|
Vol. 1 No. 4 |
October 2002 |
||||
|
|
|||||
|
--e*I*4-
(Vol. 1 No. 4) October 2002, is published and © 2002 by Earl Kemp.
All rights reserved. |
|||||
| The Season
of the Game*
By Earl Kemp I played The Game from 1966 until 1972, and by saying I played it means that I recognized at the time that I was doing just that. Lots of people who get suckered into playing The Game don't even know they're doing it. There are firm time brackets around this memory because there is no way I want anyone to think I'm talking about terrorism or Homeland Security or today's notable Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm talking about an entirely different thing and an entirely different time. If ever there are any comparisons with anything arising from within Homeland Security, I am not going to be the person making them. I'm talking about a time when a lot of people all over the United States got into playing The Game way over their heads when, at best, all they were really doing was treading water. The Game could be known as Cops and Robbers but it was the Cops who were the robbers and the Robbers who were the good guys, and every one of them will tell you that's God's own truth without hesitating. # In science fiction fandom around Chicago in the early 1950s and well into the decade, it was commonplace to talk about and prepare for The Attack whenever it came from them. Them was the government who were going to come for us…because we were fans? I can't remember the exact reason at the time. Henry and Martha Beck, Dean and Jean Grennell, Richard and Rosemary Hickey…Nancy and I…we would sit around cleaning our guns and ordering more ammo from the National Rifle Association. We would go to shooting ranges and practice our marksmanship. We had escape routes planned from Chicago for any contingency as well as stocked provisions, drinking water, first-aid supplies, etc. And we secretly stashed guns and ammunition where they could never find them but we could get to them easily when we needed to protect ourselves from them the most. #
The Game, in reality, had been ongoing for a very long time but I was too naïve to know it. I certainly hadn't been playing it and should I have even momentarily contemplated it, I know I would have reacted with real shock and fear that I could be so daring. I mention these things because I have been accused of thinking of the government as being the enemy, and these incidents-a few of many-indicate that concept to be an acquired belief earned over a span of time and that I am not alone. # In his monumental study of the season of sleaze, An Amazing Kingdom of Thrills; American Pulp Erotica 1966-1973, Stephen J. Gertz writes: "A twisted troika, indeed! First Amendment true believers, First Amendment pretenders, opportunists, lowlifes, highlifes, writers attempting to make a statement, writers just trying to earn a living… What bound these disparate parties together was a healthy (for some, perhaps too healthy) dose of anti-authoritarianism, rebelliousness, and a rational mistrust of government borne of the older generation's battle scars earned during the '50's and early '60's through criminal or obscenity prosecutions, and the younger generation's shattered innocence, not by sex but by the Credibility Gap, the chasm between what the government was telling us about the war in Viet Nam and its realities as reported in the newspapers and seen on T.V., and the desire to shuck the hypocrisy of the 1950's. And, too, pornographers, whatever their differences and competitive drives, were all bound together in common cause, cooperating, aiding, and assisting each other because they couldn't count on anyone else to help them…." Then, a bit later, Gertz gets right down to the heart of the matter [boldface added for emphasis]: "It was an insular, tribal business community, us against them, 'them' being government agencies. And this wasn't paranoia, this was real fear because despite the fact that pornography was a legal business to be in, as far as police and prosecutors were concerned it wasn't, and the porn trade became one of the most closely monitored industries in U.S. business history. In some respects, it was all a kid's game, cops 'n robbers, writ large with higher stakes, both sides pushing the envelope of what was allowable just to see what they could get away with, the pornographers tweaking the government's nose, the government squeezing pornographer's balls…." # Any person can play The Game, as long as they play by the rules and keep in mind that the rules are subject to change without notice by those who make them to suit their own ends. Also, they have to know from the very beginning that they are going to be spending embarrassingly huge amounts of their personal expendable income doing so. By 1966, I recognized that I was a player. I just didn't have the vaguest idea about how broad in scope The Game was and that, once in play, there was no ending until the umpire announced the score, whatever the outcome. And, every single player who ever played The Game, regardless of which side they were on, harmed themselves personally in numerous ways, many leaving permanent scars. Milton Luros named the game for me in 1966. "Fuck the Feds" he called it. Milton should have known, he'd already been playing it for years by that time and was getting damned good at it. He was more than eager to teach me all he knew about playing The Game. Confuse and misdirect. Never use your real name except in passport or visa mandatory situations. Never when making airline or hotel reservations. Always pay in cash and leave no paper trails. Wear sunglasses and a hat outdoors to hinder photographers. (Added to the list by Dr. David Ruben of Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex Etc.) Loudly announce your plans then, at the very last minute, do something totally different. Never make the mistake of thinking you're alone. # Playing The Game perverts the players, regardless of their intents and desires. The more you play the more you want to play. You push them one more notch and they push back the same amount. You place an irresistible chip on your shoulder and dare them to knock it off, and they do. Then they place an unavoidable obstacle in your path and you sidestep it adroitly while flipping them off. Kid stuff. You have to be a kid to play it, or to think like a kid, because no one in their right mind would spend that much time and effort and…especially…money to accomplish no objective, to achieve no goal, to win on real-time brownie points. A gold starless day. Just to make the statement that they have the right to make the statement…. And before you know it, The Game's over and you lost. Cliché: You lose the battle but you win the war. # In his article "Me And The Kingpin" (eI4, October 2002), Mike Resnick says his one-time employer Reuben Sturman "thought he was getting away with murder, and viewed his relationship with the feds and the courts as an exciting game…." Then, later, Resnick continues: "It was all a game to him. He was worth well over $100 million, had invested in a number of shopping malls, indeed had more invested in legit businesses than in pornography. How much better could he be living by not reporting a few million dollars of income? (But the feds were the opponents, and therefore the rules of the game made it mandatory that he lie to the IRS.)" Exactly! Ruby was playing The Game. (I really need to clarify that Sturman was a bad man, guilty of many crimes but, standing at the First Amendment front-line, he was still a hero in spite of himself.) Playing The Game becomes more important that anything else, it becomes obsessive, constantly driving you to greater, bigger, more astonishing lengths of defiance. You spend more and more time planning, devising more complex schemes to taunt them with, to flaunt in their faces, to challenge them with. And all the while, they are doing exactly the same thing, directed at you…at me. They are the feds, John Edgar Hoover's magnificent homosexual elite of goons, peeping toms, and rumormongers. They represent everything that is good and wholesome and legal in the whole country and I, or any other player in The Game, am scum. Who would ever believe that they were the bad guys and we/I represented the good? Yet I, and Ruben Sturman (Barney Rosset, Bill Hamling, Milton Luros, Larry Flynt, and many others) stand in position on the playing board at the very forefront of our imaginations, alone and almost unaided, defending the right of all USA citizens to have and to hold the First Amendment. Alone, against an enormous army of evil and depravity that would not hesitate to rip all your rights aside then squeeze you dry for gristmill lubricant Flags waving furiously… strobes reding, whiting, and blueing…. It is difficult, at the very best, to understand the concept of The Game, much less to what an extent it captivates the players, allowing then, literally, to sacrifice themselves completely. I don't know a one of those First Amendment warriors who does not feel that the battle was well fought and pride drives most of their subsequent actions. It is doubly rewarding knowing that it required the full resources and financial capabilities of the entire perverted FBI and the direct instructions of a malevolent and evil President a decade of intense companionship to accomplish their illegal objectives. Such has it always been. _ _ _
THIS ISSUE OF eI is for my old buddy James O'Meara of Kramel and Joe Sarno of Joe-Jim. It is dedicated to the memory of Lloyd Biggle, Jr., Donald Franson, Joan Harrison, Dave Van Arnam, and Sam and Florence Russell. As always, everything with my byline on it is part of my ongoing, rough draft memoirs and I would appreciate any corrections, additions, explanations, photographs, drawings, jpegs, or whatnots sent to me at earlkemp@citlink.net and thanks for your efforts. Bill Burns is a good man to have around because I couldn't do it without him. I call him my partner in crime because he puts so much into making me look good I just can't say enough good about him in return. He makes efandom worthwhile all by himself. Quite a few tried and true science fiction fans have worked at making this issue of eI as good as I hope it turns out to be. Contributing significant pieces of work to this issue are: Hal Dresner, Stephen J. Gertz, Dwain Kaiser, Michael Resnick, and Charlie Williams. Plus these people all worked at assembling the illustrations that are scattered throughout its pages: Robert Bonfils, Cuyler Brooks, Ron Brown, Howard DeVore, Robert Lichtman, Dave Locke, Lynn Munroe, Gregory Pickersgill, Mike Resnick, William Rotsler, Joyce Scrivner, Robert Silverberg, and Robert Speray. Thank you very much and please don't stop. [Upon Hoover's death] It was a relief to have this man silenced who had no understanding of the underlying philosophy of our government or of our Bill of Rights, a man who had such enormous power, and used it to harass individuals with whom he disagreed politically and who had done so much as anyone to intimidate millions of Americans out of their right to hear and judge for themselves all political opinions. |
|||||
| Futting With
the F.B.I. Futter*
By Earl Kemp Shortly after I started working at the Porno Factory in Evanston, Illinois early 1961, I found one of my first neuvo [I had a lot of pulp-writing heroes] writer icons. His name was Don Holliday, and he really had a knack of pleasing me. In my naïve, internish mind, that meant he also pleased everyone else. I really liked working on his manuscripts once I discovered him in Bachelor Apartment (NB1540). When I find a writer that I really like, it had always been my practice to let them know it. I would write them fan letters…embarrassingly flattering praising fan letters. I wanted to harass my new favorite in similar fashion, only I couldn't. There was a big wall separating the two of us named Scott Meredith.
