Photo Credit: https://www.newspapers.com/article/chicago-tribune-pat-price-quote-chicag/25320868/
My first introduction to any kind of archive was in high school when, on a teacher’s recommendation, I visited the Prelinger Library—a small library, just one large room, and open to anyone, in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco, and full of gems of all kinds: fifties-era urban slang guides, outdated maps of the Bay, punk zines on lockpicking, and the like. Since then, I’ve thought of libraries and archives as essentially ends-in-themselves, places where you can go and have fun, chat, pass around sometimes-old and nearly lost things, without any particular objective. At places like Columbia, where archives primarily function as tools for researchers, students and artists, it’s easy to forget to go to an archive just to play around. Thinking back to those visits to the Prelinger Library, I recently made a trip to the RBML, where I made an appointment to look through a small portion of the newly acquired David Wise papers.
Wise is probably best known for his book The Invisible Government (1964), one of the first serious studies to bring details of (CIA) American foreign covert action (e.g. in Guatemala, Iran, Cuba) to a wide American audience. He also maintained a correspondence with Jackelyn Kennedy Onassis, who later edited his novel The Samarkand Dimension (1987) at Doubleday. Going through his papers—at least the few folders I managed to get through in my brief, three hour appointment—was, it turned out, a lot of fun. What follows are partial transcriptions of a few documents that I found especially interesting.
MEMCON J.O. 12 12 83
Rain made her weekend in Virginia not good for fox hunting and she called to say we could have a drink after all at her mother’s house on Volta place. I had suggested that last week, but she tought there would be guests and it would be difficult. I arrived at 3:30 p.m. in downpour. She introduced me to Mrs. Janet Auchincloss, her mother, (who is now Mrs. Morris as I learned when I ran into her at the Homestead on Jan. 1 and we chatted) who was looking at a photo album JO had brought her. Two Jack Russellterriers nipped at my heels and nearly bit JO’s hand off until the white-coated butler lured them off. JO and I had an hour and ten minutes in living room, because Mrs. A gracefully went upstairs. We drank Perrier.
…
Near the end of the meeting, I said “When will you write your own book?”
“Never.”
“I suppose there would be parts that would be too painful.”
“I shouldn’t say never. Perhaps when I’m 90.” She said a lot of people certainly are telling all in memoirs.
I said well, I’ll come hobbling in on my cane and help you if you need help. If I’m around. Think of me, I said, and we left it at that.
Then she and her mother went off in the rain in their car to see Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.
***
Index To Card File
Chinatown: Gang wars
CIA: Blind whistler
CIA: Dulles initials in-hat story
CIA: ESP
CIA: Brain scrambling
CIA: Germ warfare, Biogen machine
CIA: Man burgled
CIA: Runs a disco
CIA: Swine flu, Cuban pigs
CIA: Weapons, marshmallows
Crime Detection: Fingerprints, laser detectors
Hand, missing juror
Helicopter, as assassination weapon
KBG: Microdots in eyelids
KBG: “Russian Mafia” in Brooklyn
Language: California speak
Lie Detectors: Beating with Miltown
Lie Detectors: Micromentary
Mafia: Pizza industry
Military: Advanced weapons, ozone layer
Military: Destroying Soviet leadership
Military: Soviet sub attacks, 7 minute warning
Nazis: Blue dye in eyes
Nazis: The electrician was eaten
Nuclear: Oil blackmail for bombs
Pigeons: Homing
Pit bulls in Florida
President: Aquarium attack
Secret Societies: Bohemian clubs
Secret Societies: Survivalist groups, California
Secret Societies: Witches
Smuggling: Buddhist artifacts
WASPs: St. Paul’s School
Wiretaps: Conductive paint
Wiretaps: Reading electrical typewriters
Zirconium
***
Plot notes N3
A character might be someone from DDO who had run the experiments to incapacitate people harmlessly with marshmallow barrages. But Pointdexter, after experiments don’t work, rents a U-haul and fills it with marshmallows and drives down to West Virginia to camp Wahwahtoosa and delivers them to his kid’s camp, where they are all roasted as everyone sings On Top of Old Smokey.
***
Iran/Contra: if I had gone into my editor and said I’ve got a great idea for a novel about an aging and forgetful president, a 43 year old Marine colonel running secret operations out of the White House basement, the government trading arms with terrorists and diverting millions of dollars to the contras, a gorgeous secretary and part time model helping the colonel shred documents, and a first lady who fires the president’s chief of staff, my editor would say g’wan, it’s not believable.