I may have gotten hit in the head too many times, but I had never spent a lot of time following my head anyways. Still, deciding to listen and believe Karl Greene told the truth was something else. I wasn't so confident about my own sanity, and now I teamed up with a guy who liked to wear a football helmet as his main sartorial statement.
Nuts or not, if we were going to foil world-changing terrorist events, I was going to make damn sure I did my homework. Despite how silly even thinking it sounded, I believed it. If you believe something hard enough it becomes true-at least to you.
It was time to talk to Kelley. He'd chew me out and tell me I was nuts, but he'd listen and tell me what he thought. We met during his lunch break at AJ's, which would mean me taking a long lunch at the clinic, but I figured I could call it a consultation with a community member. The Michelin Woman had her door closed, so got out without reliving her version of the Spanish Inquisition.
Only Jerry Number Two sat in AJ's at this early hour. He sat at the bar with his laptop, sipping a Cosmo.
"Hey Jerr, you look lonesome," I said.
"Nah, spending some quality online time with my D amp;D friends," Jerry said without taking his eyes off the screen.
"D and D?"
"Dungeons and Dragons. You know, role playing." I didn't really ever get what that was all about, but when your main hobby is getting punched in the face repeatedly youdon't spend a lot of time making fun of other people's pastimes. AJ stacked boxes. He stopped to slide me a Schlitz, without saying anything by way of greeting.
Kelley came in on cue and in uniform. He got a diet coke and ordered a burger.
"I don't got a ton of time, Duff," he said "How's your noggin'?"
"It's mostly all right."
"So what are we here about?"
"You're going to think I'm nuts."
"Too late. Let's hear it." He sipped his diet coke and ran his hand through his flat top.
"All right, you know Karl, my client from the clinic?"
"Yeah-he was in the other night."
"I told you how he's been making predictions about tragic events and terrorism."
"Yeah."
"It turns out its not just crazy paranoia stuff. He got a little fucked up in Iraq because he accidentally shot and killed a couple of little kids."
"That'll do it. What does that have to do with him being able to predict his or anybody else's future?"
"Well, his best buddy, a guy he enlisted with, finished out his tour and joined a private security force over there." I looked at Kelley to see if he listened and if he had any reaction. He listened, without reaction, so I kept on.
"When Karl got fucked up he tried to convince Karl to come join the private security firm and he told him there would always be work. Somehow Karl asked a bunch of questions and his buddy said he was guaranteed a lot of work for years to come whether there were any wars or not."
"Duffy, is there a point to this?" Kelley took a bite out of his burger and frowned. AJ's burgers often did that to people.
"According to Karl, he saw documentation about a plan for events inside the United States would keep people supporting the wars and the defense funding."
"A plan?"
"Yeah, a plan in which they would engineer and set up tragic terrorist-linked events."
"Who would?"
"This private security firm. They're called Blackgard."
"And you know this because the guy in the Redskins helmet said so."
"He wasn't always nuts; he knows what he's talking about," I said, just raising my voice a tad.
"Duff, this is Bigfoot stuff, it's Area 51, the Chupacabra. It's bullshit. Man, you really took a shot in the head."
"C'mon Kell, I'm not nuts-"
"Look Duff, you asked me, I told you. I think Karl's nuts and I think you're right behind him." He got up, wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, and left half a burger in front of him.
"Sorry, but I got to get back to work." He put his hat on and headed out.
I felt ridiculous. AJ gave me another beer. I started paying attention to ESPN when Jerry said something without looking up from his laptop.
"Northwoods," he said.
"What's that Jerr?"
"Northwoods, the name of a project the CIA proposed around the time of the Cuban missile crisis."
"And?"
"They proposed staging a fake invasion of the continental U.S. to make it look like the Cubans did it." Jerry finally looked away from the computer at me.
"Why would they do that?"
"So the American people would endorse the military bombing the shit out of Cuba."
"Why didn't they do it?"
"I don't know." Jerry looked away from me. "The point is they considered it."
"Jerry do you think it could happen-I mean, fun conspiracy stuff aside-is it really possible?"
Jerry took a hit off his Cosmo and smiled a little bit.
"In 70 B.C., a Roman named Crassus wanted to be in charge and take power from Spartacus. So he paid mercenaries to pose as Spartacus' troops and had them invade Rome. Spartacus showed up not knowing what the hell was going on, but before he could explain to anyone that they had been duped, Crassus had rallied the Roman troops and defeated the same mercenaries he, himself, hired." Jerry folded his hands in his lap and seemed very proud of his point.
"So you're saying he set up a situation where he could scare the citizens and then he could be a hero," I said.
"Exactly!"
"Don't take this the wrong way Jerr, but strategies from 70 B.C. really don't help my confidence level on this."
"Well, then, how about a nice Hitler story? Did you know Hitler had his soldiers dress in Polish uniforms and attack a radio station in Germany, no doubt to insure solid media coverage, and then used that attack as justification to invade Poland. From there you got the beginnings of World War II." Jerry raised his eyebrows and did the Groucho Marx thing.
I guess I just stared at Jerry, not saying anything.
"Ahh…but young Duffy is thinking, not here, not in good
'ol God Bless America." Jerry smiled.
"Well…"
"Far be it for me to ruin a young man's view of his homeland…"
"Go ahead," I said.