What Meredith feared most was that we would actually somehow violate his orders and mail sample copies to the writers. In some cases, the writers made themselves known to us, and one of the more active writers, Robert Silverberg, was a personal friend. I kept asking them all to try to help make contact between me and Don Holliday possible. In The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, Hal Dresner has a most unique relationship with his editor, Benjamin Wink. Wink contacts him repeatedly seeking an unfinished manuscript and Dresner as repeatedly stalls him. In my case, I wasn't even allowed that routine editor/writer relationship. I envied them and what they shared. Wink didn't know how good he had it.
All my attempts with Meredith to reach Holliday proved to be fruitless.
He did return for a quickie, in 1964, writing with his buddy Donald E. Westlake in Lust Trail (LB652), only to disappear again just as rapidly as he had earlier. Then I started missing Don quite a lot, and mourning his absence. And I became involved in other things and in being other people and, slowly, sort of started forgetting Don.
[There is an entirely different other Don Holliday story…The Man from C.A.M.P., but we are not concerned with that one here.] In Hollywood, Dresner had an impressive career writing comedy for, among others, Jack Lemon. Originally I had heard that Dresner had been purchased by Lemon outright, to be his personal writer. Although I liked Lemon quite a bit as an actor, I resented him taking my best nonfriend away from me. In a wonderful article Lynn Munroe wrote for Books are Everything called "The Men Who Wrote Dirty Books," Munroe touched briefly upon this Hollywood period. Munroe wrote: "William Coons suggested I call another writer who shall remain nameless. This writer told me Hal Dresner had been intrigued by the divorces of his friends Larry and Loretta Block and Don and Nedra Westlake: 'He turned the whole thing into a movie, The April Fools. In the movie, Jack Lemmon's character is based on Larry Block and Peter Lawford is playing Don'." In 1965, the extremely busy year when the Porno Factory switched over from being Blake Pharmaceuticals in Evanston, Illinois and began being Greenleaf Classics, Inc. in San Diego, a little ditty named The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, written by Hal Dresner, appeared from Simon & Schuster. In all the hassle of moving across country and starting all over with an entire crew of new employees, I never heard of it. # There was a time I thought the avant garde was dragging me along behind it at a breakneck speed. I couldn't wait to read a book in a timely fashion. Like now….
In 2002, Lynn Munroe gave me a copy of The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, by Hal Dresner, at my request, little knowing what a phantom of lust and need he would dredge up within the sordid confines of my essentially full-of-pulp façade. I sat down, intending to spend only a few minutes assessing the book and, three hours later, I took a break. Hooked all the cliché way, lined and sinkered. Me, in lust again, rabid to get at Dresner…finally…and tell him that I really, really love that thing he does so well. In the Munroe article for Books Are Everything named "The Men Who Wrote Dirty Books; The Story of 'Don Holliday' and Other Writers," he describes an interview he had with Dresner that included an extensive delving into Dresner's novel then questioning him about some of the more significant clues he had dropped in it. At one point, Munroe says, "Dresner spoofs the books, the agents, the publishers, the cover artists, the readers, psychiatrists and law firms with a biting wit…nobody ever wrote a funnier book on the subject than Hal Dresner." And Munroe was right. The pseudonym originated when Dresner reversed his initials then came up with Don Holliday to match. "I was the first Don Holliday," my hero told Munroe, "At various times a friendly ghost would rent the Holliday name and some…were written under such circumstances. In 1964-66, at the twilight of my career in pornography, I sold the Don Holliday name…and the tradition continued." They all did that. Every one of the writers, it seemed, passed around their pseudonyms indiscriminately, trying their damnedest to further confuse an almost recordless office struggling just to get through the day and avoid the cops who kept turning up here and there without warning. Ironically, it is Munroe who provides part of the answer. Later, in an interview with William Coons (Andrew Shaw, Dell Holland, Etc.), Munroe quotes him as saying, "…they weren't keeping those kind of records. And the publisher and the agency usually didn't know about us ghostwriters. The characters in the books weren't the only ones getting screwed. It can be tough to write one or two of these a month. After a while you know, there's only so much you can do with the form…." # I was ready, standing on the end of the diving board, starting my moves…and helplessly re-captivated by a once and past hero…Hal Dresner. What goodies did he have hidden inside The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books…? p. 7: "You've got something that makes the others look like the hacks they are and your readers know it." p. 13: "I believe that writing pornography vicariously dulls one's sex life. I keep expecting my partners to have flanks like golden ramparts and breasts like cannon shells. Everyone seems flabby nowadays." p. 13: "…has warned me of the danger of getting snowbound or going nuts." Instantly this phrase made me think of Dresner's fellow Scott Meredith Black Box pornographer William Knoles, writer of the incredible License to Kill 0008 Man from Sadisto series. By the time I discovered Clyde Allison, I had enough clout to get past Scott Meredith. As my new absolutely number one favorite writer pal funny guy, Clyde Allison could not be denied me. William Knoles, the man behind the Allison machine, and I became fast friends. This is the relationship that Benjamin Wink had with Hal Dresner when they were working on This Flogged Flesh. This was the relationship that was denied me when I wanted very much to communicate with Don Holliday when we were working on Circle of Sinners. Now I had it in spades, and what a time it was. I enjoyed our communication with each other so much, there were times when I would just pick up the phone and call Bill Knoles so he could make me laugh. We had so much fun running up those phone bills and those typewriter ribbons way back then. I wish I had copies of all those letters between the two of us. I never got out of the office with my copies and I've heard that everything of Bills, especially his correspondence, was unceremoniously ritualistically burned upon his death…everything, manuscripts, records, notes….a live of spreading fun…. With great reluctance I force myself away from fantasizing about what a wonderful book that would make, all those letters, suitably illustrated with those incredible Robert Bonfils and Harry Bremner covers for the 0008s. Narrations spanning our phone calls and some of the actual notes where we plotted the man from Sadisto's sordid affairs. William Knoles, much better known as Clyde Allison, had quite a thirst for beer [various interviews say "I never saw him without a beer in his hand," "ugly drunk," "shitface"] and was missing a bit of wiring in the control center, only that didn't get in the way of his writing some of the damned funniest stuff you ever saw, and of becoming a real good friend. We spent long hours, it seems, plotting out 0008's adventures. Some of the staff members in the Porno Factory were outlining possible titles as far ahead as three titles in the series, so all Bill had to do was write them. Between beers and really ugly fits of bi-polar depression. Then, I think it was Christmas, and Bill really hit the dumps. He was all alone, a thing he most hated to know, ever…no person to care for him and front for him and make sure he stopped drinking beer long enough to eat and finish that manuscript. The depression was too much, the Man from Sadisto did himself in rather than finish out the holiday season alone and isolated and not quite snowbound. p. 25: "…as in the case of "Brothers-in-Lust," published by Scepter Books and authored by Guy LaDouche." p. 40: "Art just reminded me that somebody from the F.B.I. was in asking for you. Art thought it was a raid and locked himself in the storeroom with all the new stuff. But it was only a joke, thank God." This was a routine happening around most publishing offices of the period, certainly around ours. The futters seemed to stalk the fringes