Shortly after eleven this morning, Gretchen put through a call from a fellow named Galbraith who said he works for the National Archives.
Tom: Hello, this is Tom Collins. How may I help you?
Galbraith: Mr. Collins, I’m afraid we’re in a bit of pickle down here at the Archives, and I was wondering if perhaps I could meet with you to discuss some solutions to these problems…
Tom: Certainly. Would you like to visit my office?
Galbraith: Uh, well, Mr. Collins, I know you’re on the GSA Schedule and all, but…
Tom: You can’t authorize rates like mine?
Galbraith: Ah, um… essentially, yes. I’m only a GS-12, and…
Tom: Say no more, Mr. Galbraith. It’s well known in Washington that I perform my share of pro bono work. Tell you what – have you ever dined at Filomena?
Galbraith: Over on Wisconsin Avenue? Oh, my God, no… it’s so…
Tom: Yes, I know. Expensive. Not so much for lunch, actually. Don’t worry, though – I’m buying. Meet you there at twelve-thirty?
Galbraith: Er, sure, Mr. Collins. I’ll be there with bells on.
Tom: Fine – that should make you easy to recognize.
Galbraith: What?
Tom: Okay, how about you just ask for the table reserved for me instead?
Galbraith: Oh. Yeah. See you there, then.
Tom: Right. ‘Bye.
Galbraith showed up a bit early, and so anxious, I doubt he enjoyed the Funghi alla Fiorentina, Insalata di Stagione or Filleto di Manzo he ordered, although he surely ate them with a discernible enthusiasm. Poor little GS-12, I thought to myself, who thinks Filomena is expensive – it’s not, really. Quite a good deal for the money, actually. You get what you pay for, after all. I like to eat there occasionally because the cooking reminds me of my mother’s, who could cook virtually anything Italian with her eyes closed and a hangover.
“So,” I began over dessert – Galbraith had the macadamia white chocolate mousse; I had the tira mi su (which is exactly the way my mom makes it) and a couple of double cappuccinos, “what’s the nature of your problem down at the National Archives?”
“It’s…” Galbraith stopped himself in a fleeting fit of paranoia, pausing to glance around at the other diners. Leaning forward, he whispered, “it’s these twenty-two million George W. Bush White House e-mails! I’m the one they assigned to classify them! Christ,” he gasped, probably still stunned at the realization himself. “I’ll be working on those [expletive] for the rest of my civil service career!”
“Well, look at it this way,” I philosophized, “you, unlike millions and millions of other Americans, have a job, and, what’s more, it’s going to last until you’re ready to go live at Rossmoor Leisure World up on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring and spoil your grandchildren when they come to visit.”
“Yeah,” Galbraith gulped, staring disconsolately down at his coffee, “if I don’t go [expletive] crazy first.”
“Galbraith,” I assured him, “you work for the United States Civil Service. Nobody will even notice if you go nuts. Now, what’s up with these Bush White House e-mails?”
“The reason they’re at the Archives,” Galbraith explained in as quiet a voice as he could manage, “is that the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics…”
“And what citizen,” I asked, “isn’t for responsibility and ethics?”
“Yeah,” Galbraith chuckled morosely, “good question; and the National Security Archive…”
“Which sounds like it’s part of the government,” I observed, “but actually isn’t.”
“No,” Galbraith concurred with a smile, “it’s not. They sued to obtain the release of e-mails lost when the White House switched over from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange…”
“Or so the official cover story goes,” I interjected, “allegedly because the archiving software couldn’t deal with Microsoft Exchange PST files.”
“Yeah,” Galbraith nodded, “that’s what they say, all right.”
“All of which,” I noted, “conveniently kept the e-mail traffic from March, 2003 to October, 2005 – one of the George W. Bush Administration’s most scandal-ridden periods – completely secret until after he left office.”
“That’s right,” Galbraith agreed, “it did.”
“Isn’t technology wonderful?” I joshed as I poured a shot of Grand Marnier into my cappuccino.
“Uh, er, yeah,” Galbraith replied, clearly missing my irony with the guileless, clueless, bovine imbecility so characteristic of those on the GS pay plan, “I guess it is. You see, Mr. Collins,” he continued earnestly, “both of those organizations have Freedom of Information Act requests in for those e-mails. But, on the other hand, President Bush, ah, former president Bush, anyway, he has the right to have e-mails of an, uh, presidential nature excluded from the FIOA request. Some of it’s pretty obvious – anything about how the George W. Bush administration engaged in a cover-up of how it lied to the American people about things, and, you know, pressured the CIA to prepare, ah, um…”
“Fabricated intelligence analyses,” I suggested.
