SIDETRIPS


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agent Willis strikes again

These were gallant days for Agent Willis. X, the Ramparts staffmember, resigned and disappeared a month after receiving the Bantu Wolf. On hearing of this success, The Director Himself instructed Willis to fake a letter from Jimmy O’Shea to Black Panther Chairman Bobby Seale so enraging to Seale he would declare O’Shea a running-dog jackanape scoundrel and have him killed.

The letter must sound genuine. Willis pulled up the O’Shea file, studied the subject’s own words:

The violence of the powerful is aimed at people. People are jailed, beaten, fined, fired, intimidated, denied and killed.

The effects of this violence are seen every day in wasted lives, betrayed hopes, corrupted institutions of education, lies and excuses disguised as political policy, a monstrous foreign war.

I would define resistance as action that attempts to stop the violence of the powerful by impairing, controlling or destroying their ability to carry it out.

Our actions are directed not at people but at the relations of power. We do not seek to punish individuals but to prevent the institutions of state violence from operating.

We now have the possibility of building a mass movement. Resistance without a mass base is terrorism. A mass movement without resistance will find itself shunted into a comfortable irrelevant niche in the existing power structure.

Perfecto. Willis pulled out a legal pad.

 

Dear Bobby Seale, Chairman Bobby, Bobby,

Comrade Bobby,

The Black Panther Party Your party The effects of violence by your party, the Black Panther Party, has failed to build a mass movement. It is directed against people, by which I mean the police cops pigs, and not against the relations of power as it should be impaired.

What are you doing? Wasting lives, betraying hopes. You make lies disguised as foreign policy political statements.

You say “Power to the People.” But if you want to be powerful you have to aim your violence at the powerful at the people, who have been jailed, fined, intimidated and killed. Nothing must impair, control, or destroy your ability to carry it out.

If you do not obey these instructions, you will be shunted into a comfortable niche in the existing power structure.

Yours truly Power to the People

Jimmy Jimmy O’Shea Comrade Jimmy

Comrade Jimmy O’Shea

 

Now to type it on mimeo paper purchased at a local stationary store and mail it from a box on the street. The Director was explicit about that.

As Willis reached for his fedora (he imagined the Director complimenting him on his fedora), he noticed a manila envelope in his inbox. No return address. Inside were four sheets of xeroxed checks from the Castle Bank and Trust in the Bahamas, made out to, what a coincidence, James O’Shea, and his concubine Cathy Cohen, and a photocopied memo from someone to someone else claiming that the two aforementioned are paid CIA agents.

NO NO NO! James Fintan O’Shea is listed on the Director’s own Rabble Rouser Index, Agitator Index, Security Index, and had just been elevated to Adex Cate-gory I. What could the fool who concocted this patent fraud, these phony checks, this multipliphotocopied “letter” be thinking? That the Director is wrong? That I, SA Willis, am going to act as if Jimmy O’Shea, whom I'm about to have offed by the Panthers, is a CIA operative? Do they take me for a idiot? Is this some kind of office joke? (Agent Scolder blames me for the one-way mirror thing with the hooker and the acid, but that was a Company op.) Fuck the Cross and Bones smug liberal-minded Yalie faggots at the CIA, they drop too much of their own LSD. NO NO NO! If O’Shea is CIA it serves him right to get whacked by the Panthers. But he isn’t because the Director says he isn’t.

He tucked the fedora on his head, levelled it, stopped at the shredder on his way to the mailbox, emptied the fake checks, the false letter into the machine, watched them turn to paper hair. What an insult to my perfect mind.