somehow, ruffling the feathers of absolutely everyone near at hand. I would get so many complaints from my neighbors about their just being in the neighborhood all the time, roaming up and down in front of the house, occasionally asking one of them of they had anything bad to say about me. p. 41: "…you still haven't forgiven me for becoming Required Reading for every lecher, pervert and spinster in America." p. 41: "The only (writer)…I know who really seems to be approaching his life's goal is Dave. At last report he had notched #135, although personally I think 130 of them have been Cora in different nightgowns." Am I to think that this is a reference to Westlake and his wife Nedra? Before the Foley switchover…? p. 57: "Westlake" appears as Dresner's buddy's name. Naturally. p. 72: "Your letter was apparently tampered with en route. Some fanatic typed in a bunch of bullshit about absolution at the bottom. Check your mailman, he may be a Jehovah's Witness." This also was a commonplace occurrence with the mail. An even worse thing would happen every time my name would appear in newspapers. It would inevitably be accompanied by my residence address at that time. I would receive numerous overboard religious letters addressed there, to my home. Each one of them would be elaborately decorated on the outside and bear no return address. Each one would beseech me to stop my sinful ways…and, many of them would end with a clearly translatable prayer for God to strike me dead right away without hesitation or rational, conscious thought. Me and God already had the whole thing handled, only they didn't know it, or much else apparently. p. 72-3: "I'm getting in on the ground
floor of a growing enterprise. Pornography is definitely on the
come. Now that they've used Henry Miller's glossy pate to batter
down the doors of prurience, all the rest of the Club will be pouring
in, whips and dirty plumes in hand. Pornographic comics, pornographic
children's books (Leon the Lecherous Lion, Porter the
Pederast Porpoise), pornographic sweatshirts, pornographic beanies,
pornographic potties. When we incorporate and get on the big board,
you'd be smart to get yourself a piece. In fact, that's our motto. This is the best part of the whole book for me. I moved slowly and cautiously across the words savoring them one by one. This section alone made reading the entire book worth doing. p. 90: "If you have some integrity, then show it by writing something decent. But writing 'truths' into a trash book is as half-assed as sprinkling a decent book with trash." p. 101: "Kenny wrote two Negresses into the last scene. They walk into this fella's bedroom out of the middle of nowhere and then the book is over. It doesn't make any sense to me but Kenny says it's symbolic. But the cover looks great." p. 128: "…asked him what "futting"
meant. p. 134: "…Unless all those things
really happened to you. Do they?" This is one of the most frequently asked questions. Even close friends have attempted to get me to go into sordid detail about the "real" sex involved with the job. It didn't matter how often or how intensely I denied it, the feeling seemed to persist. p. 145: "It means they don't know what the fut they're doing. Whenever they don't know what else to do, they put a case under surveillance. Spies, bankrobbers, junkies. We got a man covering every one of them. You want to know where your tax dollar is going, you're paying some poor bastard to follow a junkie all day." And quite a few book publishers, editors, and writers as well. p. 187: "Now, idiot. The purpose of a bad writer is the same as that of a good writer and everyone else in the world: to do the best he can. If he accomplishes something monumental, fine; but it is the work that is his real function and it is the dream of greatness that really matters…." # Thanks for the articles. Of the one about Don
Holliday, I am flattered, flabbergasted and flummoxed. I never gave
much thought to the Holliday books and am surprised that anyone
else did. Around l961, there was an article in a men's mag that
picked out Holliday, Andrew Lord and Edwin West as three "distinctive,"
I think it said---voices in the field. All three of us distinctive
voices had a hoot about that but secretly I bet we each thought
"about fucking time." Writers! As for the one error he remembers, he tells
you that "Bill Coons" told me The April Fools was
inspired by real people. If you will dig out my article, you will
see that it is not Coons who told me that, but rather "another
writer who will remain nameless." That other writer was Nedra
Westlake, and she is the one who recognized HERSELF and Don and
their friends Larry and Loretta Block in the characters. I thought
that was fairly interesting so I included it. Dresner says that
was not the case, and be that as it may, it's no "error"
that Nedra Westlake remembers it otherwise. The only personal anecdote I can share about
that period is that when the other porn writers shed their image
and went on to bigger things, I was always saddled with Hal ("The
Man Who Wrote Dirty Books") Dresner--like some Mafioso nickname.
Ah well, I suppose it could be worse. It still amuses my grown daughter. Of THE APRIL FOOLS misunderstanding, I can understand
how Nedra might have identified with the premise. And we scribblers
do tend to be cannibalistic. As Philip Roth once quoted "When
a writer is born into the family, the family is finished."
|
|||||
| Beauty and
the Beast Otra Vez*
By Earl Kemp This is a love story. To some it could be a private dick yarn, and even others would think of it as being a good bit more Bride of Frankenstein. Still, it is a love story of enormous magnitude played out on the big Cinemascope screen of life. All the colors are there of loving and of being loved, the warm yellows and cuddly pinks leading into the passionate carmines and lusty purples needed to backdrop any romance. The Surroundsound is cranked up a bit extra and the whole universe is vibrating to its frequency. The full symphony orchestra is giving it all they have with heart-beating throbs and pulse-pounding thumps, rendering the grand concert hall version of the intertwined songs of our soul. It is a classic fairy tale about two widely different types of people who, despite all obstacles standing in their way, despite enormous physical differences, still manage, before their tale is told, to fall in love and live happily ever after. Would it make any difference, do you suppose, if the fairy in this fairy tale happened to be a fairy? Is love love or does it depend upon what the meaning of is is? Enter Beast, snarling. It is the new beginning, the fresh start…New Year's Day 1895 in Washington, DC. Beast is born to Annie Marie Stutter Hoover and Dickerson Hoover…their third child and second son. They christened Beast John Edgar Hoover but, to Annie Marie, he was already her "little man." Because his brother and sister were more than a dozen years his senior, for all practical purposes, Edgar was raised as an only child. Unfortunately he had been born into an amazingly dysfunctional family. His mother was very strong-willed and controlling. She dominated her surroundings. His father was ineffectual and standoffish. Nevertheless, the family managed to struggle ahead in their own conflicted way. And, worse than that, the very existence of the Hoover family itself was brought into question. Edgar's birth certificate itself is a doubtful and unsubstantiable thing. Beyond Edgar and his parents lurked only a yawning abyss. There was no past, no records, no existence for any of them. This was brought about because of the family's overriding obsession and paranoia with the thought that someone…soon…would discover exactly when the legally black Hoover started passing as a functional white Hoover. Over the years billions of dollars and countless man-hours of futile effort were spent by the entire resources of a number of federal agencies trying to document just that occurrence. This included especially the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation which, with or without Hoover's commands or knowledge, was almost as obsessed as Hoover about the answer to the riddle. All any of them were ever to discover was that the paper trail backward beyond Hoover's immediate family had been, in government squabble, thoroughly "sanitized." Author Anthony Summers, in researching
his book Official and Confidential, interviewed writer Gore
Vidal, who grew up in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s. "Hoover
was becoming famous,'' Vidal told Summers, "and it was always
said of him--in my family and around the city--that he was mulatto.
