My dear sister Rose’s oldest son, Hank Jr., came down to DC this week from Rhode Island, where he is studying art at Brown, in order to curate some recent modern art acquisitions for the Smithsonian. He brought along his current girlfriend, Lorelei, who is an English major. Hank Jr. dropped by my office on Friday for a brief visit between consultations and mentioned that while here in the Nation’s Capital, she would like to speak with me about “journalistic techniques for managing relations with powerful people in government.” I said sure, and had Gretchen book her for an appointment on Tuesday. Lorelei demurred, however, requesting a telephone conference instead, despite the fact that she was here in Washington. Her excuse was that she somewhat shy, which given my experience with Hank Jr.’s female friends, I find extremely difficult to believe. Actually, I suspect she does not want me to be able to recognize her the next time we encounter one another.
Tom: Hello, this is Tom Collins.
Lorelei: Mr. Collins? This is Lorelei, a friend of your nephew, Henry.
Tom: Ah, yes, he told me about your interest in speaking to me concerning, um, interacting with government officials, I guess it was.
Lorelei: That’s right, and thank you so much for taking the time to discuss the topic with me.
Tom: You’re very welcome, Lorelei. Your voice sounds a little bit strange. Are you all right?
Lorelei: Um… that’s just a small chest cold, Mr. Collins.
Tom: Oh, I see. Well, I certainly hope you take care of it. What would you like to discuss?
Lorelei: As an English major with a minor in journalism who is graduating in June, I’m sure you would understand that I have, of course, been considering a strategy for my first career move.
Tom: Naturally.
Lorelei: And I was thinking of starting out with ghostwriting biographies of famous and powerful people.
Tom: A challenging first endeavor, no doubt about that.
Lorelei: I’ve been considering it for over a year, but over the last week, I noticed some… issues… arise with respect to someone in my… um… intended position.
Tom: Oh, really? Who would that be?
Lorelei: Paula Broadwell.
Tom: The author of General David Petraeus’ biography, All In – The Education of General David Petraeus, published by the Penguin Group?
Lorelei: Yes, that’s it.
Tom: Very favorable treatment of a potentially problematic subject.
Lorelei: True – and quite an insightful assessment.
Tom: So, what are these… issues… to which you refer, then?
Lorelei: Well, as you may already know, Paula Broadwell had a relationship with General Petraeus while working on the book.
Tom: They had an affair.
Lorelei: Yes.
Tom: One of those relationships that typically involves becoming at least partially disrobed, the engorgement of at least one set of genitals and engaging in the admixture of bodily fluids at a highly intimate state, usually resulting in a minimum of one orgasm.
Lorelei: I’ve never heard it described quite like that, but yes, that defines what, at a minimum, would occur.
Tom: And presumably did, at least once, if not multiple times.
Lorelei: Right.
Tom: In multiple states of undress.
Lorelei: One could certainly suppose so.
Tom: With presumed penetration of various orifices.
Lorelei: Variety, as they say, is the spice of life.
Tom: Indeed; and therefore – in numerous physical juxtapositions, venues, circumstances and situations, not to mention stages of undress, up to and include total, unabashed nudity.
Lorelei: Possibly.
Tom: Unabashed, and even… mutual.
Lorelei: Can’t be ruled out. People hook up and do what they do.
Tom: So – you’re… comfortable… with that sort of behavior on the part of a journalist or a ghost writer, having sex with their interviewee or client?
Lorelei: Well, yeah, sure – that’s how you get quality product.
Tom: They teach you that in journalism school?
Lorelei: Not in class, no. What I’m talking about is what you learn at the coffee house and the bar afterwards.
Tom: So all your classmates agree with this… philosophy?
Lorelei: A lot of them do.
Tom: What if your journalistic subject or your biography client is a woman?
Lorelei: No problem.
Tom: No?
Lorelei: I was lesbian until graduation for three years.
Tom: Almost made it, huh?
Lorelei: Until I met Henry, actually. I have your nephew to thank for turning me bisexual again.
Tom: I see. So it’s just sex, eh? No emotional charge associated with it, one way or the other?
Lorelei: None whatsoever. It’s like going to the bathroom. Everybody needs to do it. If you don’t, your eyeballs turn yellow and you die.
Tom: So it’s just part of the job for the hardworking professional journalist or biography ghost writer, then?
Lorelei: If I’m going to get rich and win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award a few times, there’s no point in worrying about what my mother would think about my methods, now is there?
Tom: I guess not. Does my nephew have any idea about all this?
Lorelei: Oh, sure he does.
Tom: And he’s okay with it?
Lorelei: Your nephew is an artist, Mr. Collins. What do you think?
