Above: A mild flirtation.

April, 1968. Central Intelligence Director Richard Helms and Secretary of State Dean Rusk warn President Johnson that Nash is getting too close to blowing the lid off of MKULTRA. Helms recommends termination. Nash flees his office in Washington D.C. and establishes several bases of operation in covert locations -- a number of motel rooms in rural areas and an exquisitely designed apartment in Vienna with floor-to-ceiling windows and several expensive modern art paintings of questionable authorship.


Above: One of Nash's (probably fake) Jackson Pollock pieces.

While in the U.S., Nash works through a list of contacts, coming across Andy Sturdevant, a secretary to Richard W. Held in the Los Angeles FBI office. Nash is initially reluctant; no one seems sure what side of the current COINTELPRO operation Sturdevant is on; (if any -- Sturdevant is known simply as an addict to covert operations of any sort).


Above left: Sturdevant minutes before strangling an informant whose fashion accessory choice had been dreadful.
Above right: Sturdevant hunts communists in Virginia's inaccurately named Red Park. Note the impeccable style, even though the action yeilded no positive results.

Intrigued, Nash agrees to meet with the unpredictable Sturdevant and learns of the so-called Sturdevant Effect, which is widely regarded as the main cause of the death of Frank Olson during MKULTRA LSD testing.



(Sturdevant had been responsible for uncovering some of the more hidden properties LSD, including powerful effect on mammalian uterine contractions.) While it was assumed that Olson had leapt from his window, Sturdevant notes inconsistencies in the autopsy findings.




Nash and Sturdevant quickly begin work to uncover the truth behind the CIA's efforts to control the human mind. Sturdevant enlists the help of Dr. Pierre Fink --who had gained notoriety by assisting two other doctors in the JFK autopsy-- to determine whether or not Olson has been assassinated by elements within the government. Rusk and Helms discover Sturdevant's complicity in Nash's rogue activity, as well as the medical undertaking of his own in the Olson case. Sturdevant flees for a safehouse in Berlin and composes a coded Telex to Nash's base of operations in a roadside motel outside Savannah, Georgia.


Above: Room "zero four" in the motel was used by Nash for many years and for many purposes.


The "Sturdevant Telex" has since been destroyed, but is widely believed to have been primarily composed of catty, rambling complaints about Richard Helms' handsome Italian suits. Nash generally attributes the cryptic content of the document to after-effects of LSD and petty sartorial jealousy.


Above: One of Helms' handsome Italian suits.

At the Sleep Rite Motel in Pritchardville GA, Nash becomes paranoid. He is convinced that his room is bugged, and that undercover operatives have laced his free ice with sodium penathol. The constant presence of Dean Rusk's baby pictures flashing on the television set does not assuage his fears.


Above: the alarming televised baby pictures in question.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, Sturdevant is asked to judge the 3rd Annual Miss Black Ops Pageant. He and a panel of judges consisting of Bobby Darin, Sid Caesar and Special Assistant for National Security Affairs Walt W. Rostow choose Miss Operation Paperclip as the winner.


Above: the pageant in Berlin.

"That sumbitch."

April, 1968. Johnson is briefed by Rusk and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara on "that sumbitch" Nash. Richard Helms is sent out for tacos. Johnson makes a number of sadistic jokes at Helms' expense as he leaves the White House briefing room, warning him not to spill mild sauce on "his naws suit."


Helms exits the White House and stops in at his favorite taco stand: Karina's, on L Street. In a fit of wounded dandy-ish pride, he contemplates lacing Johnson's fajita with leftover LSD from MKULTRA.


Helms stops off for a haircut on the way back to the White House. Johnson is growing furious. His status is upgraded from "hongry" to "damn hongry." Rusk suspects the fajitas are growing cold sitting in Helms' car.


Back in the safe house, Nash has a vivid dream about a walk-in freezer filled with fajitas. He has been keeping a fantastic dream journal for the benefit of his psychiatrist, a kindly ex-Nazi that, unbeknowest to Nash, had treated Frank Olson. He is eager to see what the doctor will make of this dream of cold Mexican food.