People said he came from a family that had 'passed.' It was the
word they used for people of black origin who, after generations
of inbreeding, have enough white blood to pass themselves off as
white. That's what was always said about Hoover.'' Mama's "little man" was a petulant, noisemaking machine within the household of rapidly aging parents. He grew to be a pampered, catered-to, over-controlled and -fed, mama's boy. Although studious and bright, fortified with an unusually extra large helping of lust and greed, Edgar managed to excel in his schoolwork despite being the designated sissy in every class he ever entered. He did not relate with any of his peers or contemporaries…ever. He was extremely standoffish. He abhorred anything related to participation sports and avoided all females as if he knew for sure that they were spewing jet-propelled plague particles in his direction. Into this idyllic world, tragedy struck. Edgar's father crumpled, flipped out, and was declared mentally insane; he spent the last eight years of his life institutionalized. This, along with Annie Marie's sudden intense dependence on her "little man," cemented the character, or lack thereof, that would dominate the rest of Beast's existence. She quickly drew him to herself to such an extent that their bonding would insure, for all of Edgar's days, that she alone would be woman enough for him; none other need ever apply. Annie Marie's "little man" quit school, got a job, and began supporting his family. He worked long hours, hard and diligently, and still managed to finish school and attend night school after that. He worked in the Library of Congress while much of this was transpiring. Just as soon as he received his law degree, he found a job working for the Department of Justice. In this position he became very successful and attracted the attention of his superiors to such an extent that, in 1924, at the tender age of 29, he became Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pretty good gig for the most dysfunctional, fucked-up mama's boy in the whole District. # Edgar had two big, big problems…his two pet hates. First, he hated fags and queers the most. Second, he hated niggers. That was his word, not mine. He used it excessively and with genuine enthusiasm and invective, intermixing it into run-on strings of obscenities about what he'd like to do to every one of them. Edgar simply couldn't stand niggers. (There was a third hate, but it was pretty insignificant in the over-all grand scheme of what made Edgar tick…females…and keeping them in a chattel position. He felt they were only good for menial and subservient tasks and couldn't be trusted to do anything worthwhile.) The thing that Edgar could never figure out for himself was that he was both of them. He himself embodied both of his major hates while he physically exhibited traits much more in common with the females he detested than the mother he loved. He was a bubble-butt mincer, a screaming maricon, a foot-stamping, pissed-off, flaming nelly faggot who, within his own imagination, was johnny straightarrow and, simultaneously, Mr. Law. Auntie Edgar hated most the things that most made her what he was. Edgar drove himself so far back inside the closet he was marinating in his own vile, stinking secretions and in the incessant, perverted, and disgusting sexual scenarios that ran…endlessly…through his tortured, unloved, even untouched psyche. He turned into such a homophobe that he became The Antifag…the single thing in the entire world he least wanted to turn out to be…. # Enter Beauty, acquiescing. Beauty was born in Missouri in 1900, five years after Beast. His parents named him Clyde Anderson Tolson, and he was truly beautiful to behold. Everyone who ever saw him wanted to touch him…wanted him…he was that special. He grew up passably normal, the hit of every party and the person everyone most wanted to possess. After he acquired his law degree, he applied for a position as an FBI agent but was not accepted. Not totally discouraged from his first attempt, a year or so later, Tolson applied again to the FBI only the second time he included a photograph of himself along with his job application. When the Tolson file folder reached Hoover's hands and he opened it and looked into that achingly beautiful face staring back at him, the entire world stood still.
It was love at first photo. John Edgar had found his man. Clyde Tolson was one stunner of a looker as seen through Hoover's eyes. He was handsome almost to the point of painful beauty and favored with a physique that would make professional models blush. It was all just natural with him, he didn't have to work at maintaining it or watch his diet or do anything but the thing the knew how to do best, lean back, relax, and enjoy it enveloping and consuming him until the whole scenario just somehow blurred out into commonplace reality for Tolson. He knew positively that he was a headturner because heads had been turning, following his footsteps, every minute of his life. Tolson was hung meat, the absolute perfect studhustler. He was equally at home in any crowd, of any gender, and they all welcomed him as if he was the ultimate prototype bisexual. Little wonder Hoover hired Tolson, sight unseen, in that moment on the basis of his photographed appearance and the reaction of Hoover's own orgasming imagination. That was in 1928, one year before my birth, and on that day Tolson began a remarkably rapid rocket-ship ride to Paradise and back. In rapid succession Hoover and Tolson became engaged and then married, figuratively, although neither of them was pregnant at the time. And, during that same feverishly intense sexual and emotional awaking interval of their relationship, Tolson, remarkably, was quickly elevated to the position of Assistant Director of the FBI within less than three years time. It was a made-up position that Hoover used to accommodate Tolson and he did it because he could. With Clyde in that position, at his side day after day at the office, Hoover could reach out and caress the rest of himself whenever the whim was irresistible. The job Hoover created for his spouse, as Assistant Director of the FBI, was a very high executive-level position. It came complete with every federal bennie that could be bribed or extorted and a salary considerably larger than that paid to most big-city mayors across the USA at the time. Hoover had practically perfected, single-handedly, the fine art of robbing from the citizens to pay for the bizarre and immoral whims of the truly depraved.
In Washington, their antics reached such a point that each day began with coffee and the newest obligatory Hoover fuck fantasy that ran from government office to government office on instantaneous feet. It became a bit of a problem choosing pronouns to represent Hoover because, without intent, he became she almost half the time automatically. As he or she, Hoover became very dependent upon his lover, assigning him most of the tasks he would normally do himself plus all the really ugly stuff, the hatchet work, the figurative destructions. "Clyde Tolson is my alter ego. He can read my mind," Hoover was heard to say frequently. Of Tolson it has been said, "Tolson was smarter than Mr. Hoover-he had a razor-sharp mind. His great failing was that he slavishly followed Mr. Hoover's every dictate." # New York powerbroker Roy Cohn used his leverage over Hoover to make "Mary"-Cohn's nickname for Edgar--his private sex slave. At a private party in Cohn's townhouse, Mary, dressed in a black garter belt, had one underaged male lover read to him from the Bible, while another engaged him in a sex act, as Cohn's partygoers looked on. --Albert Bates
In public, always together, Hoover and Tolson cut a wide path across the country, and always at someone else's expense, more often than not the USA citizenry. Hoover felt they were an exemplary couple and role models for masculinity and heterosexuality. He was never ever to see himself through the eyes of the multitude. Tolson, who completed Hoover, represented everything Hoover wanted to be…to possess…to alone dominate, starting with the sharply chiseled chin and master-sculpted facial structure and ending right down there where Hoover liked it the best in his perverted clutches.
