VLVL2 (15): How Cheap Coke Has Been ...

[Dave Monroe]

   "'We're nobody's protoge in this administration,
State Department hates our ass, NSC thinks we're scum,
if Customs don't steal it out from under us, Justice
and FBI try to either run it or fuck it up, and
frankly,' lowering his voice, 'notice how cheap coke
has been since '81?  However in the world do you
account for that?'
   "'Roy!  Is you're sayin' the President himself is
duked into some deal?  Quit foolin'!  Next you'll be
tellin' me George Bush.'
   "Roy kept a prop Bible on his desk, useful when he
needed to get along with the born-agains in the
Agency.  He opened it and pretended to read.  'Harken
unto me, read thou my lips, for verily I say that
wheresoever the CIA putteth in its meathooks upon the
world, there also are to be found those substances
which God may have created but the U.S. Code has
decided to control.  Get me?  Now old Bush used to be
head of the CIA, so you figure it out.'" (VL, Ch. 15,
pp. 353-4)


State Department

http://www.state.gov/

NSC

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/

Customs

http://www.customs.gov/

Justice

http://www.usdoj.gov/

And this is ever so helpful ...

http://www.lifeandliberty.gov/

FBI

http://www.fbi.gov/


"notice how cheap coke has been since '81?"

See, e.g., ...

Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair.
   Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press.
   London and New York: Verso, 1998.

http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/c-titles/cockburn_alex_whiteout.shtml

Webb, Gary.  Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras,
   and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.  New York:
   Seven Stories Press, 1999.

http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100705890

And see as well here, e.g., ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9807&msg=28277


George Bush

http://www.the7thfire.com/bush15.htm

http://www.famoustexans.com/georgebush.htm

http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/bush.html

http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/News/1976/January/30-Bush_CIA_Director.asp

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/gb41.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/presidents/georgehwbush.html


"the born-agains in the agency"

Cf. ...

"... and all these other weird vibrations in the air
lately, like even some non-born-agains showing up at
work with these little crosses, these red Christer
pins, in their lapels ...."  (VL, Ch. 15, p. 339)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0405&msg=90705

>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 ...

The "red Christer pins" are another reference to FEMA
and Rex-84. According to Ben Bradlee:
 
There had been considerable anxiety within the agency
about the legality of the Rex-84 exercise. [One FEMA]
official said he had never seen such security around
any other activity inside FEMA, and that agency
General Counsel George Jett had ordered the
installation of a special metal security door into the
hallway of the fifth floor of the FEMA building in
Washington where all planning for Rex-84 was
conducted.... FEMA officials with the highest security
clearances had been prevented from going into the
restricted area.... only Giuffrida, Jett, and FEMA
Deputy Director Frank Salcedo--all of whom were
inexplicably reported to have been wearing red
Christian crosses or crucifix pins on their
lapels--were allowed in.

These red crosses appeal to Pynchon for several
reasons. Like the "silver lapel-swastika[s]" worn by
prominent Nazi sympathizers and mentioned in Gravity's
Rainbow, the red crucifix pins identify their wearers
as having fascist impulses. More importantly, the
crucifix pins are a parody of the puritan belief in
predestination, for what are they but the outward and
visible signs of election? .... Pynchon's pun hinges
on the fact that these men have been chosen neither by
God nor the American voter; they have been appointed. 

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

Citing ...

Bradlee, Ben, Jr.  Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall
   of Oliver North.  New York: Donald I. Fine, 1988.



	
		
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