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?