Eat your heart out. Look what I've got! Hoover had a passion for trying to look butch and, somehow, that became associated with gambling on sporting events inside his thoughts. In spite of his childhood aversion to sports participation, the inseparable duo would attend ballgames at Yankee Stadium, front and center, more to be seen than to see. They would go to different racetracks and, seated in the Number One box, demand all manner of extra service and numbers runners and waiter-delivered (never waitress) drinks. San Diego County was one of their favorite party places. They would appear frequently for things like the races at the Del Mar Racetrack where they would run up huge tabs. It was a matter of principal with Hoover to never pay any of those bills. Not only that, he would stiff the little man as well, the below minimum wage slaves who bussed or bellboyed or waited on them, every maid who ever stripped away their soggy, funk-smelling, semen-streaked sheets and made up their beds…not one penny. No payments. No tips. No gratuities. And, especially, no "thank yous." Hoover was always ready to teach anyone who felt like asking for payment what real power could do to them before they knew anything was happening. Within the office itself, at the FBI, Hoover spent much time with his bookie, making bets with taxpayer money. He absolutely never allowed anything like law enforcement or crime investigation to interfere with his capricious whims as his power grew increasingly greater and his uses of it even more reprehensible and illegal. By 1962 Hoover had discovered me. Well, it wasn't just me of course…it was all of us at the Porno Factory in Evanston, Illinois, and with an unmeasured regularity his minions started turning up here and there, circling around us, making vague and meaningless movements and outrageous allegations. By 1965, when Blake Pharmaceuticals died and Greenleaf Classics was reborn in San Diego, California, they were shifting into high gear and, in general, making nuisances of themselves with their snooping around my neighborhood and annoying my neighbors while fishing for any type "negative only" gossip they could inspire regarding me. What a force to be proud of! We didn't even have time enough to get completely set up good in our new offices before they started increasing their pressure on us, illegal pressure being used in an attempt at prior restraint of trade, of telling us what we could publish. Hoover was so pissed-off at us and some of our completely innocuous newsstand paperbacks, that he began a serious crush effort. His agents would drop by my house with annoying frequency, asking if they could first come inside and second ask me some questions about our company. Stanley Fleishman, our boss attorney, kept telling me that I didn't have to let them into the house and I didn't have to talk to them but that I could tell them that anytime they wanted to set up an appointment through Stanley's office to do so, Stanley would be waiting for them. For some reason, they never did, and they kept coming back to my house and I kept refusing. Finally, the feds used the double whammy, they said that seven of our novels were obscene and that we would have to answer for it in court. Several employees within the company were personally indicted, including William Hamling, the President and CEO but, miraculously, I was not…the Editor in Chief…? What luck. But I was handed a subpoena to appear at the trial as a prosecution witness testifying on behalf of the FBI. I was? I who had never spoken with them at all? Surely there was some mistake? #
It was hot as hell in Houston in July and August 1966, but there I was, reporting in to the feds in answer to the subpoena issued commanding me to do so. I was in a rather large group of witnesses called to appear at that trial, either for the prosecution or the defense, and there was never a dull moment for any of us. We were: Dr. Wardell E. Pomeroy of the Kinsey Institute, Professor of Journalism Dwight V. Swain, Dr. Roger D. Chittick, a cleric, Arthur Knight of Playboy, Ian and Betty Ballantine of Ballantine Books, Richard S. Shaver a fiction writer, Robert Bonfils an art director, Richard Yerxa, Hamling's stepson, Tony Calvano, a porno writer, a particularly beautiful young married couple, swingers, there to testify about "real life," Etc. Stanley Fleishman had hired local Houston attorney Percy Foreman to back him in the defense and I was allowed to spend lots of down-trial time with them while they prepared me to meet with the FBI. Percy Foreman was a shit-face drunk; you could smell the alcohol on him from a block away at 8 a.m. every day, and he was the best money could buy. He was an early day F. Lee Bailey, always seeming to get the right (rich) clients and provide the correct outcome to any of their problems, including his specialty, smoking-gun murders. Naturally he was our man, drunk or not. He was Number One Top Dog Lawyer in Houston and most of the South. Everyone knew him and everyone knew he was the man that delivered, for embarrassingly huge legal fees, freedom for the truly guilty which we were not but it never hurts to stack the deck if at all possible. Percy, particularly, hated J. Edgar Hoover, and couldn't say enough bad about him. It was truly a delight just listening to him and Stanley, together, running a rant against their pet project. It was from Percy Foreman, during one of those rants, that the name of Auntie Edgar arrived. It stuck, and I brought it back to the office with me. Finally the time came when I was to appear for an interview with the FBI. Before leaving for the meeting, Percy Foreman told me in the most strident tones, "Don't give those fucking FBI cocksuckers the time of day." It became my motto for the season. I was ushered into a small conference room deep inside the federal courthouse that had no windows and no view. I was told to sit down and wait. Shortly two suits entered the room and sat down opposite me, introducing themselves by name. Next, one of them opened a briefcase and took out a stack of papers and handed them to me. I took the pages from him and looked at them, scanning them briefly, noting the nature of the text and the arrangement of the wording. It was a script. It was the scenario the FBI had prepared to be my testimony against my employer in their attempt to convict him of something he hadn't done. I laughed in their faces, spontaneously, loudly, and uncontrollably. They brought in two other agents and the four of them surrounded me, leaning inward threateningly, menacingly, and I laughed again. They tried to rehearse me in their script repeatedly and the more they did, the more I laughed at them. Finally, they resorted to threats. "We could lock you up right now." "We have enough on you to put you away for a long time." "We could even…well…you know; no one would ever know what happened to you." And as their threats became increasingly more serious and potentially fatal, my laughter only increased. Needless to say, they never called upon me to testify. The trial was finally declared to be a Mistrial and all the charges dismissed…everything except my vivid, up-close-and-personal, very first interrogation by Auntie Edgar's "little men." #
Laughter at Smut Case Trial Causes Recess The Houston Chronicle of Tuesday August 9, 1968 bore this big, bold, banner headline atop four columns of type. Bob Tutt, the Chronicle reporter assigned to cover the trial, wrote in part: "Laughter triggered by a passage from one of seven books named in an obscenity trial here caused court to recess this morning. "The jury laughed heartily when Dr. Roger D. Chittick, a California literature professor appearing as a defense witness, read from Temple of Shame, the story of a fake marriage counselor. "The humorous passage described the counselor, imagining he was a bubble, prancing like a goat around two nude women. "Stanley Fleishman, one of the attorneys…was so broken up by the reading that he had to request a recess…. Fleishman…claimed Monday that federal prosecutors in the trial are trying to discredit defense witnesses through 'impeachment by ridicule' and 'covert snickering.' "…Chattick of Fresno State College Monday defended the literary merit of the books in the case, punctuating his testimony with frequent quotations from Shakespeare. "Chittick, a Presbyterian church elder, described Passion Carousel, the story of a girl involved with a satanic cult, as 'a kind of morality play,'" The federal prosecutor in that Houston trial was named Morton Susman. Displaying a rare sense of humor, Porno Factory President William Hamling directed the editorial department to undertake a special project. In every book produced, they were to change the name of all the more reprehensible characters, the prostitutes, low-lifes, and criminal types, to Susman. It was a bit of a time-consuming chore but, for just over one year, hundreds of thousands of sleazy paperbacks about the sexy, sinful Susman family appeared all over the USA. # In 1966, after returning to San Diego from the Houston trial, I acquired a highly improbable mentor. He was improbable because Milton Luros (also with a science fiction background), of American Arts Enterprises in Los Angeles, was William Hamling's single biggest direct competitor, and he adopted me. [It is, however, a different story.] Stanley Fleishman was in there as well, the three of us, some devilish trio we made, too. Because I was spending more and more time in Los Angeles with Stanley, and carrying more and more messages from Bill Hamling to Luros, I kept running into both of them regularly. Neither had a kind word to say for J. Edgar Hoover and almost less to say for his Bureau. It was Milton Luros who gave the name to The Game we were all inadvertently playing, even if we hadn't acknowledged that to ourselves. "Fuck the Feds," he called it, and was he ever right. From that moment on, he began giving me lessons on how The Game should be played and I took to the sport like a natural. Milton loved to leave the followers behind, in the dust, as often as he could. He