moment a corporation (or individual) can fall out of compliance with the law- and like the tax code, there is a bewildering number of laws and regulations.
The Affordable Care Act is just one of them. Add the Dodd-Frank Act and Sarbanes-Oxley (the training required on record retention requirements was mind-numbing) and the EPA and all the rest and it is staggering.

To stay within the law, a new and non-productive category of jobs has been created: data kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows an 18-percent increase in the number of compliance officers in the United States between 2009 and 2012.

This is not a partisan rant, by the way. The trend began in the Clinton Administration and continued on its merry way through the second Mr. Bush’s two terms as well as the current one.

At last count, there were an estimated 227,500 compliance officers employed in the United States, according to the BLS. The definition of what this new sort of worker does is “evaluate conformity with laws and regulations.”

I think the time is long past to try to simplify things. Could we give that a try?

Anyway, we talked about that at Willow, as Jon-without talked to Japan. He works for the Heavy Bomber people now, and happy to have a job. He is supposed to ensure they are compliant with everything here, and they called at first light in Asia, which was past last light here.

It was too noisy to talk inside, and too cold to stand outside, so he dragged his stool into the little space between the front and inner doors and talked there.
We laughed at the sight, but then, we did not have to be compliant with anything.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Guns and Butter

(General Martin Dempsey, CJCS, talks to reporters about that boring budget crap. Photo ABC).

We are at the point where we really ought to get a cup of Starbucks and talk about where we are going. I am deliberately staying away from talking about the health care thing, except to note that it clearly is going to be more expensive than it was proposed to be, and it going to squeeze other things pretty hard in a zero-sum budget universe.

The conversation ought to be about what it is we are willing to pay for, and of course who is going to pay for it, and then move to make rational decisions about re-structuring the government to enable it to continue to function.

I don’t know if we need the sort of military structure and intelligence community we have, but we are not even going to have a rational chat about what it is we ought to be able to do, if necessary.

I talked to an old friend over the weekend who is still in the harness of Government. He had just finished reading the Mark-Up Bill of the Intelligence Authorization. Without delving into specifics, it is reportedly not pretty for my former employers and customers.

In fact, it is starting to look like a cascade of woe. The contractors will be the first to feel it as money dries up. The industry is already quivering in anticipation, and not in a good way. Then the waves of pain will spread through the government, as programs and capabilities are put on the block, one by one.

I think the argument is completely valid that the Intelligence Community over-expanded during the last decade, and probably ought to be scaled back. Several of my friends are of the opinion that the field is too crowded with Offices and Agencies and some could be eliminated, which would render substantial savings and the harvest of resources would keep the rest of the Community could be kept above water.

I went to this movie as a middling-grade officer as we harvested the “savings” of the Cold War to offer back to the Congress for them to apply to other things they deemed more important.

There were many capabilities, many redundancies that were built into the system. They were completely intentional. I was always a believer in the notion that redundancy in combat systems is no vice. After all, we were supposed to be able to continue to function in the post-attack world where millions of us would be dead.

We salami sliced our way through the thirty percent reduction the Congress imperiously demanded. That is a process where every line item is subject to the same percentage reduction, which along the way, means whatever is left of some of the projects is not enough to do whatever it was they were intended to do.

Smart reduction requires sharp, vertical cuts that protect what is really important, and discards those that are not.

That is much harder to do than say, and usually the system will blunder its way through arbitrary reductions to everything. That is about as dumb a way to do business as it is possible to imagine. It is sort of like a DoD budget that magically apportions resources in rough thirds to Army, Navy and Air Force.

Dumb as Sequestration, you know? That was supposed to be so intentionally stupid that no one would allow it to happen. It is, of course.

One of the agency Chief Financial Officers, a great lady I worked with when she was at the Office of Management and Budget, summed things up in the context of sequestration and punitive cuts: FY-15 is going to be “a bleak year.” The mark-up will doubtless exacerbate the situation.

As of this morning, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, was quoted as praising the unbelievable sacrifices made by our kids in uniform over the last dozen years, and then moved on to decry the percentage of the total budget allocated to personnel issues.

It is projected to increase from half to 60%. We are supposed to be shocked by this, since it would naturally impact the precious pet rocks of the Service acquisition officials. The ships, aircraft, vehicles and sensors all have distinct and vocal constituencies, while the kids who carry the rifles do not.

I remember a time after the Soviets collapsed where one load of ammunition made two ships magically fully combat ready. It was dishonest and absurd, but that is the road we are headed down. The the overall DoD is a bigger mess than the Intelligence Community. It is unable to control costs and unable to downsize smartly.

My pal thinks capabilities will decay until the inevitable next military shock, after which we’ll throw money at the problem. It’s the American way.

Remember 9/11?

Anyway, things will get petty and nasty in the budget wars. My pal said that at one point the word “punitive” was used to describe the cuts the Congress was demanding.

I have been in the middle of one of those before. It was the mid-1990s. I was working for the office of legislative affairs in the Pentagon. There was a battle of wills being waged between one particularly strong-willed Admiral and a particularly hard-headed staffer in the senate. The Admiral wanted to continue to do some things he thought were vital to the nation’s security, while the Staffer believed they were not, and the money could be better spent elsewhere.

The result was a Mark-Up that slashed the budget line for groundskeepers at the intelligence complex over in Maryland, and a rich crop of uncut grass growing up around the headquarters.

Defying enraged budgeteers is never a good idea. In the end, the reductions that are coming will render the DoD and the intelligence folks less capable, and they will do it in a way that prevents the institutions from making reductions in a way that lessens- not minimizes- risk.

Some of my more acerbic correspondents have said it before: it is long past time that Washington experienced some of the pain that the rest of the country has endured since 2008. I take their point, and support smart reductions where they make sense.

I think we are on the way to a nuclear Iran and an impatient China, eager to expand its suzerainty. Throw in an intransigent Russia and a restive south Asia and we could very well have our hands full.

It has been fifty years since Lyndon Johnson told us we could afford guns and butter during the Vietnam War.

We may now be on a road to the place where we can afford neither.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Tis the Season

(ATN Aries MK 410 Spartan NVG rifle scope).

I heard the first gunshot of this deer-hunting season yesterday around 0550. I was mildly surprised, since it was still as dark as the inside of a black cat on a moonless night.

Actually, it was two shots, blam blam. Then silence.

It looked like someone got their deer for the season, and quickly. I had to think for a moment about how one did precision shooting in the dark, and then it was clear. I slapped my forehead: one of my neighbors, or a visiting hunter, had procured a night vision device similar to the ones that enabled our troops to rule the night where we have had them fighting for a dozen years.

