His message, left shortly after midnight last Friday, is marked
"urgent." Listening to the first five minutes or so of his
rant, I buy most of his gist, if not his wording.
"I am a retired architect who at 72 is up to his eyeballs in
fighting American fascism," says the voice on the answering machine.
"I've been in a state of shock and semi-coma since November 2000,
when five uninvestigated crooks on the Supreme Court stopped a recount in
Florida where I think Gore won and put the most incompetent, wrong-winged
know-nothing schmuck in the White House that I have ever seen in my
entire life. Even for America, this act of fascism was incredible.
"Of course," he continues, "you know as well as I do that
the economy is a wreck, he is destroying the environment, he took $179
billion out of environmental legislation the first month he was in office
then he proceeded to do all kinds of things like coming out against
affirmative action. This guy is a dick-brained fascist moron from Texas
who should be sent back down to Texas."
OK.
But then the architect takes a dark turn.
"Tell me if you know anything that I don't know about what the hell
in God's name we can do to stop this son of a bitch," he says.
"I have been thinking about getting a gun, going down there and
killing him and saying I've done this on behalf of the American people
and I am doing it in self-defense and in their defense. That's it, Bush.
Pop pop, one for him, one for Cheney."
Uh-oh.
I wonder what to do.
On the one hand, this guy sounds so desperate, so lonely and so
needy.
On the other hand, he is talking about killing the president.
I should probably call the Secret Service, but I cringe at the thought of
diming out the poor old guy.
I call our lawyer, the Poynter Institute, the national editor at
The New York Times.
They all say the same thing.
Make the call.
Which I do, holding my nose and feeling like a rat.
"Secret Service, this is Lisa Parmagiani," says the woman on
the other end of the phone line.
I explain who I am and why I am calling, adding that "I don't think
this guy is really a threat, but that's not my job to decide, it's
yours."
"You can't threaten the president when the country is at war,"
Parmagiani says, adding that agents will visit the man's house within the
hour.
Great.
They are going to haul this poor, lonely old man off to the hoosegow and
it is all my fault. Well, not really. He's the one who left the
message.
Still, I feel bad, so a few hours later, I call his apartment.
I am relieved when he answers the phone.
"Two freaks from Ashcroft's Secret Service knocked on my door,"
he says, somewhat peeved (and misinformed -- Secret Service works for the
Treasury Department). "They said, �Do you have any idea what you
did?'"
The old architect, whose name I am withholding because I don't really
believe he means to kill Bush, readily acknowledges that he erred. I tell
him that I would report any message left on my machine threatening to
shoot someone. He says the agents, "a very nice-looking Italian girl
and a black kid," were courteous and kind and listened patiently as
he explained what it was like growing up with a wealthy mother and a
Democratic Socialist father.
"I asked these kids if they were not allowed to have political
thoughts, left or right, and they said that is correct. I feel sorry for
them."
He says the agents asked if he owned a gun.
"Of course not," he says. "I said they could search the
place if they wanted to, but they said it wasn't necessary."
The old man tells me that he chatted with the Secret Service agents about
how he, a white Jewish guy, was so passionate about civil rights that he
joined the NAACP as a child. Then, during his questioning, he received a
phone call.
"It was the Franklin Mint," says the man. "So that
reminded me to show the agents my tchotchke collection of Franklin Mint
Coca-Cola items and teddy bears."
Explaining that he never married because "I was so busy fucking
myself I was not going to drag anyone else into this with me," the
old architect, who gave all his money away to lefty political causes,
says that the agents listened politely as he showed off his
collections.
When their interview was over, the agents asked to take the copy of
City Paper, last week's "Real Costs of War" issue, that
inspired the old man to call me. Then they took his picture and left, to
pay a visit to his psychologist.
As soon as the agents left, the man says he called a friend in Maine, who
immediately freaked.
"He said that he was worried not so much for himself, but for his
wife, who has a teaching job. He's afraid of the Secret Service, that
they are going to check my phone logs and see that I talk to him from
time to time. He got spooked."
Not to worry, says agent Parmagiani.
"Nothing is going to happen," she says. "We went out, we
talked to him, he is a very nice man. He didn't realize it would get this
far."
http://citypaper.net/articles/2003-03-06/pretzel.shtml
