The Church Committee
Not choosing Rockefeller for VP also means History A avoids THIS farce. Canonically the political and media tailwinds behind the Church Committee means the Ford administration does not have the juice to set up a trap like the Rockefeller Commission to divert the reform energies of Church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_President's_Commission_on_CIA_Activities_within_the_United_States (edited)
United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the U...
The United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States was ordained by President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States. The Presidential Commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, from whom it gained ...
[11:00 AM]
Intelligence Oversight Committee Eyed By Senate Democrats "Nothing is off the table": Majority Leader Mansfield By Earl Caldwell Special to The New York Times WASHINGTON, May 23 — Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Idaho Senator Frank Church announced today that upon return from Memorial Day recess, the Senate would undertake an immediate vote on the establishment of a Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. This proposed committee would take on further investigation of domestic abuses of American civilians by U.S. Army intelligence services, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other domestic government-affiliated and -funded intelligence and counterintelligence operations. The involvement of the FBI and CIA in the Watergate affair was the tip of the iceberg as journalists and public-interest lawyers spent the past three weeks combing through the thousands of hours of tapes and transcripts released by President Nixon immediately prior to his resignation three weeks ago. Discussions between Nixon and White House advisors as heard on the tapes clearly implicate the FBI and IRS as political instruments of the President against domestic political enemies. President Nixon's relationship with former DCI Richard Helms also has come under intense scrutiny, as several tape transcripts seem to implicate the former President in a quid pro quo scheme for CIA involvement in covering up the Watergate investigation in exchange for silence about, in President Nixon's words, "the whole Bay of Pigs thing." Journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post, Seymour Hersh of the Times, and Paul Avery and Tim Findley of The San Francisco Chronicle have published stories in the past weeks alleging direct CIA involvement in Watergate, domestic spying upon American citizens, and the involvement of California state officials—aided by CIA-connected researchers—in prison experimentation upon the late Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze of the Symbionese Liberation Army, respectively. These investigations were cited by Senators Mansfield and Church as having directly inspired Senate Democratic leadership in bringing this new select committee to a speedy vote. Majority Leader Mansfield told reporters, "Nothing is off the table in terms of this committee's oversight." Senator Church, a former member of Army Intelligence during World War II, said, "Our legislative responsibilities include checks and balances on any excesses of the executive. As public servants, our duty is to ensure that no future chief executive or agency head can abuse our country's intelligence capabilities for the purposes of settling personal or political scores. Any use of our nation's law enforcement or intelligence services to unduly and unlawfully harass, surveil, or otherwise interfere with the lives and liberties of American citizens is a first step on an inexorable march towards tyranny." President Ford has still not issued a pardon to President Nixon. Ford administration transition chairman and Acting Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld said, "Since the former President has admitted to no crime and has been accused of no crime, any need for President Ford to issue a pardon at this time is a mere phantasm in the minds of the paranoid."
[11:01 AM]
(Rumsfeld played Walsingham in the Grove production of Armada, btw)
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 11:08 AM
The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 93rd United States Congress Majority (Democratic) Frank Church, Chairman, Idaho Philip Hart, Michigan Walter Mondale, Minnesota Walter Huddleston, Kentucky Floyd Haskell, Colorado John Tunney, California Minority (Republican) John Tower, Vice Chairman, Texas Lowell Weicker, Connecticut Barry Goldwater, Arizona Charles Mathias, Maryland Richard Schweiker, Pennsylvania Italics: differs from our history's Church Committee
[11:09 AM]
(Instead of Hart and Hart our committee has Weicker and Schweiker, it's like poetry, it rhymes) (I picked Floyd Haskell for both the Colorado connection to Hart and also because he was in Army Intelligence during World War II; he was part of the team that assessed the damage the atomic bomb inflicted on Hiroshima. He also changed parties from the GOP to the Democrats after the invasion of Cambodia so he seems like a decent reformist egg.) (edited)
[11:14 AM]
(Also later married to Nina Totenberg of NPR! Although who knows if he divorces his first wife in this timeline.)
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 11:22 AM
(Will try to have some August witnesses up soon. In our history, most of the Church Committee was held behind closed doors, with some select testimonies put on TV like the Watergate hearings. I feel like if History A's Church Committee begins behind closed doors, we can grease the wheels to greater public exposure despite the intelligence community's desire to keep tradecraft secret.)
Leonard — 9/16/24, 11:22 AM
Lowell Weicker! One of the last liberal Republicans
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 11:23 AM
Yup! Since Gerry Ford picked Howard Baker as his VP in this timeline, he couldn't serve here. And yes, Weicker got some serious hate from Connecticut Republicans for his "betrayal" of Dick Nixon: game-inspiration
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 6:25 PM
This is a hell of a title page
[6:25 PM]
"Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents"
[6:27 PM]
I figure, why not start History A's Church Committee with the same topic of investigation and witness list as our history's And see where things go from there
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 6:33 PM
Volume 1, Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents (September 16, 17, and 18, 1975) Volume 2, Huston Plan (September 23, 24, and 25, 1975) Volume 3, Internal Revenue Service (October 2, 1975) Volume 4, Mail Opening (October 21, 22, and 24, 1975) Volume 5, The National Security Agency and Fourth Amendment Rights (October 29 and November 6, 1975) Volume 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation (November 18, 19, December 2, 3, 9, 10, and 11, 1975) Volume 7, Covert Action (December 4 and 5, 1975)
[6:33 PM]
Needless to say, we're likely going to see a slightly different escalation of the hearings in History A. But yeah, sure, let's start with the Poisoner In Chief
[6:37 PM]
I'm reading about Gottlieb's actual testimony right now. 40 hours of it, the vast majority of it sealed for FIFTY YEARS. Which I guess means it'll be unsealed next year. Lol.