The New Chef

During Nash's next analysis, the ex-Nazi psychiatrist places him in a deep hypnotic state. Unbeknownst to Nash, on 35 of the 38 occasions that he has been placed under hypnosis by this doctor, his partially undressed body has been photographed by a man and woman team known as "The Dickgrabers." William James Dickgraber was also apparently under CIA cover as a fine art forger. He is almost certainly the source for the "reproductions" that befouled the walls of Nash's Vienna safehouse.



Above: Odd but true-The signature of WJ Dickgraber on one of Nash's (clearly) fake Dürer watercolors.

The purposes of these photos remain uncertain, but it is widely assumed that they were an attempt to garner material for a budding but imperfect photographic doctoring practice that was aimed at blackmail. To this date, it is unknown whether Nash was ever extorted or blackmailed with these photos, but it seems unlikely (due in major part to the fact that everyone who knew Nash had probably seen his half-naked body drooling and semi-conscious on a sofa before.)


Above: A "proof of concept" image pilfered from the Dickgrabers' suburban Connecticut home.


During the hypnosis, Nash vividly remembers the end of a briefing on MKULTRA in April 1953. Present at the meeting were CIA Director Allen Dulles, Gen. Ed Lansdale, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, President Eisenhower, Sec. of State Dean Acheson, and a host of internal White House staffers.



Above: Dulles (left) and others at the briefing.

At a moment in the recollection when the general aims of MKULTRA were being detailed, Nash vividly remembers an unbearded Fidel Castro eating the tongue from a boiled sheep's head and humming White Rabbit.


Above: Castro (with beard intact) forgets the lyrics again.

Knowing this cannot be possible, Nash covers his crotch, sobs, and falls deeper into the hypnotic state. (See above proof-of-concept photo.) Alas, Nash can only now recall -in flawless detail- the conversation that ended in Allen Dulles' being sent out for, of course, Mexican food. A recently discovered transcript of that conversation follows:

Eisenhower: He’ll [Dulles] do it. He’ll do it as Acting Director until we get full director.

Acheson: You're going to appoint a full director to find a better Mexican restaur-

Eisenhower: I'm the damned President, aren't I?

Acheson: Yes, sir.

Eisenhower: See, I’m making a search as you know, and he says he’ll take it [over] for that long. Do you think that’s a good thing?

Acheson: It’s ideal, sir.

Eisenhower: Now, his only problem he says is that bastard, uh - what's his name... The guy who opened the new restaurant? He took the Presidential discount with him.

Dulles: Yeah, what the hell am I going to say? I knew [Head Chef] Don Pancho?

Acheson: That's not even his real name, is it?

Eisenhower: The problem isn't the name its that, hell, everybody knows Pancho now. I mean, he hasn’t worked there since 1951.

Acheson: That’s no problem for him [Dulles]. [Inaudible] He has a sidearm, doesn't he?

Acheson: I don't think he would be within the scope of-

Eisenhower: Well, anyway, he [Pancho] was there—never during the campaign, when we ate so much - I mean everybody did... not just me. He might not even remember us.

Acheson: Might I remind you, sir, that you are the President.

Eisenhower: You've got something there, Dean. Doesn't he Allen?

Dulles: Sir, if I may interject here, it's getting late. And the car doesn't always-

Eisenhower: I told you to take the damned White House car... It has a driver, you know.

Dulles: Am I going to Pancho's new place?

Eisenhower: Well, do you think Pancho's new place would be a good one?

Acheson: Ideal.

Eisenhower: Ideal, he says. Then I’m going to name him Official Mexican Chef of the Presidency, and I’m going to have it announced from over here. Is that all right?

Acheson: Sure, but, Mr. President…

Eisenhower: Yeah?

Acheson: …under the rules and regulations of the law, it’s an appointment that I, administratively, have to make. So, I think your announcement—

Eisenhower: Oh…

Acheson: —should be that you have directed me to—

Eisenhower: Sure.

