Dowd on the surveillance crowd

December 21, 2005

The Squires of Surveillance

By MAUREEN DOWD
(and a ukethanks to Phyll)

Dick and Rummy are holed up in the den of Rummy's
Chesapeake Bay retreat, Mount
Misery, pawing through sheafs of transcripts of
wiretapped telephone
conversations, hunting for inside dope.

Chinook helicopters patrol the skies above the
red-brick waterfront mansion.
Rummy loves the take-no-prisoners lineage of his $1.5
million getaway, built in
the 19th century by Edward Covey, an evil slave owner.

Winter weekends by a crackling fire are cozy and
conspiratorial, now that the
two men have nearby spreads in St. Michaels, Md.

These squires of surveillance while away their
evenings sipping from goblets of
Glenlivet and perusing the illegally bugged phone
conversations of any American
they please. Getting in the holiday spirit, they're
mining data to revise their
naughty and nice lists.

"Check this one out, Dick," Rummy says excitedly.
"I've been reading Jennifer
Aniston's conversations for the last six months now,
and I gotta say, I don't
get what she sees in this guy Vince Vaughn. 'Wedding
Crashers' was funny. They
shot that here in this village, you know. But I don't
trust the guy. No way he's
going to give up lap dancers and be true. I just don't
want to see Jen get hurt
again."

Dick grunts. He's deeply absorbed in the classified
reports on the F.B.I.
infiltration of a Vegan Community Project and a People
for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals protest against llama fur. He's ruminating
over a naked picture of
Pamela Anderson emblazoned with the PETA slogan, "I'd
rather go naked than wear
fur."

"Porter Goss tells me that Pam was shacking up with
Mark McGrath - you know, he
used to be with that band, Sugar Ray?" Rummy says.
"Listen, Dick, we need to
jawbone about this flapdoodle about our stateside
spying operation that
developed while you were on your whirlwind tour of
American torture chambers in
Iraq and Afghanistan."

Dick interrupts, "More torture."

"Some pansies are making unwarranted claims that we
should have gotten
warrants," Rummy continues. "But we can't worry about
the Constitution's fine
print during war. Besides, it's fun to secretly blow
off the super-secret court.
Sure, warrants would have been no problem - the court
has turned down only five
government requests since 1979. Why the dickens
shouldn't we go in and eavesdrop
on whoever we want? Who says we can't do sneak and
peak searches whenever we
dadburn please?

"Junior can try to model himself after Reagan, but you
can't beat our old boss
Nixon when it came to channeling paranoia in a
productive way. Nixon and J.
Edgar Hoover had it right: dark times call for dark
measures. We're thinking too
small, really. Let's sic the I.R.S. on Murtha, McCain
and Feingold. Let's bug
Condi and Lieberman - those back-stabbing sons-of-guns
want our jobs. Condi has
no clue who she's dealing with, right, Dick? I
perfected the black art of
infighting before Condi was born. And while we're at
it, let's tap Risen's
phone. His story in The Times about our wiretaps was
an outrageous invasion of
our privacy and an assault on our monarchy's - I mean,
our executive branch's
absolute power. We'll smoke out the rat who leaked
that story."

Dick takes a sip of Scotch and nods. "More snooping,"
he says.

"Karl's new game plan of pretending to admit that we
made some mistakes in Iraq
seems to be working," Rummy muses. "The Kid's approval
ratings are picking up.
But I hope Georgie's not falling for that contrition
guff he's peddling. We
don't want him to go wobbly on us. We have a long way
to go in Iraq. The Iraqi
security forces are still curled in a fetal position.
Oh, by the way, Chalabi
called today. He thinks Iran did a better job trucking
in stuffed ballot boxes
for the Shiites than we did for the Sunnis." He adds
slyly, "You'd think we'd be
better by now at stealing elections."

"More fraud," Dick rumbles. "More rigged elections."

Dick points at the flat-screen TV over the roaring
fireplace. It's time for
their favorite Sunday night program.

"It isn't on yet, big guy," Rummy sighs. "The Kid is
yakking again to the
nation. He's so desperate he's pre-empting 'Desperate
Housewives.' The gals
won't be on for 20 minutes."

Dick glowers, sinking deep into his leather chair.

"Hey, I've got a great idea!" Rummy grins. "You wanna
read a phone transcript of
a big cat fight between Teri Hatcher and Nicollette
Sheridan? Mueller just sent
it over. Hot stuff!"

Dick perks up. Half his mouth inclines, indicating
extreme joy. "More Nicollette
Sheridan," he nods.