Agent before, honest man now

It was 2008 or so, not sure when. I could look it up, as I signed a contract, a “NDA”, or nondisclosure agreement. A large Lincoln Continental pulled in our driveway in Bozeman, and I sat inside with a man named Dell. I had been blogging for a few years, nothing really interesting, party politics and the like, and a very small following.

Dell said that blogging was seen as a tool for his people, a way to influence people. He thought my writing was crisp, but could serve a better purpose. Partisan politics was good, he thought, a nice way to keep people divided without affecting any outcomes, but blogging could serve a larger purpose.

Dell wanted bigger divisions, more fiery topics, more divisiveness. He saw blogging as a way to capture small but smarter audiences. There was, developing due to the Internet, a passionate and highly informed segment of society that could see through the hoaxes that drove the masses. His agency, which he never named, wanted to bring this societal segment into line, let it roam freely and have its say, but keep it contained.

“What would be my job”, I asked? The pay was modest, but I needed money.

“You are to take the real events of our time, and write about them, but lie. Distort. Get creative, make them into giant hoaxes”.

“Like what?”

“Well take just one. The Moon landings. It all happened, just like they said. Six landings, twelve people walked about up there. Say it wasn’t so. Say it was all a hoax, a lie.”

“Why”?

“This is how we govern. We do not care what people think. We only want them to be divided and arguing amongst themselves.”

He actually used the word “amongst”.

It sounded like fun. I like that kind of writing. Dell said that if I worked for his agency, I could keep my name, but would need a new birth date. I would henceforth have been born on April 20. He said that date sends a as message to insiders. They use numerical signals, one of which is 11. April 20 is the 110th day of the year. See the embedded 11? Me and Adolf Hitler would share that birthday. (My real, non-spooky birthday, by the way, is March 3rd.)

I started writing not about Moon landings, but 911. I was looking for an edge, a way to broach the topic. Jet aircraft really did plow into the Twin Towers, and thousands of people really did die. I woke up one morning with Isaac Newton on the brain, and wrote that what we saw on TV, holes in the side of the Towers, could not be. Aluminum aircraft, when flying into steel and concrete buildings, cannot penetrate them leaving clean holes.

Of course they can! All they need do is fly really, really fast! But I wrote that Newton said no, not so, that iron and steel prevail, and that what we saw on TV could not be.

It was my first foray into professional lying, and the agency was impressed. I woke up one morning with a new idea. I said that Mohamed Atta, one of the pilots that day, had a sinister face meant to scare people, but that he was not real! His photo was just a composite, that no such man ever existed.

Oh, Atta was real. He indeed piloted a jet aircraft into a tower, killing thousands of people. He did us all a favor by committing suicide. The agency was impressed. They had anticipated that I would invoke Newton, but the “composite” Atta was a twist they had not expected. It caught their collective eyes.

Next, indeed, I took on the Moon landings. Back from 1969 to 1972, the United States of America landed six spacecraft on the Moon, and twelve men walked its surface. They had assembled the brightest engineers and scientists of the time, and it was indeed an amazing accomplishment. I was to knock it down.

“Cannot be!” I wrote. Too many obstacles. Under-powered rockets, not enough fuel. Van Allen belts, solar flares, Playtex space suits, cosmic radiation, temperature extremes, fake photos. Why no stars in the sky? Why the same horizons? The Earth is too small in those (fake) photos! The sun is just a flood lamp!

It took, and a following developed that exists to this day. Dell contacted me, and said I was doing good work, but that I needed to be careful not to be too convincing. Remember, he said, that they do not want a lopsided debate. The object, as always, is to keep people divided. But it never does well when one side wins a debate. Division is the key.

I was off! I began writing about off-the-wall topics. I claimed that the then-FOX newsman, Bill O’Reilly, was really a man named Bobby Fuller, who had faked his death years before. Agency people chuckled at the creativity, as O’Reilly always was just O’Reilly. But I used photo sleuthing to make the two look alike.

“What’s up with that?” they asked. “It gets better,” I said. Next I said that Janis Joplin had not died, and was also working in the news business. But wait, I said. “She’s twins! There are two of them! She’s ‘Amy Goodman’!”

Howls and shrieks of joy ensued. I was on a tear. Liking the idea of twins, I also claimed that Anderson Cooper’s brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, had faked his death, and that the two of them, like the Joplin twins, were working news. Anderson was kind of bright, Carter kind of dumb, and they stepped in and out of each other’s shoes.