[6:38 PM]
They gave him immunity for his testimony. Fuck's sake
[6:38 PM]
Cover-up, cover-up, cover-up
[6:39 PM]
Well, shit has to go differently in History A
[6:39 PM]
Insane that he just... up and left the country after he resigned from the Agency, and traveled the Far East meditating and shit
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 6:40 PM
This mission is gonna make me angry
[6:43 PM]
Gotta go back to Mission 8 and re-read the Sid scenes
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 6:53 PM
For your convenience: I'd forgotten I foreshadowed Gottlieb at the end of Mission 5 when Jo Psychometried Puharich https://www.san-narciso.com/scenes?tag=Sidney%20Gottlieb
Operation URIEL
A record of the interactions and activities of Operation URIEL.
@MutantsMichael
I'm reading about Gottlieb's actual testimony right now. 40 hours of it, the vast majority of it sealed for FIFTY YEARS. Which I guess means it'll be unsealed next year. Lol.
Leonard — 9/16/24, 7:41 PM
Nice "coincidence" you're selling there Mike
1
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 7:43 PM
By the first two weeks of August, preliminary reports from the insiders in DC assembling the witness lists while most of Congress is out on recess are saying that the Church Committee is going to kick off their open and public hearings with an avenue of investigation not necessarily much in the papers since June: the issue of the CIA's working with the Army Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick on biological and chemical agents for use in foreign intelligence operations. But it's clear that uncovering the rocks of West and Vacaville have sent a whole bunch of bugs and worms squirming out of what the Agency calls the "Technical Services Division." Tech Services was christened and first headed by Sidney Gottlieb in the very early '50s; their initial remit, at least in the public eye, was to combat the possibility of "brainwashing" that had been seen in returning POWs from North Korea. But of course, in the '50s the Agency (and by extension also SANDMAN) was experimenting with what would become MK-ULTRA, with directed chemical, biological, and radiological assassination techniques, and so forth. Again, some of these elements of MK-ULTRA have long been rumored in the left-wing/kook press but last year many of the records the Committee really wanted to see were destroyed by then-CIA head Richard Helms. Scuttlebutt amongst the Committee's counsel and clerks is that someone who worked at Detrick in the '50s and at Langley in 1970 dropped a dime on "improper storage of biohazardous materials" at Detrick to the Committee. This in turn exposed some of the toxins being used were designed for use by agents caught by the enemy in need of a quick and painless suicide. Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy flight was shot down over Russia in 1960, had one of these needles on him, constructed in a fake silver dollar. Premier Khrushchev had a blast showing off Powers' equipment after the U-2 was downed: "Here is this instrument!" Khrushchev said holding up a photo of the deadly little contraption, "The latest achievement of American technology for killing their own people!" This event scuttled the Eisenhower/Khrushchev summit and arguably changed the course of history, maybe even putting Kennedy in the White House. Anyway, big names in Central Intelligence are on the docket in late August and early September: Helms, of course; Bill Colby who is the current DCI, and others with knowledge of the biological and chemical programs at Detrick and Edgewood and elsewhere. (edited)
Leonard — 9/16/24, 7:50 PM
Hey everyone, he said out of character and as if we've talked about this before so technically it's not cheating, something we might want to consider as part of the overall strategy of stringing revelations about the Owls and even SANDMAN along until we're ready to start Big Wheels turning, is using the IRS Week to start dribbling out leads that take us to SANDMAN itself. Just enough to keep people interested (SANDMAN's black budget is probably huge), and annoying enough to keep the Owls on their toes as this will also certainly lead back to them or their various puppets, but not incriminating enough that it really fucks with our ability to operate -- in fact, it might even help, as it keeps various other internal factions busy and lets URIEL take advantage of the power vacuum -- or actually starves us of our operating budget.
