Last night, Cerise and I attended a Ravel concert by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. But before that, we had a dinner date at the Capitol Grille on Pennsylvania Avenue, where I awaited her arrival at a table for two. Then, more or less out of nowhere, Hoffmann appeared. He’s a successful staffer in the Obama White House, one with a well-deserved reputation as a fixer. Seizing upon the opportunity presented by the empty chair at my table, he immediately sat down and began talking.
“Tom,” he exclaimed, “what a coincidence! Got a minute?”
“Perhaps two or three,” I told him. “I’m waiting for a lady friend.”
“Oh, oh, good,” Hoffmann nodded, “that’s excellent. I was hoping to get some… input from you about Eric Holder.”
“Well,” I opined, “he’s certainly distinguished himself lately, hasn’t he?”
“His most distinguishing characteristic,” Hoffmann maintained, “has always been his staunch loyalty to the President.”
“Too bad,” I noted, “that his other major distinguishing characteristic seems to be a total disregard for the Constitution.”
“Only certain parts,” Hoffmann objected.
“Such as the First Amendment,” I offered. “He signed off on secret subpoenas to monitor the telephones at Associated Press offices and AP telephone accounts on Capitol Hill.”
“It was related to a very significant anti-terrorist investigation,” Hoffmann rationalized. “National security issues were at stake.”
“Then he approved secret search warrants for a journalist who had received classified information from a federal government source,” I continued.
“I’m sure you would agree,” Hoffmann argued, “that when a breach of national security occurs, we all have an interest in finding the perpetrators.”
“The ‘perpetrators,’ being,” I shot back, “the federal government employees who leak the classified information, not the reporters who receive it. But Holder went as far as to accuse the reporter of being a criminal co-conspirator. That’s not how we do things here in Washington – DOJ is supposed to crucify the leakers, not the journalists. Federal employees and officials who reveal classified information are fair game, but the journalists are off limits.”
“All right, all right,” Hoffmann conceded, “so maybe Holder did get a little over zealous…”
“Then,” I quickly interjected, “he committed perjury by lying to Congress about what he had done.”
“Well, now,” Hoffmann hemmed and hawed, “that’s really a matter of interpretation, and besides, nobody actually expects the Justice Department to prosecute the Attorney General for perjury, do they?”
“Okay,” I shrugged, “it sounds like, where the indiscretions, mistakes and sins of Eric Holder are concerned, the Obama administration has an answer for everything. So why are you button-holing me here at the Capitol Grille?”
“Ah, yes, well, as I’m sure you know,” Hoffmann pressed as he leaned in, “there have been a number of calls for Holder’s resignation – Reince Priebus, Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Bob Goodlatte, Representative Peter King, plus scads of op-eds… it’s getting to be a pretty steady drum beat. The scuttlebutt is that tomorrow morning, Senator John McCain and Representative Marsha Blackburn are going to call for his resignation on the Sunday talk shows. You know, it’s like the snowball just keeps getting bigger and bigger as it rolls down the mountain.”
“So why doesn’t Obama fire him?” I wondered aloud. “Or perhaps the President likes doing business with a big, dead stinking albatross hanging from his neck?”
“No,” Hoffmann admitted, “he certainly doesn’t. But he can’t fire Holder – it’s complicated, and it’s messy, and I can’t really explain it all in less than an hour, but basically, the President feels that if he gives Holder the ax, it would seriously undermine the foundations of trust and loyalty among his many other team players, who then might, um… possibly… uh…”
“Stop covering for Obama like they do now?” I speculated.
“No, no,” he protested, “I never said that!”
“So anyway,” I extrapolated, “let me guess – you’re beating the bushes for ideas on how to get Holder to quit.”
“Um… yeah, okay,” Hoffmann agreed, “you could put it that way, provided you never told anybody I said it like that.”
“What’s Holder’s style like?” I inquired. “Is he such a big shot that he never even touches a computer, or does he pride himself on how tech-savvy he is?”
“Oh, definitely the latter,” Hoffmann assured me. “He writes e-mails, issues directives with his government Blackberry, reviews documents on-line – he’s very twenty-first century.”
“Okay,” I began, “in that case, he will notice it when you delete him from the DOJ Microsoft Active Directory, disable all his DOJ network connections, cut off his VPN access and shut down his Blackberry.”
“Oh, my God, yes,” Hoffmann agreed, “that would definitely get his attention.”
“Naturally, his office has 24/7 video surveillance?” I asked.
“Of course,” Hoffmann confirmed.
“Okay, good, take a thirty minute loop of his empty office and splice it over the real video feed. Then send in one of your best black-bag operatives and have them drop a few hints around Holder’s office.”
“Such as what?” Hoffmann implored, now becoming visibly excited at the possibilities.
“Change the combinations on his office safe and locked file cabinets,” I suggested. “Replace every pen in his desk with old dry ones that don’t write, replace his desk stapler with one that doesn’t work and the staples with a box full of the wrong size. Reprogram his desk telephone to forward all his calls to Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street. Lock him out of his voice mail. Then make sure every call rings five times silently and only once audibly before rolling over to the voice mail account he can’t get into, so the folks a Ben’s will have a chance to answer it instead. Light a match and melt globs of bubble gum all over the rug. Pour dollops of molasses between the papers in his desk drawers. Close the door to his private lavatory tightly, and then squirt Crazy Glue into the lock. Leave quart containers of spoiled moo-goo gai pan and rancid kim chee in his office credenza and glue the doors shut…”
“Wait, wait,” Hoffmann pleaded as he frantically typed away at his Blackberry, “you’re going too fast. … Crazy glue in the lock… um… quart containers of… what was that? Moo goo gai pan and kim chee?”
“Spoiled and rancid, respectively,” I added.
“Sealed inside his office credenza by gluing the doors shut?” Hoffmann sought to verify.
“Correct,” I replied. “The best way to get them to go bad quickly is to put them in a one hundred degree oven for five hours.”
“Okay, okay, got that,” Hoffmann huffed, “what else?”
“Turn the thermostat up to eighty-five degrees and shut off all the air from outside, so everything just recirculates,” I recommended. “Adjust the sensitivity of the automatic motion sensor light switches so that he has to get up and move around the room to turn the lights back on. Adjust the time-out cycle to eleven minutes. What kind of chair does he have?”
“Oh, one of those enormous green leather upholstered ones,” Hoffmann declared, gesticulating to illustrate its size and shape, “simply humongus, with a big, high back.”
“Those have a large tempered master spring that holds the chair upright,” I noted. “Use some bolt cutters to snap that spring in half so that when Holder tries to sit down, he will bounce around on his throne like a jack-in-the-box. And last but not least, take a glass scraper and remove his name from the door.”
“Gee,” Hoffmann reflected as he examined what he had typed into his Blackberry, “do you think Eric Holder will be able to… um… take a hint?”
“Maybe,” I sighed. “More likely he’ll figure that the National Press Club did it and go after them with a huge secret federal task force.”
“Who’s your friend?” Cerise chimed in over my left shoulder.
“He’s a business associate, actually,” I told her. “Private business.”
“I… um… I was just leaving,” Hoffmann mumbled as he gave Cerise a smarmy smile and slinked away.