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Five Intercepted NSA Communiques Revealed (Fiction)
By Bernard Weiner,
Co-Editor
The Crisis Papers
July 4, 2006
The following memos, emails and phone calls, which allegedly were intercepted by the NSA, have come into our possession. I can't vouch for the absolute authenticity of these communiqués, but they seem to pass the smell test. See what you think.
PHONE CALL FROM ROVE
(In this one, Karl Rove appears to be talking with David S. Addington, a key legal architect of the Bush Administration's war/torture policies, now Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Here are excerpts from the phone conversation, as transcribed by the NSA.)
Rove: Of course, it'll look funny, but I don't care. Just arrange it.
Addington: Look, Karl. We're still sinking in the polls. The Zarqawi bounce lasted barely a few days. I agree with your goal here, but I just don't know if we should risk it, politically.
Rove: That's exactly the reason we should do it, why we have to do it. Look, it's always worked before. We shift the focus away from us and our policies, and find something else, somewhere else, someone else, for the public's attention to go to. Do you think we really care whether protecting the American Flag is part of the Constitution? Why do you think we announced the arrest of those poor bastards in Miami for planning to blow up the Sears Tower? Didn't have to be true, did it? It was a win-win: The story grabbed the headlines, and it re-started the fear engine again in the public mind. I regard that as a major success. Our base is being re-energized.
Addington: But frontally attacking the New York Times? Going after Murtha I can understand: He's too close to the truth of what the heavies in the military are thinking, and he needs to be shot down, swiftboated up the wazzu river. But the Times almost always has been in our corner when we needed them -- they held the goddamn NSA story for a year when we asked them to. And now we're calling them "traitors" for running a story about tracking down al-Qaida's money-moving schemes that is old news anyway, and that was run also by the Wall Street Journal? By the way, folks are starting to notice that we haven't expressed any anger at the Journal for its running of the "treasonous" story.
Rove: David, put your thinking cap on. We have an election four months from now! We need the Liberal Media as a distracto punching bag in the campaign run-up, and we need to let the press in general know that we'll come down hard on them if they ever try to cross us. Just as going after Joe Wilson warned other insiders not to rat on us, going after the New York Times, the Grandaddy of the press, gets that message across to liberal and middle-of-the-road newspapers. The Journal and our Fox and cable news pundit friends are getting the New York Times "traitor" message out in the media, and Denny and his troops got a resolution passed in the House denouncing the Times' action, although without mentioning them by name, damn it.
Addington: Karl, again I agree with your sentiments and have no good reason not to blast the Times. All I'm saying is that we're risking everything on one roll of the dice here. It either works or we all look obvious, clumsy and extremist in our actions. Look at all the heat Coulter is taking for her comments suggesting Times Editor Keller should be "executed" -- is that who we really want representing our side?
Rove: She's honey to many of our bees, David. Let her have her fun; her sickness aids our health. She infuriates the pinko liberals, and at the same time helps us solidify our, shall we say, more out-there base. By sliming Murtha, we get the message to military and retired military to rein themselves in. With the Sears Tower story, we stoke the embers of 9/11 once again. And with our leveling verbal and legal howitzers at the Times, the media starts pulling in their horns. Maybe they see the handwriting on the wall: We're floating the idea of instituting a Wartime Censorship Board...
MEMO FROM THE ISRAELI P.M.
(A memorandum from the Israeli Prime Minister, intercepted and translated by the CIA/NSA.)
Memo from Ehud Olmert to the Cabinet
For Your Eyes Only
There was some grumbling in our last Cabinet meeting, so I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here. If not and you still have objections to our Gaza/Hamas policy, now's the time to submit your resignation. We must have a unified face as we receive all this hostile international pressure to back off in Gaza.
We take our behavioral cue from the Bush Administration: Strike massively while the enemy is weak, make them see who is boss in the neighborhood, show their citizens that if they follow the wrong leaders they will pay a huge penalty.
As I said after the Palestinian elections that elevated a terrorist group to governance, Israel can't live with Hamas in charge next door. Their mission is to wipe us off the map. We set out to isolate Hamas diplomatically, and drew up plans to destroy them militarily, but we had to wait for the right moment to strike. And then, those stupid militants handed us, on a silver platter, the excuse to act by taking our IDF soldier hostage.
Of course, it would be a great political feat to get our soldier back unharmed, and without having to give away anything to get him. But just in case, we've got our own bargaining chips in the Hamas officials we rounded up and detained. If the IDF soldier turns up dead, our involuntary guests may suffer a harsh fate -- along with the Palestinian P.M. At least it's useful to imply that this could happen.