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MutantsMichael
By the first two weeks of August, preliminary reports from the insiders in DC assembling the witness lists while most of Congress is out on recess are saying that the Church Committee is going to kick off their open and public hearings with an avenue of investigation not necessarily much in the papers since June: the issue of the CIA's working with the Army Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick on biological and chemical agents for use in foreign intelligence operations. But it's clear that uncovering the rocks of West and Vacaville have sent a whole bunch of bugs and worms squirming out of what the Agency calls the "Technical Services Division." Tech Services was christened and first headed by Sidney Gottlieb in the very early '50s; their initial remit, at least in the public eye, was to combat the possibility of "brainwashing" that had been seen in returning POWs from North Korea. But of course, in the '50s the Agency (and by extension also SANDMAN) was experimenting with what would become MK-ULTRA, with directed chemical, biological, and radiological assassination techniques, and so forth. Again, some of these elements of MK-ULTRA have long been rumored in the left-wing/kook press but last year many of the records the Committee really wanted to see were destroyed by then-CIA head Richard Helms. Scuttlebutt amongst the Committee's counsel and clerks is that someone who worked at Detrick in the '50s and at Langley in 1970 dropped a dime on "improper storage of biohazardous materials" at Detrick to the Committee. This in turn exposed some of the toxins being used were designed for use by agents caught by the enemy in need of a quick and painless suicide. Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy flight was shot down over Russia in 1960, had one of these needles on him, constructed in a fake silver dollar. Premier Khrushchev had a blast showing off Powers' equipment after the U-2 was downed: "Here is this instrument!" Khrushchev said holding up a photo of the deadly little contraption, "The latest achievement of American technology for killing their own people!" This event scuttled the Eisenhower/Khrushchev summit and arguably changed the course of history, maybe even putting Kennedy in the White House. Anyway, big names in Central Intelligence are on the docket in late August and early September: Helms, of course; Bill Colby who is the current DCI, and others with knowledge of the biological and chemical programs at Detrick and Edgewood and elsewhere. (edited)
MutantsMichael — 9/16/24, 9:22 PM
SO! Anyone in URIEL who wants to roll Politics or Intelligence Analysis or Current Affairs (Headline News) at this news is welcome to do so. (edited)
[9:24 PM]
In fact, you can roll any or all, and if you want to use Defaults from the GURPS book, feel free to roll all three
[9:26 PM]
(Current Affairs specialties default to each other at -4)
Leonard used
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Dice GolemAPP — 9/16/24, 10:01 PM
@Leonard rolled
3d6#intelligenceanalysis:(1+4+2)= 7September 17, 2024
Rob MacD used
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Dice GolemAPP — 9/17/24, 7:34 AM
@Rob MacD rolled
3d6Politics - 19:(3+5+6)= 14Rob MacD used
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Dice GolemAPP — 9/17/24, 7:34 AM
@Rob MacD rolled
3d6:(3+1+3)= 7Rob MacD — 9/17/24, 7:35 AM
(that was Intelligence Analysis 18)
Rob MacD used
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Dice GolemAPP — 9/17/24, 7:35 AM
@Rob MacD rolled
3d6Headline News - 18:(5+2+2)= 9September 18, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/18/24, 8:01 AM
(Sorry, my vaccinations yesterday kinda put me on the back foot... if there's anyone else who wants a throw at Politics, Intelligence Analysis, or Current Affairs, please go ahead today otherwise I'll spit out Jo's and Archie's analysis of the Committee's first moves here.)
Inverarity — 9/18/24, 9:12 AM
(I’m waiting to see the results of Rob’s roll before doing anything.)
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MutantsMichael — 9/18/24, 9:50 AM
(1/2) Intelligence Analysis (Archie successful by 11 and Jo by 9): Beginning these hearings with the biggest names in the intelligence community being summoned over a frankly procedural exposure of the use of highly dangerous toxins in CIA operations seems to suggest a couple of things to Jo and Archie. If the Senators end up asking the right sorts of questions, the paths of investigation will eventually lead not just to Gottlieb personally, to the development of mind control chemicals and technology in MK-ULTRA, but to the work SANDMAN has been innovating on these fronts as well: brain surgery and hacking of the kind seen at Vacaville. This would be a logical "in" for a sincere accounting of these experiments and programs. But there's also the possibility that there is a concerted narrative being built here, one that allows the sacred chiefs of Central Intelligence to appeal to the better angels of the Committee's nature, pleading national security: "We only started with the best of intentions at Technical Services, trying to figure out how our brave boys in Korea got rooked into calling the United States the imperialist aggressor. But then there were people who, yes, admittedly went a little bit overboard. We had to destroy those records, for the sake of national security and ongoing operations abroad, not because we were trying to cover up crimes against humanity, the Nuremberg Code, and the Geneva Conventions." You don't start with Helms and Colby if you're really looking to take down the Beast at the center of all this and clean house. You put them first to set the tone, to plead to a lesser form of guilt, what the boys in intel have long called "a limited hangout." By Jo and Archie's preliminary analysis, the fix is in, before the first gavel has come down on the committee dais. Some embarrassing stuff is going to come out, certainly. But it won't smash the CIA into a million pieces by the primary looks of it. Politics (Archie successful by 5): And yet, the midterm elections are coming up. The timing here is critical. Nixon is gone; Ford has made these feints at true reform, bringing Baker in as VP, acquiescing to the Church Committee's mandate. The mood in the country is for thoroughgoing, meaningful reform: even among whitebread, white collar Republicans (the Lowell Weicker factor). The polling data hasn't changed since May Day when Nixon resigned: the American people are scared and distrustful of their leaders and of the shadowy men who've been found to be starting fires in an attempt to keep the American people scared. Nixon's use of the intelligence services to crush student rebellion and investigate the Democrats is one thing, but the body politic clearly wants more shit like the Vacaville/DeFreeze/SLA/CIA-California state intelligence hinkyness investigated. The Republicans know that November is going to wipe them out; the Democrats seem a bit flatfooted, given how many of them in higher office are connected to the Pentagon and to CI. The constitution of the committee is pretty much "sensible reformers" (Phil Hart, Tunney, Haskell) vs. "libertarian critics of big government" (Tower, Goldwater). How far will these men truly go? What kind of information will impel them to go further, to not whitewash things? That will depend on the individual psychologies of each of them and the aides in their Senate offices.
