The call came in yesterday. It was a little mysterious, so I was understandably cautious.
“Listen, Big Red Car, how would you like an exclusive interview with THE WHISTLEBLOWER?” the voice asked in a furtive whisper.
“You mean, THE whistleblower?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Sure, when?”
Today, I am sitting with The Whistleblower and we are going to chat about his complaint.
“Hello, Whistlebritches, any ground rules?” I call him “Whistlebritches” because I don’t yet know his name.
He’s six feet tall-ish, hasn’t spent a lot of time in the gym, slightly balding dark hair, glasses that slide down his nose, a slightly nervous attitude, and he has a persistent cough. He’s a Jos. A Bank devotee and is dressed in CIA “casual Friday” khakis, white button down, navy blazer (slightly wrinkled), and black Allbirds with no socks. The Allbirds seem a little affected.
“No, we’re cleared hot, Big Red Car. You want to ask me any questions?”
“What’s your name, Whistlebritches?”
“Talbott, Talbott Henderson.” He chuckles nervously as if his mouth is tasting some new words and there is something a little too acidic.
“Real name?” I ask. He laughs nervously.
“I work for the CIA,” he says, taking a swig from a plastic water bottle, wiping his lip on his wrist, and, then, a weird tickish wiggle of his nose. “Of course, that’s not my real name, but it’ll do. Name on my passport and my current drivers license. I love that name.”
“Can we get some background?” I ask.
“Forty-five years old, Princeton undergrad in history, Yale graduate degree in international affairs with a second concentration in national security, TSBISCI clearance, married once, no kids, divorced, my wife was a hurtful person, stole my life force, been in the intel racket as an analyst since grad school — well after a failed shot at investment banking with Goldman. They fired me. What else?”
“CIA career?”
“Analyst. I told you. I’m the kind of guy who keeps track of the Afghanistan poppy crop and how much opium and black tar heroin they’re shipping around the world. Work with the DEA on that stuff. Can you believe we threw the Taliban out and still let those rag heads grow poppies?”
“Politically active?” I ask.
“You’ll look it up, so let me save you some time. I maxed out for Obama both times. Adore Hillary. Wrote her the biggest check allowed by law every time she ran. It was her turn. Loved Bill. I have a picture of her with me at the State Department. She should have been President. I cannot believe she got cheated like she did. Love Lizzie Warren. That clear enough?”
“So, you lean Democrat? Fair statement?”
“Lean Democrat — Hell, I’m a registered Democrat, always have been, but the thing is I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate Trump.”
“How is anybody going to take your complaint seriously? Aren’t you just like Peter Strzok and the other anti-Trump hacks?”
“So, what? None of that is going to come out. Brother Peter was able to finesse it.”
“He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Embarassed himself and the FBI. You hate Donald Trump that much?”
“More. You can’t image how much I hate the guy. So, totally illegitimate. Cheated Hillary out of her rendezvous with destiny. Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. Take that off the record, please.”
“Not the way it works, Talbott, old boy. Sorry.” I try to let him down easy to ensure he continues to cooperate.
“OK, look, Big Red Car, I have some really juicy stuff. I won’t give it to you unless you take that comment off the record, just the part about me hating Trump. Who doesn’t hate Trump? Fuck it, leave it. I’m out and I’m strong.”
“So, you worked in the White House?”
“Yeah, I was part of a team that was sent to liaise with the National Security Council to beef up their Syria, Iran, A’stan chops. Like how I do that — A’stan? Very spook chic. I worked with the NSC when McMaster and Bolton were in the NSA seat. There is nothing like eating at the White House Mess, where I met a lot of the sources for my complaint. I used to take handfuls of the M & M peanut candies. Pockets full.”
“What did you work on?”
“Typical threat assessment backup stuff — lots of sorting out those confusing Arabic names, how bad we were getting our asses kicked in A’stan, all those generals and they couldn’t figure out to beat the crap out of some hill country light infantry, and, of course, the poppy crop in A’stan.”
“You’re back at the CIA now?”
“Yeah, getting close to my retirement, twenty years. If I live that long.”
“So, I guess the big question is why did you do it?”
He squirms, takes another sip of water, twists his khaki clad legs into a pretzel, hugs himself, and speaks.
“We tried to get the son-of-a-bitch with the Dossier. We had him. God damn it, we had him. Why did they have to put in that stupid story about the hookers, the Ritz Carlton, and the piss party. I told them Trump was a germaphobe. He’d never do something like that, but that Brit bastard was leading them around by the nose. Ugh.”
“So you were in on the whole Dossier and FISA warrant business?”
“Yes. I hate to say it, but Trump and the AG has us on that fucking FISA business. That was all Comey. He’s going to jail when they finally get to the bottom of it.”
“And?”
“And, we took a good shot at Kavanaugh. We had him, but Sister DiFi had to get cute. We got started too late. Now, he’s on the Court. We screwed the pooch on that one.”
“You were part of the Kavanaugh hit? In on it?”
Another long drink of water, he spills some on his shirt, wipes it up.
“We’re all ‘in on it,’ you idiot. Doesn’t it show a pattern? Don’t you get it? Since the night of the election, we have been trying to reverse the results. At first, I wanted to put Hillary on the throne, but now I just want to get him.”
“Him? Trump?”
“And the horse he rode in on and the whores he rode in on, and those kids of his. And, yes, the new Attorney General.”
“So, how does the complaint go down?” I ask.