The technology is proliferating. I looked to see what might be available this long-gun season, and found a likely candidate: the ATN Aries MK 410 Spartan rifle scope.

It is a 1st generation night vision scope with powerful 5x magnification, improved optical configuration, low F-stop factor, and increased optical resolution, which permits more light down the tube. It also boasts a precision “Red on Green” aiming system, easy push button operation and reticle brightness adjustment. You can strap it on anything with a standard Weaver or Picatinny rail on the barrel or receiver. The unit comes with hard carrying and storage case; titanium-mounting system, and is water and fog resistant. Requires 2 each – 3V lithium CR123A batteries, which are thoughtfully included.

That is an impressive capability to be able to purchase at Amazon, and hardly seems sporting. It is also a little alarming that the military technology is proliferating so dramatically, and is available to anyone with a credit card. Thankfully, Amazon reminds potential purchasers that there are Important Export Restrictions in bold type that will preclude any bad guys from getting these things and sniping our kids.

It is pretty tough language: “It is unlawful and strictly prohibited to export, or attempt to export or otherwise transfer or sell any hardware of technical data or furnish any service to any foreign person, whether abroad or in the United States, for which a license or written approval of the US Government is required.”

Whew. That was comforting.

Anyway, I was going to continue Mac Shower’s account of being a player in the reforms that followed the egregious conduct of the Intelligence Community, 1950-1970. There were some amazing things that went on, the most disturbing of which is probably going to remain a mystery through the rest of our lives, and maybe forever.

Mac was a key action officer in the establishment of the FISA Courts, for example, the secret judicial review of Government requests for authority to conduct surveillance on the agents of foreign espionage services. The system seemed to work pretty well for a quarter century. Then things began to fall apart with the 9/11 attacks and the bewildering proliferation of technical capabilities to collect all sorts of things from the phone companies, the internet and the good old US Postal Service.

I was going to try something sly about the difference in the response to Richard Nixon’s attempt to dragoon the CIA into his Watergate struggle and the ability of the last two Administrations in our time being able to target and execute persons of interest with drones.

You will forgive my concern, I hope. It is not that I don’t think some worthless dirt-bags don’t deserve execution- but I remember the faux shock that radiated from Capitol Hill during the 1970s. Targeting people for assassination? Horrors!

Anyway, I have lost interest in pointing out that our institutions have become dysfunctional. There are plenty of people who point that out every day; half of one third of our divided government blocking everything it can, the other half is prepared to do anything to maintain control, the judicial branch that seems to be ignoring so many things that appear to be unconstitutional, and an Executive Branch that copes with the system simply by issuing decrees and denials.

I was going to try something either witty or caustic (or both) this morning, but the whole thing got subsumed in a discussion with a pal about the secret award of the Navy Cross last week, the second highest medal for gallantry the sea service can bestow, just behind the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Apparently it is a secret because it was for action in connection with the Benghazi affair, and my pal thought it was curious that it had taken so long and that it was done with so little fanfare. It got even stranger when the hero was identified as a Marine who was serving with the Army’s elite DELTA Force.

Anyway, I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole this morning, either. I have no access to classified information any more, and certainly no insight into what was going on that night that Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered, or the eight hour fire-fight that went on after that, apparently with some authentic heroism by persons unknown.

My buddy mentioned that the very morning last year that the news was spreading about the matter, we correctly identified it as a military attack, based on the weapons employed and the fact that they appeared to be pre-targeted at the annex where the two former SEALS were murdered, that it was probably commissioned to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA, (duh!) and once we learned that there had been a meeting with Turkish officials, that the reason for everyone to be there was probably to supervise the bulk transfer of Libyan weapons to the Syrian rebels to undermine President Assad.

It appears we were right about that, and it only took a couple news cycles to figure it out, though some people were still saying something about the immense impact of a video that no one had seen.

Anyway, I imagine the full story will come out someday, not that anyone seems to care.

So, what I was going to say is that our policy in the Middle East is sort of interesting. We are negotiating with the Iranians to lift some of the sort-of effective sanctions which are very irritating to the people of that nation, though they apparently don’t bother the theocrats who run that asylum enough to deter them from inching closer to getting a Shia bomb.

I have little confidence that people who have been selling rugs for a couple thousand years can be out-negotiated by earnest and idealistic American diplomats. If you do, more power to you. But with the furor here about other things, you may not have seen the headlines this morning. I was up early for perfectly understandable reasons and caught the BBC reporting that trumpeted “Saudi Nuclear Weapons ‘on order’ from Pakistan!”

Duh. The Saudis are many things, but they are no fools. The Kingdom, for good or ill, considers itself the guardian of the Sunni Umma, and is implacably opposed to the Shia theocracy cross the Gulf. They bankrolled the Paki nuke program, starting in the 1980s, and purchased dozens of Chinese CSS-2 ballistic missiles.

(Chinese-built CSS-2 Road Mobile medium range ballistic missile).

Anyone can tell you these turkeys- no offense to Mr. Erdogen in Ankara- have the CEP of Culpeper County, so there is only one plausible explanation for their acquisition. Whatever goes on top doesn’t have to be particularly accurate.

The Saudis have The Bomb, too. So, we are on the verge of having South Asia and the Middle East represented at the nuclear table by Iran, Saudi, Israel, Pakistan and India.

When I was a young officer, an old hand explained the three grounding principals of our Middle East policy, violation of any one was done at extreme peril:

· The Saudis have the oil.
· The Israelis, for all their flaws, are our allies.
· Don’t f**k with the Hashemite Kingdom.

It would appear that the Saudis have chosen to go their own way over our confused Syrian policy, and in retrospect, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline might have been a good thing to be completing, rather than dithering about. The Israelis seem to think we are going to get snookered by the Iranians at the bargaining table, and will be looking at the worst of all worlds: Islamic bombs in both flavors, Sunni and Shia.

And the Jordanians? They were thrown under the bus months ago.

I know, I know. I am probably just getting alarmed over nothing. After all, there are treaties and stuff that will prevent something bad from happening. Like those night vision scopes. Amazon would never sell them to someone with ill intent, you know? There are rules.

I’ll be jiggered. That deer just walked across my front yard, bold as brass. She is looking at me right now from my garden, the one that never got off the ground this year. She must think I am a paper tiger or something.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Blue Ribbon Panels

(Mac and Elizabeth-with-an-S at Willow).

It is the start of deer season here this morning. I have heard no gunfire, though I have been listening, and am going to avoid going in the woods for the rest of the month.

In the spirit of the hunting season, and the astonishing developments back up North in the Beltway Hot House, I am going to talk about something completely different. To do that, I am going to consider myself freed from an agreement with Mac that I honored scrupulously while he was alive. The time seems right, what with Mr. Snowden’s continuing disclosures about just about everything. The pendulum has swung a great deal since the 9/11 attacks, and the worldwide fight with those shadowy people whose motivation we are not supposed to notice.