[9:51 AM]
(2/2) Current Affairs (Headline News, Archie successful by 9): The demands in the mainstream press that the Senate take the crimes that the CIA and others are being seriously accused of are still running quite hot. You can say whatever you want about SANDMAN control of the media, or Operation MOCKINGBIRD, or how how the Times and Post and Chronicle are under normal circumstances instruments of the economic and political elite, but Woodward, Bernstein, Avery, Hersh; the dozens of kids in their 20s doing shoe-leather investigation in the left-wing weeklies; and even the nightly news under noted (and literal!) Owl Uncle Walter et al. are having a definite effect on the esmology here. The dribble of news over the past four months has just not stopped. But Archie, reviewing the tone of the coverage in July and August, notes that the Church Committee is gradually now getting the bigger headlines, the stories in the front 3 to 4 pages of each of these papers. What Beth Cole said about reestablishing trust in the government using memetics in the fall TV season seems more than ever to have been delicately and expertly constructed. "Let the kids and the lefties have their tantrum," the implication seems to go, "but when school and work and the media are really back in September, we're going to get things back to normal." Archie would bet that somewhere at each of those newspapers right now, a managing editor is going to stop the independent investigations that have fed the Church Committee's raison d'être and shove all those reporters and correspondents into the Senate hearing room instead. All possible revolutionary energy throttled into a bottleneck in DC. The media will end up becoming the tail that the dog of government wags. After all... they've done it before.
Inverarity — 9/18/24, 4:50 PM
I have this idea of Marshall arranging to have himself called to testify about his involvement and knowledge of the Company’s illicit practices. I feel like it would strengthen his position if he got out ahead of all the revelations that are coming down the pipe. He could also use the opportunity to distribute a TBD meme. And it might position him for replacing Control …
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MutantsMichael — 9/18/24, 4:55 PM
(I'll definitely have a few more pieces of Committee intel to pass along before the Committee officially starts but that is definitely something we can start planning.)
September 20, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/20/24, 2:07 PM
The above information that's been in the press, of course, does not include the witnesses who are being interviewed in closed session, in classified depositions, or otherwise not being publicized for fear of their testimony being scuttled or their physical safety being threatened. For more intel on them, we have several venues that can be explored: friendly sources at said intel agencies (CIA, etc.), staffers and law enforcement in DC (including Jane "I'm here on a pre-frosh internship with John Tunney's office" Ransom), and of course the usual Weird Powers that can be brought to bear on things. I promised you Gottlieb at the end of M10S3, of course, and that info will be delivered up via one of these methods. Jolly West is still missing, and much like the diminishing stories in the papers, the "whatever happened to Dr. West" beat is going cold, with the exception of maybe the kids at the Los Angeles Free Press who have been helping the student protesters against the Violence Center keep the heat on the UCLA faculty and donors.
[2:08 PM]
But obviously if the Committee is investigating Fort Detrick and MK-ULTRA, they are likely interviewing more than just Colby and Helms.
September 21, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/21/24, 8:25 AM
To help narrow down the huge variety of options here, here's what I see as possible actionable venues for URIEL at this early stage in the Committee's process. I think the first two are the most germane to the Committee's MK-ULTRA-related investigations right now at the outset: • confirm Gottlieb as a secret witness and find out where and when he is being held/his testimony is going to be collected and somehow influence it (available from a CIA or Jane Ransom Contact roll) • restart the search for Jolly West (shoe-leather investigation or remote viewing by Mitch and/or Pat) • further expose the COINTELPRO side of things: specifically release information around the SLA being an intel op (this could also tie into the MK-ULTRA/medical experimentation side of things), but we could go further, even as high as getting an audience with Nixon to get his testimony on domestic ops • release just the INDIGO files to someone connected to the Committee, with SANDMAN redacted: Archie prepared these documents last year during his crisis of faith/feint at getting OZYMANDIAS to think Marshall was the "good cop" • put together black budget numbers about SANDMAN (again, with Project info redacted so we don't do full exposure) Again, the consensus at the end of M10S3 was that we slowly bleed the intelligence apparatus/SANDMAN pig over a long period of time to keep it in the public eye and turn public opinion around on it, so a slow, gradual series of revelations makes a lot of sense. And on eventually connecting this all up to the Owls' level of C/control, which is our ultimate goal of course, here is where someone like Jolly becomes crucial, as he seems to have been doing the Owls' bidding with the Reagan people, as does our connecting with Eastern bloc contacts. And of course Reagan himself, whom we can now assume is back in the Owls' good graces after the SLA failure, given his speech at the Grove.