Tom: I think you’ve answered all my questions except one – why did you call me?
Lorelei: Well, yeah, okay, now that I’ve provided the necessary background, context and milieu and all for you to understand my problem, here’s what it is – because Paula Broadwell was having an affair with General Petraeus, now the Justice Department is investigating both of them to find out if he gave her any classified information. Okay, since I figure you’re an expert on issues involving government secrets, what I want to know is, when I’m having an affair with the person I’m writing about and they’ve got some high-powered federal government job with a forty-fingers-up-your-[expletive] security clearance, how do I avoid having somebody like Eric Holder pitching me like a ham sandwich to a federal grand jury after I finish writing my seven-thousand word article for Vanity Fair or sending my racy, knowing, witty and worldly, naming and shaming tell-all ghostwritten potboiler biography to the likes of Penguin Press?
Tom: Right. Got it. Do you talk in your sleep?
Lorelei: Interesting question. Since I’m asleep when it happens, how would I know?
Tom: Could you ask Henry?
Lorelei: Uh… actually, one of us always leaves right after we… finish. We’re both very busy.
Tom: Try arranging to take a nap together occasionally. You can tell him it’s for professional development purposes.
Lorelei: Oh, all right, yeah, I could do that. Or maybe a voice-activated recording while I’m sleeping?
Tom: That would work, too, and maybe allow for considerably more sampling time. You need to be absolutely sure you don’t talk in your sleep. And if your… literary subject… does, then you need to wake them up as soon as you hear them doing it and let them know they talk in their sleep.
Lorelei: Why? What’s this all about? What are you getting at?
Tom: If you’re in bed asleep with somebody who has a security clearance, then the NSA is listening, and let me tell you, all they had better hear is snoring, okay? Because if anybody starts talking, the bozos at the NSA have absolutely no way of knowing if that person is awake or not. Worst case scenario, where both of them talk in their sleep, forget about it. They can have what sounds on tape like a completely coherent conversation in which they both commit enough espionage to put them away for life in Leavenworth.
Lorelei: They can?
Tom: Oh yeah – as a matter of fact, I’ve heard several of them like that. So that’s priority number one – no talking in your sleep; neither of you.
Lorelei: Okay, got that.
Tom: The next thing you have to watch is emails and texts.
Lorelei: Well, sure, I guess so – it’s not like I’m going to be texting them about drone strike plans in Pakistan or the location of fissile nuclear materials, though, is it? And nobody smart enough to have a government job that requires a security clearance could be stupid enough to send their biographer an email with the security codes to the White House, could they?
Tom: You might be surprised, actually. But what I was referring to wasn’t using texts or emails to actually transmit classified information, what I’m talking about is you and your… literary client… sending each other messages that appear to be coded references to classified information.
Lorelei: Huh? Could you explain that?
Tom: Certainly. If Joe Sixpack texts his wife at the Safeway and says, “Honey, don’t forget the chips and dip for the Superbowl party,” when somebody at the FBI looks at that, they’re going to conclude that there’s going to be a Superbowl party at Joe’s house and the wife forgot to buy chips and dip for it. But if you’re having an affair with a fleet admiral and they send you a text that says, “Honey, don’t forget the chips and dip for the Superbowl party,” and somebody at the FBI looks at that, they’re going to conclude that “chips and dip” is code for state secrets covered by the Espionage Act and “the Superbowl party,” is a clandestine meeting with foreign agents.
Lorelei: But that’s ridiculous, paranoid idiocy!
Tom: Exactly.
Lorelei: Exactly?
Tom: Ridiculous, paranoid idiocy is what makes this town tick.
Lorelei: It does?
Tom: Yes, and if you want to become rich and famous writing biographies of powerful people who work here from between their bed sheets, you will need to develop a keen appreciation for it.
Lorelei: I see. What about talking on the phone?
Tom: The same considerations go for telephone conversations, too, of course. If some Washington bureaucrat calls his wife’s cell phone and says, “Make reservations for three at 1789 tonight,” and she says, “Who is the guest?” and her husband says, “Max Gold from Fort Knox. He’s here for the monetary conference; make them for eight – he’s arriving at Dulles around six-thirty,” that all sounds quite mundane to a security analyst at the CIA. But if that person is calling you, and they used to work for the CIA, and the CIA knows the two of you are getting jiggy before and after your literary development sessions, then those same words sound very different, indeed.
Lorelei: They do? How?
Tom: Let’s just say you and your retired spy had damn well better show up at the 1789 Restaurant at eight o’clock and have dinner with a guy named Gold from Fort Knox, Kentucky who arrived at Dulles airport around six-thirty, or the next thing you know, you’ll be staring at a US Treasury SWAT team who just broke down your front door at three in the morning waving a federal search warrant in your face.