It was June of 2011. Mac’s health had been up and down, but he was having a good month and wanted to get out of his place at The Madison. Everyone at Willow loved him, Elizabeth-with-an-S and Big Jim, and the regulars on the civilian side of the bar: Old Jim, Jon-without, John With, Short Haired Mike and the rest.

But this was an interview, so we took stools a little down from the Amen Corner. I was intending to ask about the transition from Mac’s distinguished Navy career to his time on the Intelligence Community Staff, one of the first bodies set up to oversee the always fractious group of organizations that sometimes can be barely civil to one another.

Big Jim slid a glass of Happy Hour white in front of me, and a Virgin Mary in front of Mac, since his Quacks had told him to lay off the alcohol while he was on a new set of meds. He was not entirely happy about the development, but was philosophical about it. I got out my pen, and pulled a white paper napkin square in front of me.

“We agreed we are not going to talk about your second career, right?”

“Yes, there are some things that are still a little sensitive after all these years.”

“Like Azorian?”

Mac shook his head. “Nope, not going to go there. But I can talk about Bronson Tweedy. He was old school, and the strong right arm to Director Helms, and the major player in how things changed in the early 1970s.”

“Helms was Director for longer than most, wasn’t he?”

(DCI Richard Helms smokes while on the hot seat on Capitol Hill).

“Yes. Mid-sixties right up to 1973. The whole Vietnam thing. He was old school. He had been Naval Intelligence in New York City, working on the Eastern Sea Frontier plotting U-boats when a friend approached him to join the OSS’s Morale Operations Branch. They did the black propaganda. He was a Spook the rest of his life.”

“It is interesting that the Navy reservists in New York were in the middle of everything, isn’t it?”

Mac smiled. “They were their own Navy, that is for sure. They ran the Lucky Luciano connection with the Mob to keep the docks safe from Axis saboteurs.”

“In real life a lot of them were prosecutors and cops and stuff, right?”

“It was all mixed up together, and actually sort of a parallel universe.”

“They ran the scientific exploitation of the former Nazi scientists out on Long Island after the war.”

“Yes, the projects that came out of the Castle on Long Island were of extraordinary value to Arleigh Burke, the Chief of Naval Operations who was creating the Nuclear Navy.”

“But you went to work at F Street for the IC Staff?”

“Not at first, and that wasn’t the name. I think we were on the Original Headquarters Building at Langley. I was still on active duty in the fall of 1969. Bud Zumwalt was on a tear to get every admiral who had been senior to him to retire. I didn’t want to, but the CNO wanted my number to promote your pal Rex Rectanus, and that is just the way it was. There was no animosity between us; Rex was his guy and he was the one Bud wanted to have as his intelligence officer. Their relationship was deep after the years they spent together at NAVFOR-V.”

I took a sip of Happy Hour white and positioned another napkin in front of me. Mac was in his Virgin Mary phase, and Big Jim was serving them up with the equivalent of a full salad in the tall glass. “Yeah, I liked Rex. We had an interesting time in the campaign to recognize our only POW-MIA intel officer, CDR Jack Graff.”

Mac nodded. “That is similar to my little crusade to get Joe Rochefort his Distinguished Service Medal. He died before we could make it happen, but President Reagan finally gave his medal to his son and daughter. Sometimes justice comes late, and sometimes it doesn’t come at all.”

I glanced over the growing stack of napkins. “OK, so you go from being the Chief of Staff at DIA to being retired and working for the Director of Central Intelligence. That must have been pretty crazy with the Congress howling for Richard Nixon’s butt.”

Mac gave me one of his Cheshire Cat grins. “It was in October of 1969 that I was approached by Bronson Tweedy, who was Helm’s Deputy and very much like him. He was born in London to American parents. He went to school there, and lived with a family in Germany. He arrived to start his visit the day Adolf Hitler became chancellor. He was a Princeton guy, and knew all the right people. He had a degree in European history, and went into the advertising game at Benton and Bowles on Madison Avenue before the war. In 1942, he volunteered for naval intelligence and served in North Africa and Europe interrogating captured German U-boat crews.”

“Like the secret POW camp and debriefing operation down at Fort Hunt- Post Office Box 1142?”

“That is the one. It was very sensitive at the time, the very existence of the camp. It was a violation of the Geneva Accords on POWs, but we didn’t want the Germans to know that we had compromised the Enigma machines on the U-boats if they found out we had whole crews in captivity.”

“Naval Intelligence again,” I said in wonder. “You know, there are still things that people don’t want to talk about. I was working on a story about a counterfeit ring in France in the 1950s and touched a live wire. It might have had something to do with Luciano, but I don’t know and I was smart enough not to ask.”

Mac smiled again, thinly. “After the war, Bronson briefly returned to advertising before being recruited by the then-new CIA. He served in Switzerland, and DC just as the Agency was finding its sea-legs. He was CoS in Vienna and twice in London. Then he founded the Africa Division, which was a result of Eisenhower’s dislike for Patrice Lumumba.”

(Patrice Lamumba of Congo on one of his better days).

“Did he have anything to do with the coup and Lumumba’s death?” I underlined “Lumumba” to look up later. “I remember the revelations about the rubber gloves and lethal toothpaste they were going to slip into the President’s bathroom. It was as cool as the deadly cigars they were going o try to get Castro to smoke.”

“I assume it was. Lumumba did have a brilliant smile, from what I recall. He died right before John Kennedy was inaugurated, and Bronson was in Leopoldville around that time. But we never talked about the things that later came to be known as the Crown Jewels. After that, Bronson was tapped to head the Eastern European Division. When Dick Helms was confirmed as Director in 1966, Bronson moved up to be Deputy.”

“There was something going on in those years,” I said. “I mean, someone got away with killing the President of the United States. The Warren Commission had so many glaring errors.”

“I have told you what I think about that,” he said, looking around to see if anyone was listening. “I think LBJ had something to do with it. Maybe a lot. That was something else we did not talk about at the time.”

“I imagine so. What a crazy period in our history.”

“Oh yes it was. The Nixon Administration was scrambling to cover up all the strange things that had been happening since Ike Eisenhower embraced covert action and the CIA became essentially the President’s secret army. Bronson gave me a call that October as the axe was falling on all the Admirals senior to Bud Zumwalt. He asked me to come down to a men’s club on M Street and talk about a proposition he had for me.”

“Bronson Tweedy. That is a perfect name for a spy. How did you know him?”