September 23, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 8:37 AM
On the Gottlieb/West front: • @Inverarity If Marshall is actively canvassing Everett Bumgardner for how the Agency is viewing the Church Committee's first moves, he can give me a Contact (Everett Bumgardner)-12 roll until he succeeds. • @Rob MacD, would you mind giving me a Contact (Jane Ransom/Church Committee)-12 roll until you succeed? • As far as Jolly West goes, like I said, the two options at the moment are for members of URIEL to investigate his last movements before disappearing back in April or doing remote viewing to try and find out where he is now. @Dr. Cronk, if Mitch wanted to try to peek at him (or Gottlieb!) and/or get Pat to try and get a read on his current whereabouts, we could do some rolls. • West's office is still untouched at UCLA; well, "untouched" in the sense that LAPD and FBI have already been through his belongings and not found any leads on where he might be. When John Merrick went down there in April Merrick found that his secretary said he was ostensibly going out of town the weekend of April 19 to give a "lecture for law enforcement." Now, that trail is obviously likely to be quite cold by August but @Leonard, Jo obviously has Psychometry and could break into his office and see if she gets any readings off of his desk calendar where he noted his out of town trip, his phone, etc. • Jo and/or Roger (@Bill B) could also hit up the left-wing citizen-journalists at the Los Angeles Free Press, who have been one of the only publications out there to keep pressing on the Jolly West side of the SLA/Vacaville/Violence Center investigation all summer so far. • And oh yeah! Colston Westbrook is still hanging around and Marshall and Sophie really put the Fear into him back in April. We could try to hit him up at Berkeley for more info on where West might be.
Rob MacD — 9/23/24, 10:29 AM
So what's that, about a 75% chance of Archie getting hold of his daughter in first year at university? Sounds about right. Is each roll a day? A week? I'll just start rolling and see how many it takes.
Rob MacD used
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Dice GolemAPP — 9/23/24, 10:29 AM
@Rob MacD rolled
3d6Contact (Jane):(1+2+5)= 8MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 10:32 AM
Yep, each is a day, lol. Will fill in this info when I get home in an hour or so!
Inverarity used
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Dice GolemAPP — 9/23/24, 11:01 AM
@Inverarity rolled
3d6Everett-12:(5+3+1)= 91
Leonard — 9/23/24, 11:20 AM
Jocasta will do Psychometry if she has to but is none too eager to get into West's headspace, and figures that Roger might have more luck with the Freep, but she's donated enough to the alumni association that she can get around Berkeley; she might find out when Westbrook's office hours are and occupy his seat until he comes in at the end of a long week...
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MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 12:20 PM
@Rob MacD: After spending a little long-distance phone time catching up with Jane, who's taken to her summer pre-frosh internship in the Senate offices of Senator John V. Tunney with aplomb, Jane, whose untrained esmological feelers have grown by leaps and bounds in the past four or so weeks in DC, gives her old man a little bit of Church Committee gossip. "It's been a whirlwind here, Dad. I wish you could meet the interns and aides for the committee members—they're all really cool, really dedicated, even the ones for the Republicans. They don't want this... Nixonian attitude to take root in their party, either. Sometimes it honestly feels like we're dragging the Senators along to take things more seriously. But they're definitely feeling the pressure from the constituents at home. I can't tell you how many telegrams and letters I've had to respond to from folks in California, telling us not to mess this up. It feels like people are still angry, still... hurt by everything that's been in the papers." Jane pauses meaningfully, and then says, "I do get the feeling the Senators are a little scared." Another pause. "So many of them have buddies at the FBI and CIA and at the Pentagon, and a few of them worked intelligence during World War II... they don't want to believe the worst of any of this. But the early reports from the researchers working on this Fort Detrick stuff... I can understand why they think it's scary, Dad." "There's this name that keeps coming up, a witness they're trying to convince to testify, a 'Joseph Scheider.' He's retained counsel—that lawyer who defended the Harrisburg Seven, if you can believe it, Terry Lenzner—and he's demanding immunity for his testimony. He was apparently in the thick of things for the past 25 years and the Senators are worried that if they give him immunity, there'll be no one higher that they can actually call to account, and then the committee will fizzle out. Does that name... mean anything to you, Dad?" Propaganda-20.
MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 12:41 PM
@Inverarity: Ev Baumgardner is a fair bit edgier during his "shoot the breeze" call with Marshall than he was back in April when Marshall asked him to ID Freeman Calvert and Walter Smith, and it's obvious that it's the Church Committee that's got him riled up. Not because he's personally in danger of anything close to exposure—the Committee hasn't really bothered to look into any malfeasance dating back to the thick of Vietnam very much; remember, this Church Committee mandate is all about the CIA participating in domestic ops, which are nominally against their charter—but the entire Agency is just sort of white-knuckling things right now with Helms and Colby set to testify. "Lot of people are lawyering up," Everett says with the tone of a man who's been seeing his comrades at the USIA sweating a little bit: after all, a lot of their foreign cultural ops have heavy domestic implications. "And no one right now knows who's talking to the Committee behind the scenes, either. Those closed sessions have a lot of sphincters tight over at Langley and Fort Meade." "It just seems ridiculous that we spent all this time working actual domestic ops on American citizens," Ev says, "and that there were plenty of domestic politicians and police agencies willing to go along with it all. Domestic counterintel is the FBI's job for goodness sakes!" Ev's tone of voice makes Marshall think that Ev is "putting on a show" right now, in case his line is bugged, saying all this in a slightly exaggerated tone of manufactured outrage that of course he disapproves of this domestic op stuff the Committee is investigating right now. Marshall of course knows that Ev knew who Freeman Calvert was, and how thanks to the Cinque death scene in the desert that Ev knows Freeman was involved in the SLA op while one of Reagan's security people. Whether Ev thinks Marshall is a Committee fink or a high-up in the Agency's domestic ops section, either way Ev's making sure he registers his moral dudgeon for anyone who might be listening, early and often.