It was pure creative writing, and I was having a blast. Anderson did not take it well, and I felt some guilt for ridiculing his brother’s very real death. “I still miss my bro,” he is said to have said after reading the piece.

Next, liking the idea of twins, I claimed that Paul McCartney was really a set of twins, naming them Paul and Mike. The other twin, the one we do not see anymore, was a short guy, a crooner, not a rock star. He sang Yesterday on the Ed Sullivan show, I claimed.

“But which one wrote Yesterday?,” I was asked. “Neither!” was my answer. The agency was impressed. Macca, of course, is one man and one man only, an amazing man. He is, as Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live fame claims, a “fucking Mozart”. Twins, my ass, but man could I create and write. Not like Macca, of course.

Howls of laughter ensued, my pay increased, and I was encouraged to do more of the same. On a tear, not really thinking things through, I next claimed that the famous JFK autopsy photos were fake, and that they had taken his face and superimposed it over someone else’s body.

That did not set well, as JFK is a god of sorts in the agency. His tragic death on 11/22/63 was not to be toyed with, and I was severely reprimanded. “Keep it light,” I told. “Go after less important people. Leave JFK alone. Also JFK Jr.” They were not to be touched.

That stung. Up until that time, I was having good clean fun. So I went after lesser lights. We took a trip to Argentina, and in Buenos Aires I saw the crypt said to hold the body of Eva Peron, who died in 1953. Bored in a big city, I woke up one morning thinking that perhaps (ha ha) she did not die, but lived on, and went to Michigan in the US, and raised a family. One of her daughters turned out to be Madonna, the pop sensation! I juked it around.

I giggled all the way through. I said that the only reason Madonna got the part of Eva Peron in the 1996 movie Evita was because she was playing her mother! Other better actresses and singers were available, but they gave the part to her lesser talents for that reason.

The agency was in tears of laughter, but some within were offended, as they thought I had gone too far in minimizing Madonna’s talents. I was taken aback, and wondered that even in this powerful propaganda outlet there were some who thought Madonna was real and talented. Tread carefully, I thought.

John Denver was a talented singer/and maybe also probably not a songwriter. He died (for real) on October 12, 1997, near Pacifica, California, crashing in the ocean in a Long EZ experimental aircraft. I put a lot of time into a 13,000 word piece claiming that the death was a hoax, that Denver lived on, moving to New Zealand to be with his adopted daughter. The agency loved it.

Bigger events awaited. I wrote that the Jonestown Kool-Aid massacre was a hoax. I also wrote that Tienanmen Square, where the Chinese massacred 10,000 protesters, never happened. I was unhinged. Nothing was real. I claimed that Jane Fonda was a government agent, and that she never went to Hanoi! Then I went back in time and claimed that John Brown, whose body lies a’mouldering in the grave, was an agent provovateur used to start the Civil War, and who was not hanged.

The agency loved it all. I continued to get pay raises, but on the horizon was an event so large that even I could not bear to lie about it. Covid was real, the virus was a real thing, and the PCR test was a technical miracle. Millions of people died. I was told to write that it was all fake.

Well, it was my job.

I swallowed hard, and claimed that Sars-Cov-2, the virus behind the pandemic, had never been isolated. I wrote that the PCR test merely churned out random results, none real. I wrote that the “Covid-19” deaths were hyped, merely regular deaths caused by influenza and pneumonia and other normal stuff, the regular causes. I said that CDC lied about excess deaths.

It was hard writing. I ached with each word, as millions were indeed dying. When the miracle vaccine arrived, I was told that it too was to be ridiculed as fake, or worse yet, intended for some other unstated purpose.

I got vaccinated myself, and urged all my family members to do the same. I took the initial vax, and three boosters too. While I urged that others avoid it, I took care of myself. I was a giant hypocrite.

All things pass, and my days as a counter-cultural rebel were numbered. I had crossed a line. With Covid, my conscience finally stepped in and said “Enough!” I can ridicule celebrities and events, minimizing their importance. But when it came to a worldwide pandemic that killed millions, I had to resign.

What about my non-disclosure agreement? Does it have teeth? Will the agency sue me, take back all of the lucrative pay I have enjoyed? Will I go to jail? Will I have to fake my death? Will they kill me for real? I have bargained with the devil.

We will see. Today, April 1, 2023, is my last blog post. I am done. I will never write again, I will never again taint factual history. I will leave reality alone. We did walk on the Moon, John Denver is dead, and Covid was the God’s honest truth.

Mea Culpa.