“Bronson chaired the National Security Council IC Working Group, among other things Director Helms didn’t want to do. General Bennett, my boss at DIA, was the DIA rep, and of course I was supporting him. So we moved in the same circles. He was looking for help.”

“Well, Helms was never comfortable with being the pater familia of the various components of what was becoming known as the Intelligence Community. He loved being Director of the CIA and the rest of the portfolio just didn’t interest him. The idea of the DCI running the whole show was not new.”

“But that made being Director of CIA just a management job, not an operational one.”

Mac smiled and ate one of the colossal olives off the toothpick in his Virgin Mary. “Yes. DCI McCone had established the National Intelligence Programs Evaluation Staff to review Community programs for cost-effectiveness back when Jack Kennedy was still alive. The Vietnam War derailed that, but the function was clear. I was in charge of the resources at DIA, first as Chief of Plans, and then as the Chief of Staff. So I had the background Bronson was looking for when DCI Helms set up the National Intelligence Resources Board to review all community programs and budgets, and to referee community disputes.”

“Ouch. I remember going to those from both sides of the table. Always painful. But you said it was the Schlessinger Report that kicked off the tumult of the 1970s.”

“Yes. OMB was concentrating on things like the technical capabilities at NSA, and what they had been doing during the Vietnam conflict. And it recommended several reforms to improve oversight of the Community, and the IC Staff was a mechanism to do that.”

“Did you work on the 6th Floor at the Original Headquarters Building at Langley? That is where I worked on the Community Management Staff after they changed the name. Again.”

Mac looked contemplative. “Could have been. That seems right. But we wound up on F Street, at the old Selective Service building. That is where I spent most of my time, close to the White House.”

“This all seems to be a case of déjà vu,” I said, waving at Big Jim for more wine. “We keep re-organizing and nothing changes.”

“One thing has changed,” said Mac. “The Congress was engaged, and it was on a hunt for something to get Dick Nixon on.”

“The Church and the Pike Commissions, right? I knew Jim Bush who wound up as the Budget Director on what became the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.”

“There was much more to it than that. The Administration was maneuvering like crazy to get ahead of Congress. Let’s see,” he said, looking down at his age spotted hands and extended his index finger, and then one more for each of the Blue Ribbon panels. “Schlessinger. Then the Senate and House committees, which turned into permanent oversight bodies. Then the Rockefeller Commission, and the Murphy Commission.” He had all five fingers of his left hand extended. “Every time one would report out, something else spectacular would be disclosed and it was back to the drawing board.”

“But didn’t they all recommend the same thing? A stronger central control of the Community with better oversight and more efficiency?”

“Yes, and more coordination,” he said with a laugh. “Which I think I recall reading in the 9/11 Commission Report, too.”

“But you were doing all this when the New York Times and the Washington Post were leading the Watergate charge against Dick Nixon, and the Plumbers and all that.”

Mac smiled. “Yes, that is one of the reasons we tried to establish a legal basis for necessary things that had to be done. One of the things we did was establish the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act judicial process so there was a legal framework for what we were doing in terms of…” he looked around again. “Wiretaps. Don’t write that down.”

I put down my pen. “Mac, you know we agreed not to talk publicly about that period. I won’t mention that until you are gone.”

“I certainly hope that will be a good long while,” he said.

I gathered the pile of napkins together and tucked them into the pocket of my suit-coat to transcribe later. “Me too, Admiral.”

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Feels Like Old Times

(Naval Intelligence legend and Babe Magnet Admiral “Mac” Shower with The Lovely Bea at the Willow, 2011. Photo Socotra).

I spent a couple minutes yesterday bringing you up to speed on the scandals plaguing Naval Intelligence at the moment. There are two, events of which are unheard of, in my time in the business. One of the unpleasant stories appears connected directly to the usual sordid business that dogs the world of the government bureaucracy: corruption, bribery and sex in exchange for favors.

None of the above seems to have much connection to the men I know who have been dragged into it. The second of the affairs is more symptomatic of an old story that our pal Mac would have recognized immediately: steering government money to relatives without the benefit of oversight.

I heard from an old pal about who the malefactors in that nasty business actually were, and how they got there. This is a bipartisan mess. “Conspirator 2” is a former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, and his little operation was part of a small office that used to be under “the positive control of the Director of Naval Intelligence,” but whose functions were transferred to the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld’s efforts to seize control of the intelligence functions of his department and place them under the fingers of his Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD-I).

We didn’t think it was a good idea at the time, but we were told to shut up and follow orders. Common sense is just not very common in the Pentagon.

So, the real deal is that Naval Intelligence doesn’t have much to do with either scandal, though it is clearly being thrown under the bus to cover some Defense and Service derrieres. Mac Showers would have great advice on this sad affair, and he might have just told us the best way to respond would be to stay focused on the mission and keep moving.

I contend that an analysis of what has gone before can shed some light on all this today. The concentration on the 24 hour news cycle has lead us to be pretty good at tactical thinking, but extremely limited in strategic thought. Accordingly, I would just launch into what Mac told me about how this came to be, but things are complicated when you clamber up into the national attic and start rummaging around.

I think Mac’s recollections of the last time the intelligence community was off the reservation are particularly relevant. He was there when the IC had to be reined in by popular outrage and Congressional action.

We are there again, which is why this ancient history means something right now.

Think about it. The revelations from Mr. Snowden have been remarkable about the size and scope of when the intelligence folks have been up to since “The gloves came off” after 9/11. Think about what has happened since 9/11.

Extraordinary rendition. The black site prisons. Enhanced interrogation. Assassination by drone. Wholesale collection of the communications of the entire American people. Whatever was happening at the annex at Benghazi, which some have linked to a guns-to-rebels transfer of the former Qaddafy arsenal to the jihadis in Syria. Wiretapping journalists. Enemies lists.

Of course there is more. Some secrets have actually been kept.

It is bewildering, frankly. Some of these operations are things with which I agree. Some appear to be extra-Constitutional and are deeply disturbing. That is why I wish I could talk again to Mac, and am thankful he was kind enough to share his memories when he could.

Mac left the Navy- or at least the uniform he wore at DIA- before the Crown Jewels of the Central Intelligence Agency were revealed. The list of projects should make us feel right at home today.

The Jewels were a compendium of internal memos compiled in the mid-1970s after the legendary investigative reporter Sy Hersh published a front-page story about them in the New York Times. The things that Hersh described ranged from the bizarre to the frightening, and were clearly beyond anything in the legal charter for a “central intelligence agency.”

(Former DCI Jim Schlessinger)

The compilation of the Jewels was directed by Jim Schlessinger, an able technocrat who was working at the Office of Management and budget in 1970 when Dick Nixon asked him to do a report that would address the growing technological capabilities of the IC and their impact on the collection process.