@Leonard
Jocasta will do Psychometry if she has to but is none too eager to get into West's headspace, and figures that Roger might have more luck with the Freep, but she's donated enough to the alumni association that she can get around Berkeley; she might find out when Westbrook's office hours are and occupy his seat until he comes in at the end of a long week...
MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 12:43 PM
(Since there's likely to be a good chunk of dialogue in this scene, Leonard, I will start a separate thread for it now.)
Bill B — 9/23/24, 12:54 PM
Do the journalists at the Freep have a good list of Vacaville victims beyond Cinque and the most famous? Since many will have self-destructed violently, they’ll have been written off as menaces to society, but maybe an interview with a widow/fatherless child could up the pressure. Seems like a leak to make.
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@Bill B
Do the journalists at the Freep have a good list of Vacaville victims beyond Cinque and the most famous? Since many will have self-destructed violently, they’ll have been written off as menaces to society, but maybe an interview with a widow/fatherless child could up the pressure. Seems like a leak to make.
MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 12:54 PM
I like that a lot, Bill, and yes, they definitely will have gotten the names of some of the other experimental subjects from Vacaville. Let me do a little research and find some real-world examples and I can set up a scene from there.
@Bill B
Do the journalists at the Freep have a good list of Vacaville victims beyond Cinque and the most famous? Since many will have self-destructed violently, they’ll have been written off as menaces to society, but maybe an interview with a widow/fatherless child could up the pressure. Seems like a leak to make.
MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 1:31 PM
I have found someone who definitely got experimented upon at Vacaville and that the Freep and Findley and Avery at the Chron would know, but he's not going to be as sympathetic as a widow, fatherless child, or brain-damaged ex-con:
Dr. Cronk — 9/23/24, 10:48 PM
yeah c'mon guys, let her go already
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Leonard — 9/23/24, 10:51 PM
[Now picturing that there is a local newspaper that calls you up for a comment on literally every news story] [Jeff to Guy at Coffee Shop: 'This tax policy sucks']
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September 24, 2024
Rob MacD used
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Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 9:01 AM
@Rob MacD rolled
3d6Propaganda-20:(6+3+2)= 11Rob MacD — 9/24/24, 9:01 AM
(no rush on reply)
1
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 9:25 AM
The name rings a bell with Archie; it takes him back to the on-the-job learning he had to do—the crash-course in the history of advertising he took when he first started doing his goofy puppet spots for Jack Ogilvie, right around the time JFK was elected. Learning about the history of trademarks and corporate logos and mascots... Joseph Scheider, what the heck was that from? And then it hits Archie in a flood of recall; his memory these days has been taxed thanks to that drug he took at the Grove, but these memories from nearly 15 years ago and that glossy history-of-advertising-art book flash into his mind fresh as ever... Joseph Scheider was the name of a tobacco company based in New York City in the 19th century, and they had one of the first real popular nationwide trademarks as well, this mysterious monk figure depicted on the tobacco packs, clutching his long pipe while gesturing at a royal straight in his hand. The iconography is memetic, all the way down: he's wise, he's smoking, he's got the royalty of the world in his hands. And in a flash, Archie knows: Joseph Scheider is New York-born Sidney Gottlieb. He's just the right age to remember the final years of those Scheider Left Bower packs, too. Even the nod and wink of the pipe/tobacco is a reference to all those cockamamie schemes the Fort Detrick boys were plotting: trying to assassinate Castro by putting poison in his panatelas. Archie can tell that Gottlieb is confident, cocky, thinking he's going to waltz right out of this. Is Joseph Scheider a memetic message to any friendly Sandmen who might be watching the Committee? "Come and get the Mad Monk out of this mess!"? Maybe. Having worked with Gottlieb fairly closely in Huntsville (and having usurped his CWG reign), Archie can't allow the paranoia of faint familiarity to get the better of him here. But he does wonder. (edited)
September 25, 2024
Inverarity — 9/25/24, 9:22 AM
Marshall hangs up with “Ev” after thanking him for his time. He’s does a little key, stands, and walks onto the patio. The sun hangs heavy over the hills. He is uneasy — has been uneasy — about the current trajectory of the team’s plan. Exposing the work the Company has done … it will lead to him, eventually. Perhaps even sooner than he can predict. They will come for Ev, in time. They will come for all us, in time — all us Company men. Then what? The rest of the team are not “in this” like he is. The closest one would be Jocasta — practically a war criminal herself — but “Jocasta” doesn’t technically exist, and has more fake identities than real ones. She can slip away, if she wants. But he cannot imagine how blowing up the Agency — blowing up SANDMAN — won’t take him down, too. And is that what is required of him? Does winning the game require such a sacrifice? If so, what does that mean? “That you were never the player,” he murmurs, lighting a joint. “You were just a piece. A piece with delusions of grandeur.” What did Vishnu say? “Those who know and partake of the secret of sacrifice advance toward the Truth. Those who do not sacrifice find no happiness in this world … or the next.” Does the Truth require his own destruction? Maybe. Maybe it isn’t his place to ask — or to even wonder. “What does one do with an old spy,” he muses, “when the world doesn’t need spies anymore?” (edited)
2
@Bill B
Do the journalists at the Freep have a good list of Vacaville victims beyond Cinque and the most famous? Since many will have self-destructed violently, they’ll have been written off as menaces to society, but maybe an interview with a widow/fatherless child could up the pressure. Seems like a leak to make.