Acheson: —designate him as Official Chef—

Eisenhower: Mexican chef

Acheson: -of the...Presidency? Is that right?

Eisenhower: Yes, of the Presidency. I like that. But under the rules and regulations of the law, it’s an appointment that the Secretary of State has to make? Is that right?

Acheson: So, you just—you make the announcement that you have directed me—

Eisenhower: Yeah.

Acheson: —to make him the Official Chef.

Eisenhower: Mexican Chef...Jesus. Anyway, I make the announcement that I have directed the Secretary of state to make you—him the Official Mexican Chef until a successor—

Acheson: That’s right.

Eisenhower: —is announced...

Acheson: Yes, sir.

Eisenhower: as an even newer Official Mexican Chef. All right. That’s what we’ll do.

Acheson: Fine, sir.

Eisenhower: Fine.


Nash Awakens, terrified. And "hongry."

Powerful damn hongry. Plus: our man in Red Hook.

Above: Mimeos today, Ruskian origami tomorrow.

Meanwhile, back in the Johnson White House, April 1968.

Hours have passed. Rusk is sitting in a corner, creating origami cranes from mimeopgraphed copies of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. President Johnson's status re: the tacos is upgraded from "damn hongry" to "powerful damn hongry." He makes a number of colorful references to a "summit meeting with mah foot and [Helms's] ass."


Above: "It don't look like no damn taco I ever seen."

Johnson is furious that he is being made a fool of. After six hours with nary a phone call from Helms, Johnson impulsively bars Mexican food from ever being served in the White House in perpetuity, and demands that master pierogie chefs be smuggled in by the CIA from behind the Iron Curtain, and appointed to Official White House Chef (Non-Barbeque Division) on an ad-hoc basis. The resulting termination of Chef Don Pancho, as history has well-recorded, will have calamitous results just a few years later.


Above: ¿Dónde está usted, Don Pablo?

Meanwhile, in an unheated steel mesh warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, W.J. Dickgraber, long since removed from CIA's payrolls, works furiously on his latest set of unauthorized Eva Hesse forgeries, which he sells on the contemporart arts black market to fatuous California millionaires with lapsed subscriptions to Artforum magazine. Dickgraber, in an ill-timed burst of conscious, split from the CIA during the Kennedy Administration, furious that newly-appointed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara downgraded his black-ops role in the Nash blackmail project from creating mock-ups of the naked sobbing man, to merely handling the interior decorating details used in the couches Nash would be photographed on (to add insult to injury, President Kennedy also used these couches as rendevous locations for several of the less-noteworthy trysts in his administration).


Above: Dickgraber's post-Eisenhower handiwork. CIA focus groups found Nash's Kennedy-era blackmailings to be "free-spirited," "modish" and "now."

The funds from the Hesse forgeries will be used to purchase back any extant blackmail photos from various collectors of the perverse, and begin to unsully the name of "Dickgraber."

Meanwhile, Nash has joined noted anarchist rock band the Fugs as a flautist. His further association with New Left is noted by higher-ups at Foggy Bottom.

Nash's kindly ex-Nazi doctor is hired as a technical advisor on "Hogan's Heroes," and will later be singled out as a "person of interest" in Bob Crane's death in 1978.


Above: Kill for peace?

Johnson and Johnson: A Tense Situation

April, 1968. Johnson kicks off one of his huge leather shoes and hurls it unmercifully at Rusk, who has just attempted to question the President's judgment on the matter of replacing Mexican food with pirogies. Johnson's tantrum was later memorialized in the feature film "Clear and Present Danger"

Johnson: How dare you come in here and lecture me?
Rusk: How dare you sir?

Johnson: How dare you come into this office and bark at me like some little junkyard dog?! I'm the president of the United States and I need a [expletive] pirogie!

Rusk's glasses are irrevocably broken in the assault.