The Report highlighted two “disturbing phenomena” within the IC: an “impressive rise in…size and cost” and the “apparent inability to achieve a commensurate improvement in the scope and overall quality of intelligence products.

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

Mac used to talk about the Schlessinger Report with reverence as the pivotal moment in his later career. Schlessinger later was Director of Central Intelligence. He was confirmed to that position in 1973, having been identified as one of the only bureaucrats independent of the Spooks who could try to bring them under control.

Having learned that Watergate burglars and CIA-alumni E. Howard Hunt and James McCord had been in contact with the Agency while carrying out illegal activities for President Nixon’s reelection campaign, Schlessinger ordered divisions within the CIA to report any activities they had engaged in since 1959 that might be outside the CIA’s authority.

Deputy Director William Colby then assembled a loose-leaf notebook of the memos that poured in. The package totaled 700 pages, and was considered to hold the agency’s darkest secrets. You can find the whole thing, suitably redacted in 2007, on-line at the National Archives. Only one of the Jewels is still redacted. My guess is that it is the account of MKULTRA, the LSD experiments the Agency conducted on unwitting citizens.

I have been trying to stay away from the other thread that poisons the period, but it is hard. Mac had some dark views on that, and the anniversary is bearing down on us, fifty years since the events in Dallas marked the beginning our new world. I don’t want to plow that old ground again, but the shoots of conspiracy are hardy ones, and the thicket of misdirection that has sprouted from that fertile field are still with us.

The latest, as you probably have heard, is “The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy,” by Larry Sabato. He says a lot about the mythic President, who wasn’t a myth when my parent’s generation elected him. There is a popular meme these days that he was a conservative, of sorts, though I only recall my parent’s misgivings about the smooth young Catholic Senator from Massachusetts.

The latest in the story about that Day in Dallas is Sabato’s use of
“cutting-edge audio technology” to debunk a key finding of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 that “an open microphone on a Dallas police officer’s motorcycle picked up the sound of a fourth shot, which suggests the involvement of a second shooter.” If that was true, of course the whole Warren Commission narrative falls apart.

I defy anyone to watch the restored Zapruder film and come to any conclusion except that the President was hit twice, once from behind and once from in front, but that is the only assassination I have ever seen in slow-motion, and I concede that I am no expert.

So, we have the newest revisionism of the story that will never be answered to anyone’s satisfaction, except for Kevin Costner’s rumination in the baseball picture “Bull Durham.”

“I believe Oswald acted alone.”

Maybe. But tomorrow we will go back to Willow, on a lazy afternoon with Mac’s champagne Jaguar parked out front, and a discussion about an intelligence community out of control, only seven years after that day in Dallas, when Mac said he used to see CIA legends like Cord Meyer, ex=husband of Mr. Kennedy’s paramour Mary still walking the halls.

This is going to have some eerie echoes. History doesn’t repeat itself, but as Mr. Twain used to say, it does rhyme.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Scandals

It is past time to talk about it. You know what I mean, if you have been following any of the revelations that are sending shock-waves through the Navy in the Pacific, and like a Tsunami, the reverberations are stirring the normally placid brown water of the Potomac.

I have no idea who these guys are- the latest three, anyway. The first two I do.

According to sloppy redacting in the latest indictment to be publicized as having a connection to Naval Intelligence, Conspirator 1 is some guy named Hall. Conspirator 2 is David W. Landersman, another cypher. The third guy is unknown at this point- maybe I know him, but likely I don’t.

They are accused of steering a sole-source contract for rifle parts to a company owned by a relative, and pocketing the (large) profits. The Command that was supposed to get the rifle silencers- SEAL Team SIX- claims never to have heard of it.

I don’t think the two scandals are connected. The three star that was put on leave in the Pacific bribery and corruption scandal involving a large individual named Fat Leonard is an aviator and old shipmate- his elevation to three stars is intended to enable him to sit over the re-organized information community in the Navy as a line officer- a return to the way things were back when we got bombed at Pearl. In my view, idiocy, but understandable in light of the frustration of the Line with the radio intel guys (then cryppies, now information warfare) the intel guys, the weather-guessers and the communicators who all had their little plots of turf.

The other admiral is an intelligence guy, and also placed on leave.

The Three Star could have got in trouble when he was CO of Nimitz. I don’t know how cozy the relations between Fat Leonard and the elements of the far-flung 7th Fleet. I can’t imagine how the intel guy got dragged into port schedules and chandlery services. Favors accepted? I don’t know. We always had “preferred vendors” ashore in places like Hong Kong and the P.I., but that was all personal services managed personally.

There are accusations for some of the initial round of officers who were busted, not placed on leave. Hookers and free rooms ashore? To what end?

Learning the schedule? Hell, the Wives Club has that information within minutes of publication as CONFIDENTIAL/NF information.

The three guys who steered the contract for silencers? I have not heard of any of them, by name or reputation. They are not “Naval Intelligence” as I knew it. But there are a lot of strange characters who have shown up since the beginning of the Global War on Whatever.

There are certainly antecedent organizations that specialized in black bags and untraceable cash. That goes back to the 1930s, and the break-ins at Japanese consulates to gain access to code books. More recently, it was TF 157, the Navy’s HUMINT organization. The legacy of that one, of which I wrote when Eddie Wilson passed on last year.

Eddie left CIA after a stint from 1955-71, and then was briefly at Navy, in the Task Force 157 organization. His conduct there was sufficient to have the organization dissolved.

Which takes me back to this: I have no personal knowledge of the facts, and will not comment beyond this. But I will tell you this has all happened before, and our pal Mac Showers was there for it.

The community had a black eye back then, when he was leaving active duty and going to work for the DCI to try to implement the recommendations of the Schlesinger Commission, and the mandates of the Pike and Church Committees.

So rather than speculate on what is happening now, I am going to take you back to the interviews that Mac gave me about the last time the Community was off the reservation, out of control, and needed some tough love.

I think you will find it interesting, and this has all happened before. In fact, it is why this is all happening now.

I have to go see a man about a dog, so we will take this up again tomorrow.

I miss Mac. He would have completely understood this mess- and probably told us what needs to be done to clean it up.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

The Spirit of Detroit

Looking at the vast homes in Palmer Woods- particularly the former Archbishop’s 62-room mansion, I could feel the dream stirring. At various times I have felt it palpably. Staying downtown a couple years ago, I looked at some of the Beaux Arts skyscrapers that are vacant now.

I walked into the Golden Tower of the Fisher Building to investigate the rental of a little office suite to house the corporate headquarters of the Socotra House publishing empire.