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 11:01 AM
So I think the most effective way to get a line on other Vacaville victims would be to hit up Paul Avery and/or Tim Findley at the Chronicle; this would allow Roger to use his own more current and up-to-date street-level knowledge from the Bay Area rather than LA (looking at Roger's Current Affairs and Area Knowledge). The Free Press is doing good work but they are also a chintzy weekly hippie rag with 32 pages of dirty ads at the back. The Chron has more heft and more resources, even if Avery and Findley are both kind of scuzzy reporters themselves. If either of these guys have stories or leads cooking on other victims they have only vaguely gestured at them in their stories, but reading between the lines of their journalism since Cinque was found dead, Roger is betting they definitely have them. So I see a few options for rolls; any or all are available for Roger in August: 1) A general canvassing of crime stories over the past half-decade or so, looking for patterns in the stories that would say, hey, this guy probably has an antenna in his head; this would be a combination of Current Affairs (San Francisco)-14 and Research-13. 2) Asking questions directly "on the street," which would be a combination of Current Affairs (San Francisco)-14 and Streetwise-15. This would be faster and likely more effective but also put Roger in front of the faces of a lot of petty criminals, gang members, political insurgents: the social detritus left behind after the apprehension of the SLA. 3) Going directly to Avery and/or Findley, which would be a scene we'd roleplay out; Roger could use social skills, Hypnotism, what have you to directly get at their notes and research thus far, especially stuff that hasn't been published yet.
Bill B — 9/25/24, 11:28 AM
Roger would try #1 first, at least to get enough to build a file that would look interesting to a crusading paper journalist, or, thinking more about this, like raw meat to a crusading law firm interested in fighting miscarriages of justice. Maybe another roll to try to identify a good candidate lawyer/firm for pursuing justice for the victims wrongful arrests/re-trials for extenuating circumstances, etc.
[11:29 AM]
If he can find a law firm, going to the streets as a volunteer contact passing out their business cards could be a good approach for starting all those dangerous talks.
Inverarity — 9/25/24, 11:33 AM
(Marshall has a big fancy lawyer on retainer, Melvin Belli — I’m sure Melvin would be happy to “bring Roger on as a private litigation investigator”)
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 11:33 AM
(Oooh, that's excellent, that ties together a bunch of stuff we're working on right now.)
[11:35 AM]
(Let me get a thread started.)
Inverarity
Marshall hangs up with “Ev” after thanking him for his time. He’s does a little key, stands, and walks onto the patio. The sun hangs heavy over the hills. He is uneasy — has been uneasy — about the current trajectory of the team’s plan. Exposing the work the Company has done … it will lead to him, eventually. Perhaps even sooner than he can predict. They will come for Ev, in time. They will come for all us, in time — all us Company men. Then what? The rest of the team are not “in this” like he is. The closest one would be Jocasta — practically a war criminal herself — but “Jocasta” doesn’t technically exist, and has more fake identities than real ones. She can slip away, if she wants. But he cannot imagine how blowing up the Agency — blowing up SANDMAN — won’t take him down, too. And is that what is required of him? Does winning the game require such a sacrifice? If so, what does that mean? “That you were never the player,” he murmurs, lighting a joint. “You were just a piece. A piece with delusions of grandeur.” What did Vishnu say? “Those who know and partake of the secret of sacrifice advance toward the Truth. Those who do not sacrifice find no happiness in this world … or the next.” Does the Truth require his own destruction? Maybe. Maybe it isn’t his place to ask — or to even wonder. “What does one do with an old spy,” he muses, “when the world doesn’t need spies anymore?” (edited)
Inverarity — 9/25/24, 5:14 PM
Later, Marshall wakes up in an armchair. He can’t remember falling asleep; that happens. But on a piece of paper, in his hand, is sloppily written: “how to synthesize kether & malkuth, matter & ideas??” He reads it twice before crumpling it up and throwing it away.
