DIRTY TRICKS-PART II

Besides the Encyclopedia Britannica, a complete set of the works of Dickens, and autographed copies of The Jeweler’s Eye, The Four Quartets, and On Being a Real Person, Mother’s floor-to-ceiling bookshelves contain every known book on spies and counterspies, with the latest ones especially in evidence—from Wise and Ross’s The Invisible Government to a book by somebody named Fletcher Proutty propounding a theory that the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the Director of CIA comprise a “secret team” which runs the affairs of the country. Why such a library? “We have to read all this stuff to understand what everybody says about us,” explained Mother.

Until the top people at CIA started reading what the outside world thought about spies and spying they had to face their critics in bewildered silence, not having the faintest idea what they were talking about. “Is it true,” some senator once asked Frank Wisner when he was head of the CIA’s covert services, “that in every American embassy you have at least one agent?” Frank thought the senator was implying that the CIA spied on the State Department. “No, senator,” he said, “We only put agents in embassies of Communist countries.”

MC

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Miles Copeland

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Besides the Encyclopedia Britannica, a complete set of the works of Dickens, and autographed copies of The Jeweler’s Eye, The Four Quartets, and On Being a Real Person, Mother’s floor-to-ceiling bookshelves contain every known book on spies and counterspies, with the latest ones especially in evidence—from Wise and Ross’s The Invisible Government to a book by somebody named Fletcher Proutty propounding a theory that the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the Director of CIA comprise a “secret team” which runs the affairs of the country. Why such a library? “We have to read all this stuff to understand what everybody says about us,” explained Mother.

Until the top people at CIA started reading what the outside world thought about spies and spying they had to face their critics in bewildered silence, not having the faintest idea what they were talking about. “Is it true,” some senator once asked Frank Wisner when he was head of the CIA’s covert services, “that in every American embassy you have at least one agent?” Frank thought the senator was implying that the CIA spied on the State Department. “No, senator,” he said, “We only put agents in embassies of Communist countries.”