1987 Iran-Contra Affair or Contragate. The National Security Committee operated as a kind of parallel government, setting up illegal deals to continue funding the Nicaraguan contras or “freedom fighters” who burn fields, starve out families, murder children. The hearings revealed an “underworld of arms dealers and financial brokers into which Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North and his fellow National Security Council staff members descended” (“Reagan’s Band of True Believers,” Frances Fitzgerald, the New York Times, May 10, 1987).
1897 Felix Gribelin covered his googly eyes with dark blue glasses. He was about to enter a public urinal in the Parc Montsouris. A man whose long, drooping moustache would not have set him apart from any number of other middle-aged men in the Paris streets that spring, he didn’t need much of a disguise but felt the dark glasses were important, if not essential. Gribelin was the archivist of the Section of Statistics, an agency something like the FBI, but he didn’t approach the arranged meeting with Count Esterhazy as if it were all in the course of an ordinary day, because it wasn’t. He had been summoned by the General Staff for this appointment, and he had to carry out their wishes.
Gribelin was startled to see a large woman exiting the small stone building just as he was about to enter. Her face was veiled, and she opened an umbrella to shield herself from the rain. He turned to look at her back and the folds of her skirt as she disappeared, making her way through the park. Despite the somber tailoring of the woman’s clothing there was something gaudy about the way she put herself together. Her green brocade jacket was very bright as well as close fitting, and he had seen many rings on her gloved hands before she opened the umbrella in his face. He assumed she was a prostitute, but what he didn’t know was the woman was actually Major General du Paty de Clam. Once she was out of sight, Felix entered the urinal to find the Count leaning against a tiled wall, coat unbuttoned, humming a tune, waiting for him.
As long as they were determined to condemn Dreyfus, the real spy, Esterhazy, had only a slight chance of being convicted, and he was arrogant with the knowledge that although guilty he was almost untouchable. They needed him, and the deeper the General Staff dug in asserting Dreyfus’s guilt, the more they needed him. The Count was fortunate that the letter signed D found in the garbage at the German embassy had been misattributed to Dreyfus. Had the D been assigned to a Drumont or Deroulede or d’Ormescheville, Christians all of them, the outcome would not have been so clearly in the Count’s favor. Du Paty de Clam was powerful, a man who arranged convictions, promotions, a man who moved without restraint, a man so confident of his position that he could wear a dress, and no one could say I have the goods on you, a man beyond blackmail.
In the dim urinal, made considerably murkier by his dark glasses, Felix made out the shadowy form of the Count. Water dripped, gaslights sputtered, the tile smelled of chlorine and salt. The two men shook hands. Du Paty had told Felix that national security issues were at stake in the Dreyfus trial and therefore the conviction must stand. Esterhazy made Felix a little uneasy, which was unusual because after all his years with the Section of Statistics, few people did.
Just as du Paty’s General Staff was an agency of parallel government arranging deals in public urinals, creating evidence of crimes where none existed, so too was Oliver North able to manufacture the fraud he was the architect of, or perhaps he genuinely believed in it. His project, however, operated on a global scale, getting one group of thugs to bankroll another. Again, North’s testimony was bracketed by deletions and assertions that “national security issues were at stake.”
1992 John Lennon’s file is still sealed. The FBI claims national security is at stake.
Do you see what I’m getting at? Méliès wrote: “The scenario is simply a thread intended to link the ‘effects’ in themselves without much relation to each other.” In other words the individual stories are less important than the parallels they represent. The who’s, where’s, when’s and why’s might be interchangeable. The scenario is a means to the end. Evidence of mistrials and cover-ups, the forgeries and lengths of shredded documents are only a series of similar patterns. Yet all these machinations make a mockery of even the notion of gullibility. I want to believe what you’re telling me is true, I yell childishly at the radio, television, and microfilm. I want to believe the lives of John Lennon and Salvadoran children were corrosives eating away at a filigreed and imperiled democracy, but face it, Frances, don’t you find all this a little difficult to swallow?
Some “national securities,” so important at the moment, turn into exercises in clownish paranoia, the butt of curatorial or custodial jokes in a museum of ancient history, and while some conspiracies deflate when subjected to the pinpricks of the late twentieth century, others are born and gain momentum fed on underground springs. It was believed Napoléon died from stomach cancer. We know now that Napoléon died of arsenic poisoning.
Méliès’s slogan was Star Films: The World Within Reach. He really believed any event, from kidnapping to a flash of lightning, could be caught and preserved, made accessible through the camera. It was an optimistic slogan. I think he was saying that because of the camera, the truth couldn’t be perverted. Little did he know.
One thing I should add, someone stole the two books on Méliès from the New York Public Library. Settling down at the Donnell branch I called for the books only to find they were long gone, so most of what I’m telling you about him was learned while I worked at Omnibus. When I arrived back in the States I thought I would have access to more information and may yet, but so far I’m coming up empty handed. Not only are the books missing, but I’ve found microfilm tampered with by someone armed with pins and needles keen on riddling the strips with strategically placed pinprick holes and minute slashes so that any information I sought was rendered inscrutable. Most references to him have been poked or sliced out. When one of the books I searched for was found, the sections about Méliès had been torn out, replaced by chewing gum, tissues, or nothing at all.
Last week I was followed from the library into the subway at Broadway and 66th Street. It was early evening, just past rush hour, but the underpass that connects the downtown and uptown sides was surprisingly deserted. How do I know I was followed? I don’t, but I think I was, although I heard no footsteps. A figure came up suddenly from behind me, and an abrupt blow to the jaw almost knocked me out. I didn’t get a good look at her, but I’m certain it was a woman. She was a pro and moved quickly and gracefully like a figure from a Jackie Chan movie. Punjabi dance music floated down from the news kiosk on the subway platform just up the stairs above my head and the sounds of tabla and sitar threaded in and out of my consciousness until I was able to stand up and make my way to the stairs. I groped toward the sound, comforting and familiar from my years in London. Finally I reached the steps, damp with spilt liquids, and sat down again, my head in my hands. I swallowed my screams because this is a crime I’m unable to report. I’m here in this country illegally although I was an American citizen at one time and suppose I still am. I held my arms against my stomach rocking back and forth, unable to go to the hospital for exactly the same reason. No one paid any attention to me. When I was able I made my way onto a train although it was going the wrong way. My wallet was gone, which means someone has my address and Alphabet’s. My assailant knows I’m living in New York, and I worry about you as well. They surely know you have this film and that you are working against the clock to preserve it.
Yours truly,
Jack Kews
I remember watching the Watergate trial on television. The screen flickered. Our reception wasn’t very good. Howard Hunt with his pencil moustache. Liddy with his burned hand and love of Nazi propaganda films. Round-eyed Maureen Dean, a name with rhyming parts. We sat around the kitchen table watching. I remember the scene as if it were evening although it may have been during the day, and because I was very young I probably didn’t know exactly what was going on. Houseplants and lumpy pottery made in grade school framed the talking heads. When a television commentator expressed shock, I had a sense of imminent catastrophe and shame, but it wasn’t personal