would devise rather elaborate fake plans in attempts to lead them astray. Milton and I, commandeering two or three limousines each, would lead them around the German countryside for hours on end. They never had it so good. # The following year, 1967, Hoover began blackmailing Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas because, among other things, Fortas made too liberal decisions regarding pornography to suit Hoover. And, the ridiculousness of his blackmailing is in that Hoover, The Antifag, had hands-down proof of Fortas' gay activities. Ultimately, to avoid further harassment, Fortas resigned from the Supreme Court on May 14, 1969. A pity, too; you can never find the right Supreme Court Justice when you need them the most…right around the very next corner. # Hoover felt that his job was to discover how the rich and famous, the notorious and salacious, fornicated and, whenever he discovered anything he disapproved of, to do something righteous about it. It really helped, though, if they somehow offended him politically as well. No single person was beyond the reach of Auntie Edgar and Clyde, her familiar. Presidents fell before him…eight of them. Their wives as well, and their lovers of either gender, color, or combination. Supreme Court Justices were no more immune than were senators, congressmen, governors, streetsweepers, or janitors. They were especially printers, publishers, editors, agents, writers, journalists, etc…the usual criminal types. Everyone he personally disliked fell to his whim, whether they ever knew it or not. The file folders, the photographs of the familiar people, naked and engaging in various forms of ostensibly normal sexual intercourse, the reels of film, the noisy little voice recordings…all made in absolute secrecy of course…and all absolutely illegal…they grew to fill numerous file cabinets attesting to and maintaining Hoover's absolute power. Rumors of Hoover's Hit List persists throughout all records of his reign as well as unsubstantiated murders performed at his whim with some regularity. The delegates on this list were people like Ernest Hemingway, ordered murdered by Hoover while the official record says "suicide." People like Marilyn Munroe, ordered murdered by Hoover while the official record says "suicide." With some significant amount of supporting documentation as well. The sordid sex files of the innocent, untried, and unconvicted were maintained secretly within the control of Hoover's secretary, and all of them carried Hoover's personal selection of code names. Hoover's file for Richard Nixon, for example, was aptly named "Obscene Matters." #
Having all that data about the sordid secret sex lives of the far-flung populace at his fingertips drove Hoover to even more excesses. He couldn't resist using it against his enemies. He leaked the vilest stories about the nation's very best people to known-liar cronies like Walter Winchell. Hoover drove some of those totally innocent people into exile, into disgrace, into poverty, and into suicide…without even flinching. They used the data to blackmail people and to extort things of value and things of intangible worth all over the country and they would, particularly, crush anyone who even thought about "suggesting" anything to Hoover in any manner similar to an order. Hoover was above orders. He was untouchable. He could do anything. Hoover could walk into the Oval Office and confront an angry Richard Nixon and both of them could pull out guns and wipe out the other in a bloody frenzy and no single person in the whole USA would ever know a thing about any part of the reality of it and no blame would ever be ascribed to either. They were robbing the country blind and really earning Truman Capote's label of "Johnny and Clyde." # One target of the combined forces of hell was Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General John Mitchell, "Mr. Law And Order," henchman of Richard Nixon, and Future Felon of America. Martha was a good old girl from Arkansas and Texas, a child of the South; we had much in common because of our backgrounds and that especially included a high regard for honor and truth. Martha Mitchell was only one of many extremely close-placed Washington insiders who didn't exactly agree with what was going on. She knew things that no living person ever needed to know and she couldn't even get her own husband to do anything about correcting what she felt was wrong within her observations. She decided to go public. First she would telephone local newspaper reporters and columnists and pass along some incredibly unbelievable gossip, then she started appearing on occasional television shows, furthering her traitorous rants against Nixon and his Administration and babbling away about the peculiarly illegal things she said they were trying to do to her. She expanded her reach to every person or organization, however remote, she felt could help do something about exposing the criminality of what she was privy to. She was very fast on the speed-dialing before there was any such thing, and even quicker to mail, anonymously if necessary, photocopies of nonexistent and highly flammable memoranda, all the way across the country. They thomped her royally, every one of Nixon's men, assisted by Hoover and his minions, and when they were through, Martha would never play The Game again. They quietly shipped "the nut" back to the sticks and most people forgot about the woman who was the shining herald of the entire Watergate period and the one rational denouncer of Richard Nixon. Every single one of Martha Mitchell's stories, tips, and warnings turned out to be 100% true. # I was personally a target of much FBI admiration. Because I had Stanley Fleishman standing directly behind me, and guiding most of my movements, I accepted their presence far too casually and grew to think of them as persistent, annoying, insects. However, there were rogue agents who felt a compulsion to extend themselves just a bit beyond the call of duty, which was already a good deal beyond the limits of legality. These rogues had a real hate-on for me, personally. You could tell they were rogues because they were acting alone, and often not in uniform but wearing civvies and attempting to blend in with the general population, and out of control. These men would accost me in the oddest places at the most unexpected times, like jumping out of doorways or landscaping ahead of me and snarling at me more like animals than men. Blocking my pathway and looking right into my face, their eyes aflame and their faces flushed with an adrenaline rush they couldn't suppress and their body shaking with visible convulsions they couldn't control. "I'm going to get you, motherfucker!" These rogue agents were particularly dangerous. There were a few moments when I actually feared for my life, and countless times and places where anything could have happened to me easily. In retrospect, I should have been more cautious and less…surely not stupid. It took me a very long time to figure out why the violent radicals were so personally fixated onto me. Every one of them thought I was doing, every day in numerous ways, every filthy, perverted, disgusting sex thing they were as individuals forbidden to do, either by themselves or some other authority. And they wanted to do those sex things and because they couldn't they were going to see to it that I didn't either, only I wasn't. That didn't matter either, to them, as lost as they were inside the boundaries of The Game. # In the office, all our telephone lines were tapped. There were so many different agencies dogging us even we couldn't tell who was on first without a program. Every one of those agencies felt the need to maintain their own wiretaps and to never, absolutely never, share one single fragment of intelligence they might gather with any other agency. It was a real bitch at times just trying to use the phone. There were entire days where, every time we picked up a phone receiver, all we could hear were police calls. There was a telephone pole outside my office window less than 100 feet away from my desk. For months, hidden inside a small little tent atop that pole, an alleged "repair man" was working on some really serious problem…for six months or longer. The man inside that tent, and the rest of his particular squadron of FBI agents, all pretending to be telephone company employees, was held in the highest contempt by the telephone company itself. In fact, after we complained to them about the length of time they were taking to affect their repairs, they laughed and said they weren't involved at all. "It's the FBI. Look at their trucks. They can't get an appropriation to paint them." And they were right; you could always spot an FBI surveillance team because all their vehicles sported a two-year-old, out-of-date, replaced, color scheme and logo at the time. The surveillance became so intense, at times, that in order to have a private business conversation, every party to that conversation would gather around the conference table in the editorial office. We would sit there in silence, letting our fingers do the talking. We had a small portable typewriter and it would be loaded with a sheet of paper. One of us would type some important part of the discussion onto the paper and begin passing the typewriter around. Each person, in turn, would read what was there then type in their comments. After the conversation was finished, every sheet of paper used to house it was burned and the ashes flushed down the toilet. The typewriter ribbon was disposed of away from the office. All our mail, incoming and outgoing, was routinely captured, examined minutely, delayed unreasonably, and begrudgingly passed on. # Fortunately, as in the population itself, there were some good guys who worked for the FBI. It is unreasonable to think of the agency as having been all bad in those days. Today's Bureau bears little or no resemblance to Hoover's crew, thank God for small favors. The good agents would surface just as easily as the rogue agents had, quietly and in shaded, out-of-the-way