“We were sitting around trying to decide how we could throw some gasoline on the impeachment fire and somebody says we should try to get him on some campaign treachery. Some other person says something about the call to Ukraine’s new president. We send that stuff — the classified transcripts of the President’s calls with foreign leaders — around all the time.”
“Isn’t that classified material?”
“So, what? I work for the CIA. Our team at the CIA will outlast any admin, even this one. We send that stuff to the New York Times. Bite me. But, it would be way more fun to get rid of Trump, then Pence, and put Speaker Pelosi in the White House.”
“Is that the end game? President Pelosi?”
“For God’s sake, no. She’s an idiot. No, now, we just want to ensure Trump is gone either through impeachment or dirtying him up enough that he doesn’t get re-elected. I like the Paleface, Warren, but it’s a ‘not Trump’ crowd.”
“Back to the complaint?”
“I have a pal go to the CIA counsel’s office and he tells my story to a woman lawyer who then goes to the Department of Justice, and the White House. She tells my friend that anybody can file a complaint, but that there is no protection unless it fits under this whistleblower statute. I get an attorney pal to look at it and he says, ‘Bingo!'”
“So, you file the complaint?”
“No, I go talk to Adam Schiff’s people and ask them what I should do. Very helpful guy says the whistleblower thing is the way to go. So, I get the forms and go to work. Problem hits me in the face.”
“What?”
“This whole first hand knowledge thing. So, the IG’s bunch re-writes the forms, I check with my new pal on Adam Schiff’s staff, and he hooks me up with some lawyers who used to work for Chuck Schumer. They help me write up ‘my’ complaint.”
“A lot of people think it wasn’t done by a CIA person. They say it’s a legal document.”
“Duh! Hello, America. I had lawyers. I had the Schiff staff. I had pals at the White House, at the CIA. You couldn’t fit them all on a bus. There was a Google doc, a DropBox file. It took almost four months. Somebody acting alone can screw up something like this, but if you really want to fuck it up, you need a committee. It was a major league production. About the only thing I contributed was my signature.”
“Can you tell me the names of those who were involved?” I ask.
“Sure, if I had a death wish. This is now some big time stuff. Goes as deep into the Dem and liberal intelligentsia as you can go. Not going away easy.”
“Did you meet with Adam Schiff?”
Whistlebritches finishes off one water, asks for another, drinks half of it.
“OK, so did we meet directly? No, but we sort of met in adjacent stalls in a Congressional rest room. Something, sort of like that.”
“He knew about the complaint a month before it was filed?”
“Yes. That putz was sending out Tweets that any idiot could ultimately see were based on the complaint. You want the whole world to know something? Tell it to Adam Schiff and tell him it’s a secret. I’m really pissed off about that.”
“Do you think you’re going to be able to maintain your anonymity?”
“The people who want to know, know. I want to get into the Witness Protection Program. My lawyers — before the complaint — said it was a ‘two hand dunk shot.’ Now, they say it is like throwing a ball from Reagan Airport to the Pentagon. No bueno.”
“Any reservations about anything so far?”
“No. In a word: Trump. If he’s involved, anything goes. You cannot imagine the visceral hatred that man spawns. Everybody in the Deep State hates him. Know why?”
“Tell me,” I say.
“Because the son-of-a-bitch is usually right. Everybody laughed when he said Obama was tapping his phones — guess what? He was. Said he was nuts when he said the whole Mueller thing was a witch hunt. Right again. Wait until the Notorious RGB kicks the bucket. And, then, this. It’s uncanny.”
“So, there is a Deep State?” I ask, expecting him to balk at that characterization.
“It’s a fucking paper coup, you idiot. We were trying to take down the duly elected President of the United States of America; we almost did it. We had the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the fucking CIA. This ain’t bean bag, you rusty bucket of bolts.”
“It’s real?”
“Look, if you had any idea of what the CIA and the NSA have been doing for the last fifty years, you would blow chunks. We run the fucking country. You send the CIA out to lie to other countries and act surprised when we come home and lie in the USA? To Congress? The media? Of course, we own the media. You really are a dim bulb.”
“So, how does it look right now?”
“I think we’re fucked. Nobody ever realized how thick this Trump guy’s ass was. He’s got the ass of a rhinoceros. Every time we jab him, he comes out swinging. Doesn’t help that we have to drag Adam Schiff along and feed him his lines.”
“Barr and Durham going to get to the bottom of the Dossier and the FISA abuses?”
“Yes.” His words were small, quiet, dark. There was resignation in his voice.
“So, you? What happens?”
“I took my shot. I played my part. I’m like a Christine Blasey Ford tragi-comedic figure. My name will be on Jeopardy as a trivia question in a couple of years.”
“Why did y’all do it?”
“Trump. Never should have gotten the nomination. How the Hell did he get get elected? The people who voted for him are deplorable, they do shop at Walmart, they do smell, and they don’t floss. The whole clingy guns and religion shtick. It was Hillary’s turn. The Dossier didn’t work. The warmonger label didn’t work. So, we had to take a last shot before we get skunked in the 2020 elections.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he said, standing to go.
“So, Talbott Henderson — is that your real name?”
He laughed, began to cough. I thought I might have to give him CPR, but he pushed me away.
“Nothing about this is real. This just the Dems, the Deep State, and our pals in the media. We are so fucked. Who knew — Trump. Son-of-a-bitch is tough as a fucking boot.”
So, there you have it, dear reader, my exclusive interview with the Whistleblower, Talbott Henderson. I don’t think that is his real name.