Lorelei: You mean, if my… client… used to have a security clearance, they’d send… some guy… to track us down and make sure we weren’t talking about some kind of… criminal activity… in code?
Tom: They would not send some guy – they would send several guys and a van full of surveillance equipment. Now there’s the subject of your clothes.
Lorelei: My clothes?
Tom: Yes, your clothes. Everything you wear to his – or her – place has to leave with you, when you do. At your place, take all of it off in the front foyer. And make sure you have a smooth wood floor in the foyer – no rugs. If you have wall-to-wall, then staple some thick plastic sheeting over it. Take everything off and put it in plastic bags. Then vacuum the floor thoroughly and burn the vacuum bag afterward and flush the ashes down the toilet. Then wash everything that normally goes in the laundry immediately. The next day, take everything that would go to the dry cleaner and leather shop and have them thoroughly cleaned.
Lorelei: What’s the point of all this?
Tom: You not getting caught, for example, some six months after one of your love trysts with a suit jacket that has pieces of microfilm snagged in a cuff or… stuck to it somewhere else with, ahem… Clinton pearls.
Lorelei: They still use microfilm these days?
Tom: Sure. It continues to have some pretty awesome bandwidth, actually. And speaking of information media, you must never, under any circumstances, accept disks, DVDs, thumb drives, flash sticks or any other form of digital storage device from your lover. There are ways of storing secret information on all of them that you would never be able to detect. Don’t run any errands for him – or her – that involve you delivering any information storage devices to anyone else, either. And needless to say, don’t borrow any of their information storage devices, even if you intend to erase what you put on them and return them later after you are done. The fact that you had possession of them will prove impossible to conceal.
Lorelei: What if they send me – you know – letters or stuff like that?
Tom: Burn them and flush the ashes down the toilet.
Lorelei: But, but… what if the, you know, content is relevant to the article or biography I’m writing?
Tom: Then make photocopies and keep those. Always burn the originals.
Lorelei: How come?
Tom: Well, first of all, there’s invisible ink. There are dozens of types, of course, but the real state-of-the-art stuff only shows up in the ultraviolet spectrum after thermal neutron activation, and God knows what it might say. You don’t want to find out, that’s for sure. Then there are extremely fine perforations that would only be visible under an electron microscope. They don’t even go all the way through the paper, in fact, and of course whatever message they convey would almost certainly be encrypted. Then there’s DNA – most forensic chemists would conclude it’s your lover’s, of course – derived from sweat, tears or… other precious bodily fluids. But in fact, secret messages can be encoded in the A, T, G and C molecules and decoded using standard polymerase techniques. And there are also coded messages imbedded in the text of what appears to be an ordinary love letter. Like the other formats, that type would also be intended for a third party who would intercept the letters before you open them, or break into your domicile to steal them afterward, replacing them with previously prepared substitutes. And if you make photocopies, imbedded messages are just a risk you’ll have to take, because the photocopies would have the same imbedded secret messages, naturally, and it would be up to you to convince the feds you had no idea there was anything in those letters besides expressions of longing and affection.
Lorelei: Okay, I get it. Now, if I might change the subject just a bit then, what if I get… like… you know… pregnant?
Tom: Don’t do that.
Lorelei: But it happens, right?
Tom: These guys you’re thinking about sleeping with for professional advantage – they’re almost always married, and usually to some really tough women. I’m talking about the type of women who have become accustomed to living in ten million dollar homes in places like Chevy Chase and Reston. You start waving your baby fat tummy around in front of them, and I guarantee getting thrown into federal prison for twenty years will be the least of your problems.
Lorelei: Oh, okay, I get it.
Tom: You could always find some young guy who maybe isn’t quite all that rich and powerful, but who is obviously on his way to getting there, and you could marry him, provided, of course, you could put up with the guy for twenty years while he claws his way to a place near the top of the heap here in Washington, and then you could live in a ten million dollar house of your own in McLean or Potomac.
Lorelei: No, no, I don’t think I want to do that.
Tom: You want a twenty-million dollar condo in a luxury high rise in New York with a magnificent thirtieth floor view of Central Park, perhaps?
Lorelei: That sounds nice.
Tom: I’m sure it does. Any other questions?
Lorelei: Well, talking to you about this stuff, one more question did occur to me.
Tom: What’s that?
Lorelei: How do people in Washington stay sane, coping with this kind of cloak-and-dagger melodrama all the time?
Tom: Who says we do?
Lorelei: Oh. Well, um… thanks a bunch, Mr. Collins.
Tom: You’re welcome. Give my best to Henry.
Lorelei: Uh, yeah, I will, ‘bye.