places. They would hand me photocopies of notes or memoranda containing startling things about me that I thought no single person knew, but there it would be, in black and white. Or they would whisper hurried warnings into my ear…warnings about their fellow agents. And, relearning a hard lesson already forgotten, I found out that however much I might like those good agents, and think of them as perhaps being friends, when it really mattered, I could never depend on a one of them because, even to them, the Bureau was more important that anything…certainly lowly little me didn't count for a damn. They would dump you in an instant; the first thing they learn in FBI school is how to lie convincingly under oath. # At times almost as predictable as PMS, Hoover would go into rants about being personally maligned by the press and the media in general. These dark periods would begin whenever anyone would mention, to Hoover's knowledge, anything about him being either homosexual or Negro. He would gather all his forces, which were considerable, and attack the offending liar with a full-frontal assault. It was, literally, a crime to mention either and the consequences were almost insurmountable. When Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon first appeared, it was instantly jumped upon by agents of the FBI. All over the country in book stores and drug stores, federal agents confiscated every known copy of the book, because it contained some details about Hoover's crossdressing, and they destroyed every copy. Many true first edition copies still exist, of course, but they are valuable and very hard to locate. The publisher quickly exorcised the wordage that offended Hoover, replaced the "first edition" with a second first edition, and really lost a bundle in the process. # Meanwhile, back in the offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hoover had a large staff whose job was to act as press agents to enhance Hoover's personal reputation and to earn money for Hoover. That's right, to earn money for Hoover. Pay attention: At US taxpayer expense a battery of people, working full time every day, did nothing but write press releases, articles, lectures, and books all carrying the byline of John Edgar Hoover. Whenever one of these would be finished, it would be presented to some publisher whose worst nightmare was to receive it in the first place under circumstances he couldn't possibly refuse at ridiculously exaggerated rates and every single payment went into Hoover's private coffers along with all that filthy lucre seeming to pour in automatically from anonymous and contributory sources. At home, just the two of them, together and in bed, they would chortle over the fortune they were amassing and the power they were expending and the righteous sex they were having surrounded as they were, so totally, within the imagination of John Edgar Hoover. The house was his, as were the contents and this especially included Clyde, and it was filled almost to being overstuffed with Hoover's accumulation of rare and priceless antiques and, the most prominent thing throughout the house and what passed for a pretend garden, the penises. There were penises everywhere. Hoover had to have one-and he most preferred Clyde's-in view from every angle and every approach throughout his domain with some of them being bounced back and forth numbers of times in mirrors until they seemed to surround him suffocatingly. Pictures, engravings, sculptures…statuary with exaggerated genitalia…the knickknacks and bric-a-brac of a dedicated, serious, queer hater. # Very late into his life of shame and his career of criminality, Hoover began construction of his Great Pyramid, a tribute to himself as he wanted to appear to be, a monument that would outlast time itself, the impressive, painfully expensive, Federal Bureau of Investigation Building. To Auntie Edgar's continuing credit, that building is known to every insider in the country as Hoover's Last Erection. Johnnie and Clyde's marriage ended abruptly on May 2, 1972 with Hoover's death. They had been together for 44 years…an admirable record by any standard. When he was informed that Hoover had just died, Richard Nixon said, "Jesus Christ, that old cocksucker," in his best presidentialese. Tolson, with the help of Hoover's secretary, Helen Gandy, boxed up Hoover's private sex files and Tolson drove away with all of them. The legend would have us think he destroyed those files, however difficult that is to believe…all the riches of the world in one vehicle…photographed in explicit detail, sound recorded, documented far beyond any rational need…just waiting to be opened like Pandora's Box to uncountable profit. Surely all of it still exists…the truth is out there somewhere…hurry the day. In his book J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and
His Secrets, Curt Gentry catalogues the nature of those secret
sex files this way: "....their contents included blackmail
material on the patriarch of an American political dynasty, his
sons, their wives, and other women; allegations of two homosexual
arrests which Hoover leaked to help defeat a witty, urbane Democratic
presidential candidate; the surveillance reports on one of America's
best-known first ladies and her alleged lovers, both male and female,
white and black; the child molestation documentation the director
used to control and manipulate one of the Red-baiting protégés;
a list of the Bureau's spies in the White House during the eight
administrations when Hoover was FBI director; the forbidden fruit
of hundreds of illegal wiretaps and bugs, containing, for example,
evidence that an attorney general (and later Supreme Court justice)
had received payoffs from the Chicago syndicate; as well as celebrity
files, with all the unsavory gossip Hoover could amass on some of
the biggest names in show business." Tolson died on April 14, 1975, three years after his lover. They are still together in death as they were in life, buried as close to each other, in the same cemetery, as they could possibly arrange considering appearances. # - - -
|
|||||
| This is my
FBI story*
By Robert Silverberg In 1966, I think, while the Houston trial was going on, the FBI phoned and asked if they could interview me at my house. Yes, I said, and didn't even consult a lawyer, since I knew I was breaking no laws. Come over and let's talk. I was living then in a splendid mansion in the New York suburbs. Two gentlemen in suits and ties showed up, and I showed them into the baronial library, where I had thoughtfully left a few of my recent children's books on archaeology lying around. Barbara served soft drinks. I was genial, though I let them know that I didn't quite understand why they had come to me. "Are you a writer, Mr. Silverberg?" "Yes," I said. "I used to write some science fiction, and now I write children's books on archaeology and history." Since I happened to have a few nearby, I showed them to them. They leafed through them appreciatively. Then they said, "And do you do any business with a company named Reed Enterprises?" Since the dummy corporation through which I was getting paid by Hamling was in fact Blake Pharmaceutical, I said, no, I don't do business with Reed Enterprises. (I did know that Reed was another of Bill's phantom companies, but since I didn't get checks from them, I had no reason to answer that I did business with them. And they never did ask me about Blake Pharmaceutical.) Since I wasn't under oath, I suppose I might have lied about them if they had asked me, but they didn't ask, and at this late date I don't know what I might actually have said if the matter had come up. Somehow their research had failed to turn up the name of the company that was actually paying me. (The way it worked at that period, Bill paid Scott's commission to Scott and paid the remainder directly to me, out of the Blake account.) Since I seemed to be a nice clean-cut young writer with a nice clean-cut wife and a fine majestic house and a fine career writing books for Putnam and Holt and Macmillan, they either decided that they had the wrong Robert Silverberg or that I was a really gifted liar, and, either way, they didn't choose to press the issue. I didn't offer to take them upstairs, where my hundreds of Nightstand books were laid out on my office shelves. Barbara served coffee, they pleasantly bade me farewell, and off they went, having learned not a single useful thing about that nest of evil pornographers in Evanston. In no way had they threatened me or said anything even vaguely unpleasant. They had run into a stone wall and they made no attempt to peer around it. - - -
|
|||||
| The Ultimate
Straight Men: My Adventures With Our FBI! By Dwain Kaiser Earl Kemp summed it up well in Memoryhole during a discussion (among other things) about abuses by the government. A request for those to speak up who had, "Personal contact with 'officials' from various 'agencies' of harassing, unusual, or extra-legal nature." Well, in my case, it was the late middle '60s mid-'70s, a time in my life when I found it hard to accept anything as less than humorous. That's the point in ones life when one discovers how preposterous existence truly is, and before the rock and the hard place flattens one's sense of humor. Earl's comment was, "Roytac didn't even touch the surface about how much fun it was...." It was a bolt of lightening. Earl was completely right. It was funny at the time; it's just as comical looking back. It could have easily not been, but sometimes we win the roll of the dice and other times we lose. I ended up dealing with authority on the thin edge of buffoonery. And I got away with it. The FBI is in trouble again, caught cheating on requests for wiretaps and other illegal activity. Will they get away with yet another slap on the wrist from the Justice Department, of course they will. Once again. They've abused power that they haven't been granted, how far can they warp the legal authority the Shrub has granted them? Personally I hope never to discover the answer to that question. Somehow, fandom is an exception; the America masses have no sense of history. They jump to judge without background, based on self-aiding statements made by the powers in charge. Rather than judging upon discovering the facts (abuses upon abuses upon abuses, mea culpa, mea culpa), they hear "We won't do it again". What more could one ask for? Give them more power and let them do their job! Scary. My first run in with the FBI was through the post office. Remember those ads for Soviet SF on the back cover of Amazing and other pulps? How could one resist? Somewhere, in a huge warehouse, are hundreds of thousands of confiscated hardbacks of Soviet SF propaganda. Now I could understand more how this would protect us if they had managed to be more effective at it. Half the books reached me, the other half were held up while the P.O. checked to make sure that I "really, truly" wanted those novels. Maybe the Soviets were randomly mailing bad SF (and the books were truly awful) to susceptible teenagers. I signed the forms agreeing to "releasing" these novels and waited. The post office had "lost them," but not to worry, as soon as they're "found" I'll receive them. I'm still waiting. I'll always have a need for doorstops. Of course the postal problems continued during