Above:Johnson (next to Rusk's unattended sportcoat) in a fit of grief after the still-classified incident with the loafer.

(An unidentified white house staffer was later overheard commenting that Helms would never do something "so...so...gauche." To which another replied, "You mean those hideous loafers?" A third chimed in, "Exactly.")

---

Johnson signs Operation Plan 34-g, which authorizes the Department of Defense to use military force to return Helms and the food to the white house "come hell or high water." With Rusk cowering in the corner and several of the Joint Chiefs looking on with calculated indifference, Helms and an intern suddenly barge into the room over the objections of Secret Service agents, carrying not a small fortune in Mexican food, but rather, a single pirogi wrapped in a napkin. The undersecretary of the Navy quickly eats what he believes to be the only copy of Operation Plan 34-g.


Above: Helms' pirogi napkin as it now resides in the national archives. Initially unbeknownst to others, the napkin contained the highlights of a secret CIA communique that Helms received during his haircut and shave. The communique outlined Johnson's change of heart re: oval office ethnic cuisine and held a complete copy of Op. Plan 34-g. Upon receiving this briefing, Helms quickly contacted a CIA asset who helped him destroy the Mexican food and craft a truly fine example of the now popular Soviet delicacy.


Helms quickly unwraps one end of the package and takes a monstrous bite as he leans over the table toward Johnson. Several outraged Secret Service agents attempt to lunge at Helms, but Johnson, rising from his chair, waves them away. "Son, why in the livin' hell would you eat that damned thing right in front of me? Do I take your meanin' to be that {mockingly} you're a little upset? {To Rusk} Some [expletive] Great Society here, huh, Dean? I'm an old man with an entire government falling on me and I've got the Director of the CIA tryin' to piss up my leg about a goddamned burrito?!"

Helms continues to mash the pirogi into his mouth, barely stopping to chew.

Johnson fumbles with his waistband and looks Helms in the eye. "Dick, I want you to understand that I will not have any of this shit in my White House....So we're gonna settle this right now. You might think that you have a bigger tallywacker than the president...but I can assure you that you are wrong." Johnson drops his suit pants and pulls out his, well, Johnson. "Pony up, asshole." Helms stares in wonder at the president of the free world's member, drops the last bite of the pirogi on the floor, and promptly begins to vomit.


Above: Helms later tells Nixon: "He literally tried to make me suck on his bishop!"


Johnson, pleased, returns his pants to a respectable state. Rusk is heard whimpering from a corner. Johnson walks around his desk and pats Helms on the back. "Come, Dick.. {pausing for effect} We're all headed to Nathan's for a some extra creamy clam chowder. Won't you join us?" Helms continues to vomit, attempting to save his expensive Italian leather loafers. Johnson rallies the remaining staffers in the office and walks through the door, vindicated.

It is not known what characteristic of the president's member caused such a visceral reaction from Helms. Many historians believe that it was not the president's Johnson at all that caused the vomiting, but rather a dose of ipecac placed in the pirogi by Johnson's henchmen.



Above: Johnson was known to carry ipecac in his pants pockets along with a book of matches, a single, masticated band-aid, and on some occasions, a prophylactic.


Indeed, with the state of CIA affairs at the time, and given the superior capabilities of the Secret Service, it seems possible that Johnson could have intercepted Helms' misguided attempt to get back at him. Alas, the truth of the matter may never be known.

---

Meanwhile, Nash uses covert action money and a CIA helicopter to fly members of the Fugs and their entourage to a party at the New Jersey shore town of Asbury Park. At a rental home, Nash has set up a sort of LSD opium den, with red velvet walls and hundreds of pillows. Present at the party is someone Nash has never met before; a comely transsexual barista from the Upper East Side who, despite the present company, has some decidedly conservative political views...


Above, one of the bedrooms in Nash's opium den summer rental house. Note what appears to be a bassinet in the foreground. Was it used for a child, or simply for the more benign purposes of fulfilling Nash's opium fueled sexual fantasies?