VLVL2 (15): That Queer Moment

[Dave Monroe]

"... and that queer moment the opther night around
3:00 or 4:00 A.M., right in the middle of watching
Sean Connery in The G. Gordon Liddy Story, when he saw
the screen go blank, bright and prickly, and then
heard voices hard, flat, echoing.
   "'But we don't have the actual orders yet, somebody
said.
   "'It's only a detail, the other voice with a
familiar weary edge, a service voice, 'just like
getting a search warrant.' ....

[...]

   "The man was handed two pieces of paper clipped
together, and he read it to the camera.  'As
commanding officer of state defense forces in this
sector, pursuant to the President's NSDD #52 of 6
April 1984 as amended, I am authorized--what?'" (VL,
Ch. 15, p. 339)


"The G. Gordon Liddy Story"

Sean Connery

http://imdb.com/name/nm0000125/

http://www.seanconnery.com/index.cfm

G. Gordon Liddy

http://www.liddyshow.us/

http://imdb.com/name/nm0005147/

Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy (1982)(TV)

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0084908/

Starring Robert Conrad ...


"the President's NSDD #52 of 6 April 1984"

>From David Thoreen, "The President's Emergency War
Powers and the Erosion of Civil Liberties in Pynchon's
Vineland," Oklahoma City University Law Review, Vol.
24, No. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 761-98 ...

Although Jules Lobel credits The Miami Herald with
breaking, on July 5, 1987, a "national news stories"
revelatory of FEMA,109 organs of the populist press
had been offering undocumented versions of the story
as early as April 1984. A story by James Harrer in The
Spotlight would attribute its facts only to "two
trustworthy confidential sources--patriotic career
Army officers--stationed at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and
Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas," while alleging that "on April
5 the White House issued a highly classified National
Security Decision Directive (NSDD)111 which sets forth
urgent instructions for the 'activation' of 10 huge
prison camps at key defense commands located across
the nation." The story claimed that "[e]ach one of
these camps is being laid out to hold 25,000 civilian
prisoners," and went on to name ten locations. Two of
the camps were in California: Oakdale ("reportedly for
15,000 detainees"), and Vandenburg Air Force Base.
Although the tone of The Spotlight article, filled
with more than its share of inverted commas ("measures
against political opponents, resisters or even
outspoken critics whom the administration considers
'dangerous"'), is somewhat paranoid, it does mention
the code name "Rex 84," and the broad outlines of
Harrer's story were later confirmed. 
     These plans for "detaining" civilians reverberate
with Brock Vond's Political Re-Education Program
(PREP) camp, which is "just about to be put in as a
rider to what would be the Crime Control Act of 1970."

[...]

Brock's unwillingness to wait for authorization for
PREP foreshadows the climax of executive
aggrandizement as it is presented in the novel,
Reagan's approval of National Security Decision
Directive (NSDD) #52, authorizing Rex 84.

http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/thoreen24.htm

And see as well ...

Thoreen, David.  "The Fourth Amendment and Other
   Modern Inconveniences: Undeclared War, Organized
   Labor, and the Abrogation of Civil Rights in
   Vineland."  Thomas Pynchon: Reading from the
   Margins.  Ed. Niran Abbas.  Madison, NJ:
   Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2002.  215-33.


"I am authorized--what?

Cf. ...

"What?" --Richard M. Nixon (GR, epigraph to Pt. IV)


	
		
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