What a prestigious address- I could not have imagined such sumptuous surroundings for what is essentially a Mom and Pop business, or would be if I could find Mom around here someplace. I feel it periodically when I look at some grand structure that has such intrinsic history and worth. And a view to die for, the one in which the relics of the devastated city still seem to be alive.

The RenCen on the River, and in the other direction, out where the curve of the earth becomes apparent, the smaller modern towers constructed by those that fled.

The largest Masonic Temple in the world is not far away, for example, down at the heels, perhaps, but magnificent in its decay. The possibilities…they call out “opportunity,” and more likely, “heartbreak.”

And as we drove away from Palmer Woods onto the curiously silent Woodward Avenue, past the abandoned State Fair Grounds and the vandalized Civil War Monument, headed for Eight Mile. I couldn’t see if the old muzzle-loading cannons were still at the base of the square stone tower, which honored the service of the 24th Michigan infantry, a component of the Iron Brigade, which racked up the highest casualty rates of any unit in the Army of the Potomac. They might have been stolen for scrap. It seemed they were likely targets.

There was a time when an “eternal” flame blazed from the product of a natural gas well drilled nearby, but that was long ago, and the gas better used for heating against the cold of the Michigan winter. I could see a few of the 250 stones that festooned the surface of the monument were gone, victims of the weather and neglect, or souvenir hunters.

We passed through the big underpass that leads Woodward out of the failed urban colossus and into the near suburbs.

The closest of them is Ferndale. It was a gritty blue-collar kind of town, one of the string of pearls strung along mighty Woodward- followed by Pleasant Ridge and Royal Oak and then Grabbingham and Bloomfield Hills before settling again into working class Pontiac, named for the Native American chief who ravaged the early settlers in SE Michigan.

The money used to start somewhere in Royal Oak, mostly at the northern edges, and end at the Pontiac city limits. That is where it went to the north when the city began to change in the 1950s, there and east to the posh Grosse Points.

Grabbingham was solidly middle class with the larger Auto execs in their exclusive enclaves out by the Kirk in the Hills and the Cranbrook Educational Community. The architecture out there was of a piece with Palmer Woods- solid stone and neo-Tudor.

The flight to the suburbs really began in the 1920’s, when Detroit roared like no place else. The Purple Gang had a hideout in Grabbingham, even if much of their business was inside Eight Mile.

Bootleggers, gangsters, flappers and Feds converged on the Motor City, whose proximity to Canada made it the supplier of three-quarters of the illicit liquor poured in America during Prohibition. If the 1920s could be said to roar in America, you can characterize Detroit as a thundering engine of commerce, legal and not.

Unprecedented revelry could be found with a secret knock at any of the 25,000 blind pigs and speakeasies in the city. Even Mayor John Smith thumbed his nose at the blue-nosers and was once busted at a Mack Avenue juice joint. We were talking about that in the car, and we were headed for a distillery.

The kids had mentioned it at lunch, and I was interested. They tried to explain Ferndale. “It is sort of like Arlington,” they said. “Maybe the Clarendon neighborhood. Royal Oak began to be fashionable first, but now Ferndale is edgy and cool. They narrowed Nine Mile and made it more pedestrian friendly. People are out at night, and when the Dream Cruise happens it is a raucous street party.”

I considered that, and the flickering flame of interest in this place that Anthony Bourdain compared to Chernobyl.

“You will like this place. It is a real distillery. A guy named Rifina Valentine decided to come home after a career on Wall Street and start making booze.”

“I am strongly in favor of that. I have thought about it down in Virginia, but we have a certain history about moonshine. They take it seriously down there, and have since Shay’s Rebellion.”

“Here in Michigan they treat it more like making your own wine.”

“Very progressive,” I said. “And thoroughly in keeping with Detroit’s tradition about liquor.”

We found a place to park the Explorer on Vetter, a quiet side-street on the east side of Woodward just down from the Elk’s Club and a vacant dance studio. Valentine’s is housed in an older brick warehouse structure unadorned with a name- just a red light burning above the door and a sign indicating that the place makes (or made in some distant time) pool-tables.

There were a couple smokers outside, and we walked into the bar room. All exposed enter the bar room which was all exposed brick, with big windows. The bar was small and to our right and the rest of the room was set with high-top cocktail tables. The big wall was decorated with the Valentine’s logo- a spritely scantily clad woman who looked as though she had just climbed down from the nose-art of a B-17 bomber.

In the rafters the aviation theme continued with a bright aluminum curved metal sign adverting “Liberator Gin” with a giant Pratt and Whitney propeller hanging next to it.

“Appropriate,” I said, walking over to look more closely. “They made more than 5,000 B-24 Liberators at the plant at Willow Run.”

We took a seat at a high top and a formidable woman with jet black hair in a provocative cut and nice ink peaking out of the sleeves of her blouse. She introduced herself as Katie, and said “You folks new here? You want vodka?” The spirit of the Soviet Union and the forerunner of the Premium Liquor movement in Detroit is on the other side of that wall, right here in Ferndale.”

She gestured toward the exposed brick. “It is Sunday, so we have limited snacks. There is some infused Vodka, gin and liquor still available- must be the holiday. And we have our signature cocktails and bloody marys on special.”

“This is too cool,” I said. “Can you get tours of the operation? I am interested in making moonshine down in Virginia.”

“Of course,” she said. “But you will have to be around when the owner is here. He is proud of what he did, bringing in kids with chemistry and biochemistry degrees to make exactly the perfect product. We use old-world techniques and equipment to create a hand-distilled vodka with a proprietary multi-grain blend.”

“So Valentine’s is made from grain, not potatoes, right?” I asked.

“Our position is that potato-based vodka is best left to those who grew up on it. Mr. Valentine’s approach to grain-based vodka has won awards at international competitions for taste and smooth drinkability. Plus, we use local products to enhance the cocktail experience.”

“We are firmly in the local food movement back home,” I said. “And why shouldn’t we drink that way, too?”

“Right on” said Katie. “Our special blend features locally grown Red Michigan wheat, barley and corn. The mash is boiled and fermented one small batch at a time. Then it is triple-distilled to separate the pure vodka. Mr. Valentine then makes the critical decision on where to “cut” the heart of the run based on his trained sense of smell and taste. Then that perfect heart is charcoal-filtered for extra smoothness.”

“Sounds like Mr. Valentine is a master craftsman,” I said. “I like that attention to detail in a fine cocktail.”

“We won the Gold Medal at the San Francisco Spirits Festival in 2012.We scored a 94 out of a hundred, and beat Grey Goose, Belvedere, Ketel One and Tito’s,” she said proudly.

“But we have other great drinks, too. Our Moscow Mules are served in copper mugs and made with Vernor’s Ginger Ale. The locals love them.”

