The Bootblack Stand
Plunkitt, George Washington
are divided bitterly—not only by ideological differences but by political and military conflicts that would probably be inevitable between whatever nations were the world's two greatest powers. In...
...William Colby Acting Director, CIA My Dear Colby: The trouble with these European aristocrats is that their peculiar working habits leave them open to easy assassination, and as you are aware assassination is an increasingly popular form of diplomacy...
...Go to it, Senator Church...
...Why this should be the case remains a mystery to old Portuguese hands...
...In such political and military conflicts, the Soviets and the Americans can gain only at each other's expense...
...We have embraced these principles more often on a domestic than on an international scale, but if we are to win our ideological battle with the Soviet Union—which represents the very antithesis of these principles as of almost all our principles—we must strengthen our international efforts...
...Remember me to your mother...
...If the Soviets develop a new attack missile, that is a threat to our security...
...For instance it would be kid stuff to slip one of the old boys a loaded backgammon stone or to swamp his yacht...
...He also charges that my committee glossed over evidence that the 1964 Republican convention was bugged by the FBI under orders from the late Mr...
...In the November 20th edition of the New York Times that man attempted to cast doubt on the integrity of my Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by claiming partisan political interests have caused me to neglect several instances of domestic skulduggery during the illustrious administrations of President Johnson and President Kennedy...
...You can't bug him...
...Incidentally, your letter failed to self-destruct...
...You closet candidates have become a dreadful nuisance...
...He wants us to desecrate the graves of patriots and Democrats...
...By the way this letter is timed to self-destruct thirty seconds after you have read it...
...B. Dear Senator Church: My mother died 26 years ago, and I wish I could say the same for you...
...But the world of commerce and production does not play what the game theorists call a zero-sum game...
...Plunkitt, is how I can give it to this rat good and hard...
...Duck...
...though it did smell awful for a few days...
...Further he charges that we have not delved deeply enough into revelations that the management of NBC News gave press credentials to the late Mr...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...He wants us to investigate men who aren't even alive to defend themselves...
...What do you say to the idea that we send him airfare and let the chips fall where they may...
...Plunkitt: Political conditions continue to worsen in Portugal...
...I long for the good old days when jackasses like you ran for the Presidency by promising to rid the country of demon rum and the foreign element, instead of promising to rid the country of its intelligence agencies...
...if exchange is free, it can take place only when it is to the advantage of both parties to engage in it...
...No, it seems that for the present the best way to put the screws to an enemy is to call him before your committee...
...Make him hire a lawyer, spend large amounts of time recalling the minutiae of his life...
...Plunkitt: Wouldn't you have thought that the Nixonian menace to our liberties was finally over...
...In the case of your Eieveron, a foreign op-erative could easily secrete a bomb in his skateboard...
...Our Portuguese operative Admiral Francisco da Gama, ret., reports that there exists a political resolution eminently desirable to the vast majority of Portuguese and that it could be put into effect overnight with but a gesture of support from Washington...
...The United States is one of the few countries in the history of the world which has been committed, however imperfectly, to the freedom of exchange and to the principles of friendship and prosperity which spring from that freedom...
...To my lights your plan is full of peril...
...If the Soviets gain influence in Angola, that is a diminution of our own influence...
...And he's not a steel mogul, so we can't harass him with agents in the night...
...Johnson's spies at the 1964 convention...
...According to da Gama, 78-year-old Dom Fernando Oliveira Da Costa Eceveron, the half-brother of the present pretender to the Portuguese throne and the man who was actually groomed for that job, is willing and able to return to Lisbon from Honolulu if someone could only be found to pay his airfare...
...From Honolulu Eceveron has kept a sharp eye on Portuguese politics for the past 65 years, and da Gama claims that the avowedly pro-Western prince feels that there is no reason Portugal cannot be returned to the same stability that characterizes Spain or even Monaco...
...Johnson...
...Cordially, Senator Frank Church...
...Make him sit before abusive interrogators, endure questions that could never be put to him in a court of law, and then have his reputation thoroughly blackened by leaks to unfriendly newspapermen...
...What I want to know, Dr...
...GWP The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1976 35...
...by George Washington Plunkitt The Bootblack Stand Dear Dr...
...I suggest you get the Gambino family's judgment...
...Why don't you extend your investigations to cover the doings of the KGB...
...There is a very real sense, then, in which we would be playing into Soviet hands not by trading with them but by restricting their trade...
...But now it seems that I am to be the victim of a muckraking campaign directed by one of the most vicious relicts of the Nixon years, one William Safire...
...Now what galls me is that this Safire is not talking about dangers to civil libertiesbut about the deceased...
...You can't at this time rely on the old schemes that were so useful in the early sixties...
...You can't send the IRS after him...
...With respect to your question, there of course remain ways to take care of Safire...
...Specifically this Safire claims that we have not looked into the identity of the attorney general who in 1963 authorized a program of wiretapping against Martin Luther King, which ended in attempted blackmail...
Vol. 9 • January 1976 • No. 4