the late '60s due to drug references in my genzine. Druggie stuff,
and therefore "fans were into drugs." Of course my big
"drug" piece was a reprint from the '50s, but let's not
let facts get in the way of a good, solid, conclusion. Those were "fan" related problems, the freedom to read bad SF and the First Amendment freedom to publish whatever the hell one wanted to. But this was the '60s and it was during Vietnam. More serious problems with government authority were soon to crop up. I discovered an "interesting" fact volunteering at one of the local anti-war headquarters in L.A. If the Feds had tapped your phone they would go through hell to guarantee that your service wasn't cut off. Including in some cases paying your huge phone bills, in the form of "anon" contribution from a "supporter," in other cases a willingness on the part of the phone company to accept a buck on the hundred with a promise to pay the rest later. And the phones stayed working and the FBI taps remained in place, and the FBI stayed employed listening to those taps. Of course current records show that during the heyday of the FBI's communist witch hunt up to 1/5 of all members of the Communist Party were connected to the Feds in one form or another. Which was truly wonderful because only about 2/5ths of the American Communists ever had enough money to pay their dues. And only 1/5th always paid their dues on time, and always paid the full amount. Guess which fifth? Party headquarters would have folded across this nation, completely disappearing, if it hadn't been for the FBI. So these headquarters (communist, left-wing, whatever) continued to do whatever they were doing (to this day nobody quite knows, or now even cares), the rents and salaries were paid for their employees, and the FBI stayed employed collecting all that useless data. Now there's a happy ending to that tale. The "data" they collected on me came in handy during the early '70s while I was working for Service and Hospital Union Local #399. We were located in L.A., but I was in charge of the Las Vegas office during an attempt to organize the Clark County General Hospital. I was picked to run the office because I had lived in Vegas as a teenager, had gone to high school there, and therefore "knew" the town. Anyone involved in labor as an organizer had FBI run-ins. At the time any minor violence on the picket line (breaking a window for example) was treated as extortion (committing a crime to gain a profit). All of a sudden some union hothead would be facing twenty years in prison for what should have been a misdemeanor and a small fine. There was no love lost between the FBI and Labor (then or now). Picture this; it's 115 degrees outside my office in the Plumbers Union Hall. In walk two gentlemen dressed alike (sort of a pre-Men in Black dressup). Nice suits, but not too nice, plain, with a plain hat on their head, a plain (ugly) tie, black shoes, and I couldn't lie about this, white socks. Now I knew right away who was visiting my office, so I asked (may as well cut to the chase): "What can I do for the FBI today." The ultimate straight men are FBI agents. No sense of humor. None. Nada. Zilch. They don't believe (or had no idea) how much they stand out from the common folk, so by calling them "FBI" before they introduced themselves shows to them that you had been expecting them to visit. Then, therefore, you're guilty of something. "How do you know we're FBI," the tallest one asked (shorter than I am, they were never very tall in those days. Hoover, beloved asshole of crossdressing fame, didn't like to have to look up at his agents.)* Then the fun begins (Nonstop Fun)...say whatever you like to them, refuse to go along with their bullshit, use them as straight men for whatever warped sense of humor you have, and it will just bounce right off them. The ultimate straight men. An early form of interactive gameplaying before computers. Neat fun if you're not worried about what they think of you, or what they could try to do to you, or what they did to harmless assholes who upset them. I always had very, very, very good lawyers back in my union organizing days. Then, the appearance of FBI agents was just an amusing break in the days work. My lack of respect always drove them up the wall. The first time they visited my office they wanted a copy of the information we had on everyone we had signed up during our organizing drives in the city. I said no. They acted like they couldn't believe I'd be that disloyal. I said no. They informed me, that it was my duty to do as they say. I said no. I was told that they could get a subpoena, I told them I could burn the records (no great shedders in those days) before they could subpoena them. And what records? Are they sure we even kept any records? And how could I resist, "I don't have to show you no stinkin' records." That sure went over their heads. Upon a second visit I was told that they "knew all about me." "Ah, very useful," I replied. "I seem to have lost July of last year, can I get a report from you on what I did that month?" I was having fun at least, playing The Game. Another visit to the office and I acted like they were Mormon Missionaries trying to get me to change my religion, "but I like being a U.U. Jefferson was a U.U., so it's good enough to me. Why do you want me to change it?" It was wonderful. A live Marx Brothers film with my script. They'd ask me about our organizing drive and I'd ask them, "Why would the FBI want me to change my religion? I have no interesting in becoming a Mormon," followed by, "you are Mormon's, right?" Now the FBI can't lie in those cases, so I'd get (it was just a good guess because of high Mormon FBI membership in Nevada and Utah), "Yes, but we're hear to talk to you about...." "My religion?" I would butt in with. And back and forth. I doubt if these days I would have enough nerve to do a stunt like that, but it was fun back then. And they never got the records. (I won the hospital election by the way, but we never got a contract. I also organized the first M.D. Union formed by the AFL-CIO in the U.S. while staying in Vegas. Those were fun days.) However, data keeps those FBI paychecks flowing in. Years (hmm…four or five) after Vegas, I answered a knock at the door. The FBI. Fond memories rushed to my drugged head (waves of Indica smoke drifted out of my living room). "My friends. What can I do for the FBI today?" Okay, I shouldn't have. Because once again they knew I was guilty of something, otherwise why would I expect the FBI to come a-calling? I was no longer working for Service Employees, so the quality of available lawyers was sharply reduced, so I didn't quite play The Game like a madman. (Besides, with the front door open you could smell my house from a block away.) But I had a hard time resisting when I discovered that I was a suspect in a murder investigation. One of the local labor leaders in Vegas (one we had some serious disagreements with while I was organizing in town) was found dead in the desert, buried with one hand out of the sand visible for all to see and to be warned by. Now that's a mob hit. Even a seven year old in Vegas would have known that. But when I mentioned it was a mob hit, the ol' pencils starting flying. "How did I know that?" I laughed. The ultimate straighten. They weren't happy over my "it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person" either. I was supposed to be (I guess according to their case study books) all misty eyed over a true SOB getting hit. We went over the, "We know all about you," routine again. My not being quite so snippy as before, but nothing came of it. I hadn't been out of state for several years, I didn't do the hit on the guy. End of story. However, the FBI stays out of unemployment lines by keeping records. Several years later, while friends were trying to get clearances, they were asked about me. What our "relationship" was all about, were we members of any groups together (here fandom got mentioned a few times, I wonder what this "hobbies" FBI file truly looks like), that sort of stuff. Not enough problems to hurt my friends, however. No jail time, no real hassle...but threats, veiled statements concerning harm, and those nasty vibes about how they're going to get me. Looking back playing The Game was sort of fun, in a scary way. But it wasn't scary at the time, mainly because I wasn't bright enough to be scared. Someone looks after those fools who do truly dumb things with a sense of adventure and jocularity. I'd sure like to see my police records one of these days...just to see what was recorded. It would make a nice Christmas gift to my grandkids. Don't trust these fools. Don't put the fate of our freedoms in their hands. If you can't laugh, you can't rule. And always remember that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that | |||||