Sure, our aggressive policy is a gamble. But the Palestinians are so weak and confused, we can get away with whatever we decide to do -- and the Americans won't put any real pressure on us. Why should they? They gave Sharon and then our government the green light to control this part of the region however we see fit.
When the Palestinian street sees that the thugs they elected to power can't really protect them, that we can enter and destroy areas of Gaza whenever we feel like it, they'll start backing another horse, one we can do business with, like Abbas and his crew. So we'll pile on the humiliation, each day demonstrating how powerless Palestinians are under Hamas leadership, and eventually the Palestinian people will bend in our direction.
And if it doesn't work out that way, we eliminate Hamas as an effective force by wiping out virtually the entire leadership. Sure, the anger in the street would lead to more popular resentment and resistance against us -- but what else is new? We will have gained a year or so of relative peace while they regroup. And the Palestinian people will get the message and, no matter how grudgingly, will bow to our will.
So let us move forward as a united Cabinet and country in the service of that policy. Everybody got that?
A NOTE FROM JUSTICE ALITO
(FedExed Handwritten Note from Samuel Alito to Alberto Gonzales, intercept by NSA.)
Note from Justice Alito to Alberto Gonzales Burn After Receipt
Dear Alberto: I hope it's clear from the vote on the Hamdan case that we need more friendly faces on the Supreme Court. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts & I can't always move the issues the way we want with the liberal bloc in place and Kennedy in the middle, doing a pretty good imitation of Sandra Day O'Connor. Conservative, my ass!
We're doing the best we can -- Roberts had to recuse himself on Hamdan, but even so the vote would have been 5-4. Perhaps Justice Kennedy will decide he'd like to leave the court early, if you get my drift, so your boss can appoint a jurist more amenable to issues we all hold dear. Good luck in November.
All best wishes, Sam
A LETTER FROM GEORGE W. BUSH
(An NSA email intercept from Bush to Rumsfeld.)
From POTUS to RUMSTUD Destroy After Reading
Rummy: If the Iraq war continues to go south on us, we're going to need some good news to balance that out before the voters, you know, vote.
I'm thinking of cutting our losses and reporting that we've killed Osama. He's served our purposes well, but the polls are way down and we need something spectacular to give us a boost for November -- an "October surprise," I think they call it.
Karl and Dick and I think that the reported death of Osama (might as well put his lieutenant, Zawahiri, into the report at the same time) would be big enough to wipe out all the bad feelings Americans have about the goddamn war, and would probably put us over the top in November -- along with a little help from our vote-counting friends, of course.
After the election, we'll announce that it turns out we got fooled and killed Osama's double. The dance can continue: We use Osama bin Laden as the terrorist bogeyman to justify our permanent war stance -- which gives us virtual carte blance domestically as well -- and Osama gets to use us as the Great Satan recruiting-tool he needs to build al-Qaida. It's a win-win-win.
So get back to me ASAP with an operational plan for how this little scenario can work. And no Pentagon fuckups this time, Donny Boy.
RUSH LIMBAUGH'S PHONE CALL
(Excertps from phone call from Limbaugh to Bill O'Reilly, NSA intercept.)
O'Reilly:Yeah, I heard about the bust at the West Palm Beach airport. Got you with your Viagra stash. That must have been a major bummer, Big Man.
Limbaugh: You have no idea how embarrassing this is. Well, actually, Mr. Loofah, maybe you would have some idea about that. Not only am I the butt of constant jokes on late-night TV about my little problem -- whoops!, I didn't mean it to come out that way -- but another trip to the hidden, delightful pleasures of Santa Domingo is probably out of the question for quite some time. The Dominicans are so much fun and eager to please.
Listen, Bill, I'm taking a beating out here, and am even losing some dittoheads from my once-stable fan club. So if you can take a swipe at some of those critics who are bashing me -- you know, "it's just a political witch-hunt, folks, the liberals piling on a respected conservative commentator," that sort of thing -- I'd be most appreciative.
O'Reilly: No problem, Rush. It's simply unfair what they're doing to you. If we had done the same thing to Gary Hart and Bill Clinton and Henry Sisneros about their personal peccadillos, they'd have shouted bloody murder, you can bet your life on that. Whoops! We did do that. Forget it. But you could do me a favor, Rush.
Limbaugh: Sure thing, Loofah. What's your pleasure?
O'Reilly: I think your Oxy maid is cute, and probably kinky with the right guy. Could you, you know, fix me up with her?
Copyright 2006, by Bernard Weiner
Bernard Weiner, a playwright and poet, has written many satires and fantasias about political figures. A Ph.D. in government & international relations, he has taught at various universities, worked as a writer-editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). For comments: >> crisispapers@comcast.net <<.