“We only got Vernor’s when we were sick as kids. The taste of it brings back a lot of memories. They used to brew it at the bottling plant at the foot of Woodward.”

She pointed to a drink on the bar that had skewers with little mozzarella cheeses and peppers exploding out of a glass on the bar. “Local is good. We used McClure’s pickles in our Motor City Marys, and craft our other drinks with B. Nektar Meadery and Grocer’s Daughter Chocolates. We also distill a sister brand called Ghost Vodka.”

“Hold the chocolate for me,” I said, “I’ll take a Motor City Mary.”

The kids had opted for the specialty drinks, and Katie swept off to construct them. When she returned, she also brought out little beakers of the whiskey and gin to try. Both were remarkable in their subtlety.

“An unfortunate incident at the end of High School has rendered my relationship with gin problematic.” I wrinkled my nose at the crisp smell of juniper in the beaker, which had no corresponding pungency in the liquor itself. “That is delicious”

Katie smiled. “Since Mr. Valentine launched the brand four years ago, his vodka has found its place in locations throughout Michigan, and he is going to expand to connoisseurs in other states. For the first time since Prohibition, Detroit will be the place that supplies America with its finest spirits.”

We talked about drinks and dreams, since the kids still have them, and finished one drink and prepared to head back up Woodward Avenue. I stopped at the bar to ask Katie for a bottle to go, something that would never occur to me to try down in Virginia.

She slid the elegant clear bottle with the saucy logo into a brown paper bag and handed it over the bar in exchange for some cash, speak-easy style.

“Thanks,” I said. “It is good to see something positive happening. I mean that. The old town will always be special to me, and now I can drink something besides Stroh’s fire-brewed Bohemian Beer. I would like to hang out here, sometime.”

“Come on back,” she said. “But remember, Stroh’s got sold a long time ago. We are the last local. But Ferndale isn’t Chernobyl, you know. That is further down the road.”

Copyright 20313 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

web site hosting by renee lasche .com

Spirits of Detroit

There is a lot to process this morning. The basic stats? Easy: 536.4 miles in 8 hours and fifteen minutes, with a net Speed of Advance (SOA) of 64 mph, including two gas-and-comfort stops. Ohio is still flat and Pennsylvania isn’t.

There were a lot of miles in a short time, but I escaped just ahead of the first snow and spotty ice. As someone said up there, “the winter can’t go on forever, right?”

God, it hasn’t even started.

I will never quite get it out of my system, I guess. The kids were humoring me. We did the Franklin Cider Mill for the tastiest damned hot cider I ever sipped, watching the ducks frolic in the rushing cold water of the narrowly-channeled tributary of the Rouge River. And those doughnuts. Dark brown and chewy and rich. Gawd.

I do not think I have been to the cider mill in nearly a half century. I remember the fall-time trips there to the dark wood building, and watching the wheel being turned by the insistent water that drove a shaft that in turn crushed the apples and produced the marvelous elixir. Hot or cold, it was either refreshing or sustaining against the coming snows.

The place was smaller, though, or I was larger.

We looked at the places we lived, long ago, after the Socotra’s were chased. Out of the city by unscrupulous real estate operators, eager to flip neighborhoods from white to black. They flipped us right out of the house on Kentucky Street off McNichols and Six Mile roads.

I didn’t slip into a reverie, exactly, but close enough for Government Work. We wound up driving past where Baldwin Elementary School once stood-and those memories flooded back: the massive brick structure that had once been Grabbingham High School and the curious relics of other times. The plaque commemorating the students who served in the Great War, and the way too cool banked wooden track that circled the gym, suspended high above it.

Gone now, completely, like the even more ancient Hill Building next door. When they tore that old hulk down, we fond the carved initials of students from the century before on the beams of the rafters. The Hill School went all the way back to the days when the town had been known as “Piety Hill,” and the volunteers for the War Between the States drilled on what became the playground.

Not too much left that shouted anything like pious now in the terminally hip suburb, and passing through the old and new buildings, flush with irony, toward fabled Woodward Avenue the impetus of change and fashion was clear enough.

“I could tell you what all these things were,” I said, thinking of the Rexall drugstore, and Cunningham’s and Peabody’s Market. “But who cares?” The kids were nice enough not to tell me.

Driving down the Avenue that slashes out of the downtown to the northwest from the River, we talked about where the street-racers once tromped on the go-pedal of the Chargers and GTOs, and the things that have transformed and the things that have not.

The Car that protrudes from the second floor of the alignment shop is now a ’64 Plymouth Valiant, rather than the 1948 Ford I remember, but car it is and still poking out proudly toward the Avenue.

We stopped for a bite at Anita’s Kitchen, south of Nine Mile Road. It was an ice-cream shop back in the day, but got a face-lift with a strategically located on Woodward south of Nine Mile Road got a witty redesign from Ron Rae of the Grabbingham architectural firm on and Roman, and now Anita’s offers some of the best Lebanese fare in town. We had the big Greek salads and with gyros strips. Awesome.

From lunch we ventured down south of Eight Mile, into the City proper, and drove around the Palmer Woods neighborhood where I rented the maid’s quarters to one of the posh old mansions. We drove past the place, still in good shape, and marveled at the places that were for sale, and were stunned by the former Archbishop’s place, a 62-room pile of Tudor revival commissioned by the Fisher Brothers (of Fisher Body) and donated to the Catholic Church as the seat of Archbishop Gallagher.

Archbishop Deardon was living there when I was a couple blocks away, and after this death in the 1980s, the place passed from Church through an elaborate deconsecrating ceremony to the hands of Mr. John Thomas Salley of the Detroit Pistons basketball concern.

A curious thing- the streets which once exited the neighborhood onto the eerily quiet Woodward Avenue to the northeast and Seven Mile to the south have been sealed to through traffic. I guess it is the better secure the area, which is an oasis of calm in an area that had been in free fall.

I felt myself getting the fever, looking at the Bishop’s house- what it might be like to rattle around the oak-wainscoted walls, carved plaster ceilings and heavy leaded glass, conservatories, libraries and strange staff kitchens.

It is sort of the spirit of Detroit, in a way, the temptation to throw a tiny amount of money at one of these places and live like a king. We saw one that a quick browser search suggested could provide baronial luxury for about what a new condo in Arlington would cost.

But of course it was quickly pointed out that since no one lived in the city anymore who actually paid taxes, regardless of how cheap the property was, the taxes reflected a confiscatory grab by a couple generations of corrupt city councils, and the cost of providing their own security (and snow removal) made the homeowner’s fees in Palmer Woods likewise atmospheric.

