Oops, The CIA Goofs Goofed Again-An Analysis Of The “White Christmas  Caper” By a Former Senior NSA Operative-Conclusion: The CIA Operatives Need A Manual To Even Tie Their Shoes      

By Andrew Barrows III, special guest commentator

Believe it or not I used to have something which could be called double top-secret clearance which meant I could see almost anything except “for presidential eyes only” and even then through this and that contact I saw some of that too. If you think I was some kind of government spook, some CIA operative, forget it, start laughing like I am since those clowns, including their so-called Special Operations Units, couldn’t tie their own shoes without a manual. No, I worked for the real deal intelligence guys, the NSA that you probably heard about a few years ago from Eddie Snowden, an old friend, when we were keeping big tabs on everything and everybody-bar none including that “for presidential eyes only” bullshit. I went under the code name Jimmy “Bangs” and you can figure out why. Figure some pretty hairy stuff happened when my team and I got turned loose with no limits actually under authority of whatever cowboy in the basement of the White House who was really running the show. Since then you know, or should know, since I used the word “used to” I don’t have that clearance stuff anymore, have what the spook world, I think learned from MI6, called “falling down the rabbit hole.” Don’t exist.             

Which means that one Jimmy “Bangs” who no longer exists can tell a story, can tell a tale about a seriously botched job that got me vanished. And no it is not one of those Cold War come in from the cold tales when the Russkies and our side were going mano a mano over everything although it does involve Russians, the clever bastards, in the post-Soviet period when they really have had no limits to what they can and can’t do under the new regime. First let me tell you though that the image, maybe the familiar James Bond spy image in not what the guy who went under the name Jimmy “Bangs” looked like or gave a damn about. I was a high school dropout who went to prison early to learn my trade. One day a lawyer came in, not my lawyer but somebody who claimed to know my lawyer and offered me this deal-freedom from jail for doing what I was a whizz at-making murder and mayhem and not necessarily in that order. I was to lead an elite unit that didn’t “exist.” Nobody but some cowboy named “Ma” knew anything about.     

Everybody who kept up with the news knew that after the Soviets went down in flames the whole nuclear arsenal was basically for sale to the highest bidder and no questions asked. Most of the stuff was just regular nuclear material but one load, at least one load that got into some smelly hands was zinuim, the blaster of all blasters. So my unit was charged with finding who had it and deactivating it.  Simply right. Yeah, simple except we lost some good people on the mission and never did get that freaking zinium which is still out there some place in evil hands waiting for some right time to ante up the price-or else.       

Here’s where things got screwy once we got the go ahead to waste whoever we needed to waste to get the damn stuff. It ain’t pretty but this is why I can tell the story and know that I will get no blow-back from those half-baked bastards who people the offices in places like the NSA. We were supposed to have a meet in a quiet suburban housing development and things looked good for the takeout and take down except the whole thing was a Russian spy operation ploy to throw us off the trail. We got screwed on that one, worse though because one the guys we wasted in the firefight was some son of a bitch of a relative of some high muck in the security apparatus. His death as he told Alice, my right-hand woman, before he died was a serious mistake. Both of us thought it was nothing but bravado and the life draining out of the kid. Ouch, we learned the hard way that a mother’s milk can go many different ways.   

I wasn’t sure where we were heading with the operation and “Ma,” believe me a real cowboy down the low, low basement of the White House which meant he probably on any given day could have declared himself president and nobody would have said boo. But “Ma” loved operations, loved to beat down the other side, whatever that other side was from Osama to bedraggled college student protesters. One day out of nowhere this seemingly low-level cop from Jakarta showed up at the front door of the American embassy there claiming he had the keys to the kingdom-had the zinium location. This after beating down about sixteen Marines, and an assortment of bad guys who were later found out to be in the employ of the Russians.     

This cop, let’s call him Zeke because as I have repeatedly mentioned what the fuck difference does a name make since they are all fake news for real, didn’t figure at first but he left enough bread crumbs that we slowly began to see maybe he did have a tag on something. One Jimmy Bangs had seen plenty of tough dudes, had tangled with them and came out okay, mostly but I knew this guy had something wrong with him, something didn’t add up beyond that low-level copper bullshit. I just couldn’t put my finger on it, and sorry to say never did. That mistake cost me Judy D who was the best bombmaker who I ever met and Dizzy Dean the best sharpshooter ever. Who knows where Alice is now, although I am on the trail.

To make a long story a little shorter this Zeke, a real piece of work every time I say his name, reeled us in over time despite ever technological innovation we had to cut his throat if he made one wrong move. He never did. Never was some stumble bum low life grafter copper either but a master spy for the Russians, for that high muck woman who lost her son to our guns and sought revenge. She got it all right and all I got was a chance to tell some story about a botched operation that even “Ma” disowned when the deal went down.