“Yeah,” Galbraith acknowledged, “that’s it – fabricated intelligence, that stuff’s a no-brainer. Presidential material, every bit of it. Nobody but me and the four GS-10’s in my section are going to see any of it before 2040. And all of that stuff about how Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Ari Fleischer, Richard Armitage and Dick Cheney conspired to blow Valerie Plame’s CIA cover by leaking the information to Robert Novak – that’s all obviously presidential, too. Back in the vault with all that for another three or four decades, no doubt about it. But then, there’s some other stuff I’m not so sure about.”
“Right,” I speculated, “such as e-mails pertaining to the unjustified firing of United States Attorneys that Bush didn’t like…”
“No, no,” Galbraith disagreed, shaking his head back and forth in a tight, rapid oscillation, “not that. Strictly presidential, too. No, it’s the other stuff.”
“Okay,” I shrugged. “You got me. What other stuff?”
Galbraith drew a deep breath. “First, there’s these e-mails that went around about Condoleezza Rice.”
“What about Condoleezza Rice?” I wondered aloud.
“Things like…” Galbraith blushed as he quoted what he had read, “’Is she hot?’ ‘How about that gap between her front teeth? Would that be more like banging Bugs Bunny or Mike Tyson?’ Stuff like that. And, you know, e-mails where they talked about whether she’s, ah, um…”
“A lesbian?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Galbraith breathed out heavily, his eyes darting around the room, searching to see if anyone might have overheard my question. “And e-mails about whether it would be hot to watch her, um, ‘do it’ with Mary Cheney; and who would be butch, and who would munch rug, and which one would wear the, ah, you know…”
“Yes,” I confirmed, “I think I do.”
“And would Rice let Cheney touch her nappy hair…”
“Right, I get the picture.”
“And what kind of noises they would make…”
“Say no more,” I pleaded. “I’m trying to eat my tira mi su here, okay?”
“Oh,” Galbraith apologized, “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
“Sure,” I accepted graciously. “Moving along then, I take it you don’t know whether to categorize e-mails like that as ‘presidential material’ or not?”
“Exactly,” Galbraith confirmed. “And then,” he whispered, pulling a sheaf of papers from his briefcase, “there’s these.”
With that, he handed me a stack of White House e-mail printouts. He’d carefully redacted the sender and recipients’ names in each one. They were pretty interesting reading, I must say. So interesting, in fact, that I ordered another cappuccino:
Is it just “male bonding,” I wonder, all those nude men down in the basement of Skull and Bones? Certainly, guys get naked in locker rooms, and there’s nothing perverted about that, but this is my husband we’re talking about here.
“Oh, come on, baby,” he insisted with a sharp pinch, once again in a place she had told him was undignified and degrading. Not that he cared, of course. “Bill Clinton got a hummer under the desk in the Oval Office, how come I can’t have one, too?”
Dearest heart, if you think he’s fallen off the wagon again, you have to do something, no matter what the consequences…
She grimaced, recalling his fumbling, inept copulation, which even now, at his age, had been no better than a school boy’s. She flinched reflexively as the memory of his fetid breath, heavy with the odor of fried pork rinds, washed over her and recoiled from nothing – as she was, in fact, alone, so very alone – when she realized with stark revulsion that his oily, pungent, simian scent still clung to her flesh. Why – how in the name of God Almighty – did that man manage to smell exactly like the monkey house at the zoo? Closing her eyes, the image of his face floated before her, wreathed in nothingness as a ghastly vision grew clearer, the Seal of the United States surrounding the repulsive apparition’s horrid face. Suddenly, the mists around the Great Seal parted, revealing its inscription: “What? Me President?” She woke, startled, and sat bolt upright. “How come,” she sobbed, “I never noticed before I married him that he looks just like Alfred E. Newman?”
“This isn’t the President’s, rose garden,” she panted as she pulled him closer, “it doesn’t belong to the Executive Office, the Department of the Interior, or the General Services Administration! It belongs,” she cooed, deftly unbuckling his belt, “to me! Come, Manuel, come! You are the White House gardener, this is my rose garden, and I am your rose!”
There was plenty more; I just skimmed it, and it was all very similar. “Obviously fictional,” I remarked as I handed the papers back to Galbraith. “Apparently, even as the country was becoming mired in Iraq and Wall Street was looting everybody’s bank accounts while the SEC looked the other way, some folks at the Bush White House still had time to work on various Washington potboiler novels and screenplays.”
“So you’d say e-mails like those…” Galbraith’s eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Are all definitely ‘presidential’ in nature, and nobody but you, me and the people in your section at the Archives should ever see them until at least 2040.”
“Wow,” Galbraith exhaled. “What a relief!”