1
September 27, 2024
MutantsMichael
The name rings a bell with Archie; it takes him back to the on-the-job learning he had to do—the crash-course in the history of advertising he took when he first started doing his goofy puppet spots for Jack Ogilvie, right around the time JFK was elected. Learning about the history of trademarks and corporate logos and mascots... Joseph Scheider, what the heck was that from? And then it hits Archie in a flood of recall; his memory these days has been taxed thanks to that drug he took at the Grove, but these memories from nearly 15 years ago and that glossy history-of-advertising-art book flash into his mind fresh as ever... Joseph Scheider was the name of a tobacco company based in New York City in the 19th century, and they had one of the first real popular nationwide trademarks as well, this mysterious monk figure depicted on the tobacco packs, clutching his long pipe while gesturing at a royal straight in his hand. The iconography is memetic, all the way down: he's wise, he's smoking, he's got the royalty of the world in his hands. And in a flash, Archie knows: Joseph Scheider is New York-born Sidney Gottlieb. He's just the right age to remember the final years of those Scheider Left Bower packs, too. Even the nod and wink of the pipe/tobacco is a reference to all those cockamamie schemes the Fort Detrick boys were plotting: trying to assassinate Castro by putting poison in his panatelas. Archie can tell that Gottlieb is confident, cocky, thinking he's going to waltz right out of this. Is Joseph Scheider a memetic message to any friendly Sandmen who might be watching the Committee? "Come and get the Mad Monk out of this mess!"? Maybe. Having worked with Gottlieb fairly closely in Huntsville (and having usurped his CWG reign), Archie can't allow the paranoia of faint familiarity to get the better of him here. But he does wonder. (edited)
MutantsMichael — 9/27/24, 8:35 AM
(I will dump the remainder of the "Joseph Scheider" information here today @Rob MacD if you like, but only if there's nothing else Archie wants to ask Jane about the Committee.)
MutantsMichael — 9/27/24, 8:00 PM
Anyway, this star witness Scheider is being put up, in all places, at the Watergate Hotel, in the Presidential Suite, the rest of the floor is taken up by a team of U.S. Marshals. He's getting visits from Committee counsel to negotiate the terms of his deposition and immunity. You have to imagine that this process will end one way or the other in the next week, so if someone was to, say, want to get to him before he can say something to the Committee investigators/the Committee itself, time would be of the essence.
September 28, 2024
@MutantsMichael
(I will dump the remainder of the "Joseph Scheider" information here today @Rob MacD if you like, but only if there's nothing else Archie wants to ask Jane about the Committee.)
Rob MacD — 9/28/24, 8:32 AM
Archie will ask Jane a few more questions about how the committee works, who seems to be in charge, what kind of language people are using, key phrases and talking points, all by way of just taking an interest, learning about the exciting educational opportunity Jane is having, but trying to sus out if anyone there is actively deploying memetics or esmology, whether first hand or passed down from somebody else. And he'll pass the info about Scheider/Gottlieb/the Watergate on to the rest of the gang at the first opportunity. What's our play here, team?
1
@Rob MacD
Archie will ask Jane a few more questions about how the committee works, who seems to be in charge, what kind of language people are using, key phrases and talking points, all by way of just taking an interest, learning about the exciting educational opportunity Jane is having, but trying to sus out if anyone there is actively deploying memetics or esmology, whether first hand or passed down from somebody else. And he'll pass the info about Scheider/Gottlieb/the Watergate on to the rest of the gang at the first opportunity. What's our play here, team?
MutantsMichael — 9/28/24, 8:37 AM
Want to give me a Politics-19 roll to aid Jane's own skill roll on this? Needless to say, Corruption is available but I feel kinda awful saying that when she's already doing what amounts to spying on the US government for her dad
Rob MacD used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/28/24, 8:44 AM
@Rob MacD rolled
3d6Politics - 19:(6+6+6)= 181
1
Rob MacD — 9/28/24, 8:44 AM
womp womp
MutantsMichael — 9/28/24, 8:54 AM
Moral quandries making Archie stutter and stammer as he tries to wheedle the further info out of her? No matter, she still gets a skill roll, even if it is at a -2.
[8:55 AM]
Well, too bad she didn't get an epic boost, this would have almost been a crit at 14
[8:56 AM]
The idea that Archie has reservations about all this skullduggery but Jane doesn't and is relatively ice-cold is kind of amusing me. Must be the bad influence of all those other Committee interns
MutantsMichael — 9/28/24, 9:09 AM
So are there memetics being deployed or is someone orchestrating things using esmology? At this stage, from the sound of things from Jane's 50,000-foot view of the Committee's workings, Archie thinks not on the memetics side. As Jane mentioned, the Committee's members are simultaneously reform-minded and deeply in bed with intel. But as Archie (clumsily, thank you critical failure) has Jane recite some of the initial statements by the Committee members, it doesn't sound to Archie like that's because SANDMAN or someone else has decided to lay in memetics to reinforce the Committee members' ruling-class leanings. This attitude of keeping the intel boys safe is just... part of doing business in the senior chamber. On the esmology side, though, Archie's feelers seem to go off. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that Archie is able to understand Jane herself has taken to her elementary lessons in esmology. Jane has this sense that the public won't stand for half-measures when it comes to cleaning house of these abuses against the American people. But as Archie considers this first batch of witnesses and the possibility that Scheider/Gottlieb will do a "limited hangout," it does seem by the sound of things that someone aiding the Committee wants to allow precisely the right ratio of revelations-to-secrets-kept to allow for the appearance of a full and frank accounting. You keep the angry public satisfied, you allow the people responsible to skate. It's textbook mass movement management, it's textbook SANDMAN. Who that esmologist could be, Archie's not sure, though. Gottlieb's specialty is chemistry and poisons and psychopharmacology, and West's is psychology, NLP, brainwashing and programming. SANDMAN's got esmologists dedicated to working in Washington, DC by the truckload, though. And it would make sense for the Owls, if we're thinking of them as distinct from the Project by this point, to have their own beekeepers (or "seers" as Mitch correctly surmised ages before we found out their Mantle stats).