But still….the dream stirred. To imagine yourself as one of the Fisher or Dodge Brothers, whose homes were in this neighborhood. To be a Baron of the auto industry, the 1920s auto industry. I could see why the spirit moves people to come to this place, this amazing, sad, impressive, astonishing place.

We got back to watch the Lions eke out a victory, just as they did when Bobby Lane was the quarterback, and later we watched as Anthony Bourdain featured the Motor City on his global food show “Parts Unknown.” He is very good, both as a judge of food and of people and places. I wanted to know if he was going to stop by the Lafayette Coney Island.

Instead, we got something that was half Motor City comfort food and half social commentary on a great place on the skids. Here is what he said about ten minutes into the show:

“Is Detroit going to turn things around? I could lie and tell you ‘Yes.’ But you know what? This city is screwed. The only place I’ve ever been that looks anything like Detroit does now is Chernobyl. I’m not being funny. That’s the truth. But you have to admire the bold, proud, ferociously enterprising survivors who have decided to hang on, hang in and figure out a way to not only survive, but do something extraordinary.”

I know some people who are doing extraordinary things. I am going to have to tell you about them tomorrow, though. The real Spirits of Detroit.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Where’s the Beef?

I had drinks and dinner with an old comrade and his lovely daughter last night. We were at Willow, of course, though I mention that only in passing. I will not provide a detailed blow-by-blow on the meal that consisted of the extraordinary award-winning Willow Burger, local hormone-free beef on house-made potato bun garnished with Havarti cheese, onions and garlic sautéed in duck confit butter with hand-cut fries on the side.

It answers the old campaign question about “where’s the beef” in a most satisfying manner.

I have resolved to be less obsessed with the local watering hole, and that will be easy enough, since I am on the road to the Wolverine State this morning. I didn’t have a burger- I weakened at lunch and actually cooked the food that would expire while I am going to be gone, and accordingly wasn’t particularly hungry. The burgers did look good, and even the young Baroness (her title is worth a story all in itself, including antecedents stretching back to the Norman Invasion and some banished opponents of the Crown) polished hers off with panache.

I was pleased to spend some time with her. She is smart, vivacious, ambitious and no fool.

Our kids are doing fine. I am quite impressed with their ability to navigate the treacherous waters of modern life, and they seem to accept the new reality that continues to boggle my aging brain. We talked about all that in some detail, along with life in the Depression, and the compare-and-contrast to how our grandparents handled the sudden dislocation of their age, and what we are doing to prepare for the next one.

Anyway, my pal is fully retired except for some academic work to keep his hand in, and has actually let his special background investigation go out of scope. “Last piss-test for me,” I said, taking a sip of the very impertinent Happy Hour White. “Last bring-up investigation. Last polygraph. I am done.”

My pal smiled. He has been much better about letting this all go.

We were seated at one of the little tables to the right of the bar, and the usual suspects stopped by to be introduced to the out-of-towners. Jon-without has encouraged The Lovely Bea to travel to Panama to accompany Placid Jamie, who, on a whim, chartered a personal trip to a resort on the Pacific side of the country. Old Jim was courtly, and demurred when my pal noted that he was famous. “Only in a very small universe,” he said, as Chanteuse Mary, her sister and Montana Dan arrived to occupy the apex of the Amen Corner.

It felt like home amid the bustle of Mike and Jasper and Tex and Brenna servicing a raucous Friday night crowd.

(Beefy “Fat” Leonard Francis, mastermind of the biggest corruption scheme in Navy history?)

I don’t know if the subject of Fat Leonard came up or not as my table mates polished off their burgers. We both care passionately about our Navy, the old one in which we served and the new one, which is a mystifying thing.

But nothing is as mystifying as the allegations of bribery and kick-backs in the Pacific Fleet. I don’t know if there is any beef to anchor the latest allegations in reality.

CHINFO- the Chief of Navy Information- has been circumspect about the investigation, but the reporting had been fairly straightforward. Investigators had so far accused only mid-level Navy officers of accepting the services of prostitutes, lavish trips and six-figure bribes from Fat Leonard Francis, a Malaysian contractor of imposing girth and bold intent.

It might have been mentioned in passing- I forget, since there is a lot going on to talk about as it is. My pal and I exchange passionate missives nearly every morning about elements of the Continuing Crisis. I know what he thinks about criminal conduct, since we talk about it all the time. He started out as a Surface Warfare officer, and that tribe is the most relentless and unforgiving in punishing deviations from The Book as it is written.

Since we were sitting talking about times past, we did not know about the bombshell CHINFO dropped at the end of the week’s news cycle. I heard about it for the first time from Japan, where the JG wrote to ask: “WTF, Oscar?”

They could not have chosen a better time for release to try to bury the story. The information that two officers I know pretty well were the latest to be rolled up in the investigation. CHINFO says they have been placed on administrative leave, and stripped of their access to classified information.

I was with them two weeks ago at the annual Dining-In. To say I was thunderstruck would be an understatement. The email queue, when I opened it in the pre-dawn, was filled with commentary by my former shipmates about how, or why, the Director of Naval Intelligence and Director of Intelligence Operations were implicated in Fat Leonard’s web of corruption. Specifically, they were accused of “inappropriate conduct” in connection with the scandal.

Fat Leonard was CEO of an outfit called Glenn Defense Marine Asia. Apparently his scheme was to bribe Navy officials to shift port calls for deployed warships to ports where he could charge exorbitant fees for repairs and ship’s chandlery services.

I am going to withhold judgment. One of my most learned peers opined that the charges might be so widespread that our pals were being squeezed by the NCIS to provide information against others.

I have no idea. This is so far being anything I find credible that I am frankly gob-struck. This is not my Navy. It is beyond anything I find imaginable.

I am going to wait until the Federal Prosecutors out in San Diego dribble out some more information about where the beef is in this thing, maybe releasing it at a time when people will pay more attention. Beyond doubt, this signals a significant escalation in the investigation. I remember our last big scandal. Tailhook seems kind of quaint in comparison.

The accusations, if true, are unprecedented in the history of the American Naval Service.
The allegations against the Admirals are of “personal misconduct in accepting gifts or services from Mr. Francis, the nature of which could have exposed them to blackmail.”

I poured over the New York Times reporting this morning. There is no sign at this point that the admirals had done anything for Mr. Francis that might lead to bribery charges against them. The DNI used to command Nimitz, though he hardly got to pick the ports at which the nuclear carrier would call. The Director of Intelligence Ops has never commanded anything except a shore command in Hawaii, which has never moved at all in my experience.

Whatever it is, I feel sick to my stomach. And I am very glad to be retired.

I have to get on the road. There will be a lot to think about during the drive.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303