"A hundred years ago, William Randolph Hearst wanted the U.S. to invade Cuba. He sent a team of photographers there to take shots of the Cuba-Spain war. Except it wasn't really going on. Hearst had the photographers stage the pics, so it looked like war was raging and published them in his newspapers so people would get riled up."
" Hmm…"
"Then the U.S.S. Maine, in Cuba as a show of force, blew up. The ship's own captain said it had nothing to do with any war; it just blew up because of a fire on the ship. That part never made it to the papers and the U.S. got drawn into the conflict because Spain blew up our ship. The only problem — they didn't." Jerry smiled.
My head started to hurt.
"Need something more modern? How about FDR and Japan? The US suffered in a terrible depression and FDR wanted to go to war with Hitler, but the people railed against it. When Japan signed on with Germany and Italy, FDR had what he wanted. He set up oil embargoes to Japan and placed the Navy in Hawaii to keep Japan from going to Indonesia. Without any oil, Japan had to make a move."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. FDR knew to get the people worked up sufficiently the attack from Japan had to look barbaric. The reports said the Japanese were silent and made no radio transmissions while they headed toward Pearl Harbor, but it turns out it wasn't true. Our Admirals weren't informed about the Japanese advances and got left there as sitting ducks. The New York Times published the attack was known in advance in their December 8, 1941 edition-the very next day. People just chose to ignore it." Jerry grouchoed his brows again.
"Jerry-"
Jerry rolled on.
"In 'Nam we upped our involvement based on our ships getting torpedoed in the Gulf of Tonkin. The problem was our ships didn't get torpedoed. The sonar guy on the ship read his information wrong. LBJ knew that and still went on TV that night and dramatically presented what he knew was bullshit so his defense contractor buddies could get the war they wanted." Again Jerry Grouchoed.
"Uh…" I looked at my watch and knew I'd be in trouble at work.
"Need something even more modern?" I couldn't stop him, so I just let him run with it.
"In the early nineties, the first Bush saw Iraq had started to glut the market with too much oil, which drops the price. Well,
'Ol Herbert Walker is an oil man and he didn't want to see that happen to him or his OPEC buddies. So we got involved in Kuwait."
"How did he do it?"
"He actually sent word to Hussein we would not intervene if he invaded Kuwait. He then hired a PR firm to set up scenario for the US people to swallow."
"Huh?"
"Try to keep up, Duff. Don't you remember the story and the vast coverage about the Iraqi troops storming the hospital and looting the incubators and killing all the little precious infants?
They even had a Kuwaiti nurse in tears on camera." Jerry looked at me.
"Yeah, I remember. That was hideous," I said.
"Hideously effective. It never happened. The nurse was an actress, but the whole act played on the American psyche and we were ready to bomb the shit out of them. First, we all but invite him to invade Kuwait, then we set up a gut-wrenching PR stage act and presto! You got Desert Storm, which, by the way, didn't remove Saddam from power, but it did get the Iraqi oil off the market and did get the prices back up where George Herbert Walker and his OPEC friends wanted them," Jerry said with the biggest Groucho of all.
My hair hurt. I became a bit overwhelmed and a lot confused.
"I guess, in short, Duff, I'm saying you and your buddy might not be nuts. Or, at least, this conspiracy thing might not be why you're both nuts."
"Jerry, this is heavy shit. Karl says this guy he went to school with showed him a memo outlining a bunch of this Northwoods shit involving a private firm. Is it even possible?"
"It seems kind of weird some guy at soldier-level would be hip to what's going on, but these companies get so cocky it's possible they've gotten flip with their internal security. Or, maybe he's close with someone who is in the know and who leaked him info. That would seem more likely."
"Could you find out anything that might shed some light on this shit?"
"You never can tell. What's the name of the private security firm?"
"Blackgard."
"Hang on; let me see what comes up when I look them up." Jerry started hitting keys, making faces, nodding. He smiled.
"What's so funny?"
"Blackgard is in the top five of the website Compwatch. com."
"What's that?"
"It's a watchdog group about companies that benefit from defense contracting. They're huge. They do private security, which is pretty much mercenary stuff, but they also are into field food service, logistics and ancillary healthcare."
"So there's no question they benefit from a big defense budget."
"Yeah, but Duff, you could say the same thing about three quarters of the Fortune 500."
"Are they big enough and powerful enough to even pull off what Karl is saying?"
Jerry typed a few things into his laptop, smiled, and spun it around so I could look at the screen.
"Jerry, what the hell am I looking at?" he showed me some sort of financial statement and it made my eyes glaze over.
"The bottom line with all the zeroes."
"18.3 million dollars. That is a shitload of money."
"Duff, look a little closer."
"What? Oh shit. That's 18.3 billion dollars."
"The answer to your question is 'yes'. They can pretty much do anything they want to do."
"But Jerry…how? Is it all the shit that Karl is crazy about: mind control, drugs, post hypnotic suggestion. That's comic book stuff, isn't it? Is it even possible?"
"It's pretty common knowledge the military did experiments with LSD on soldiers without their knowledge to see what they could use it for. They didn't treat a bunch of black men with syphilis because they wanted to see how their bodies reacted to it, and thousands of guys who got exposed to Agent Orange are all fucked up and the VA says the stuff was harmless."
"So that would be a 'yes' it is possible," Jerry just raised his eyebrows and smiled.