SLPAD - 38 - colloquy w/company clerk / Hiss

[Michael Bailey]

Not a magazine, no, it’s a paperback which Levine’s reading. I said
otherwise, & apologize.

3 years of avoiding work details resulted in Levine’s physique, and
nickname.

Twinkletoes Dugan, company clerk - several degrees of likeability removed
from Radar O’Reilly was my first impression.

He interpellates the orderly leaning against the wall:
“Capucci, you worthless bastard“

So, if we’re keeping track of the melting pot nature of the Army, going by
surnames, in all likelihood we’ve got an Italian, an Irishman, and a Jew -
&, if they walk into a bar, the beginning of a joke.


[Dugan] “…with an ill-natured pout on his lips. “Who’s got that whore book
after you, Levine,” he said. Levine, who was using his helmet liner for an
ashtray, flicked his cigarette. “The GI can I reckon,” he smiled.”

So, not a magazine, maybe _Peyton Place_ - #1 NYT bestseller in July of
1957?

Something scurrilous & sex-drenched, would be the natural imputation from
Levine reading it in his bunk, and of Dugan requesting dibs - and of
Levine’s plans for it -

Taking it into the GI can (lavatory, right?) either for his own morose
delectations there, or to leave for the next comer…

Company clerk & whatever Levine is are both specialists, right? So why
wouldn’t they use the same can? Dugan is probably miffed that Levine won’t
promise it to him?

No love lost betw these two, seems to be the case.

Dugan utilizes the insulting part of Levine’s nickname in relaying a
summons from the Lieutenant.



— more about Nathan Levine -

Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury.

Weird how that worked:
- Whittaker Chambers testified before HUAC in 1948 that both he and Hiss
were Communists during the 1930s
- the statute of limitations for espionage had expired
- didn’t know there was a statute of limitations on espionage
- Hiss sued Chambers for libel
- Chambers produced evidence during pre-trial discovery
- Hiss got indicted for 2 counts of perjury
- first trial ended with a hung jury
- second trial sentenced him to 2 concurrent 5-year terms in prison
- he served 3 1/2 years
- in the ‘90s former Soviet spymasters claimed to have found nothing in
their archives about Hiss
- but in 1995, the final round of declassification of the Venona Papers
(sort of America’s Bletchley Park) did yield some evidence
- Hiss maintained his innocence till he died
- I found & read a library book by his son, who took the time and made the
effort to try to buttress Hiss’s claims (filial devotion) - can’t remember
much, but it seemed convincing at the time


(But wait, there’s more!)

Dept of Tenuous Connectionz & Wispy Tendrils

- now, if, as Whitaker Chambers’ lawyer, Nathan Levine could be said to
represent conservative opposition to activist government efforts to
“provide for the general welfare” by tarring prominent figures in FDR’s
alphabet soup of agencies with the “communist” brush…

- then, by putting an instantiation of Nathan Levine into a military
cleanup after a storm

- the disastrous effects of which had been aggravated by infrastructure
shortfalls of the type that New Deal programs had been designed to remedy

- this Nathan Levine is confronted with an adventure here which could be an
early version of “karmic adjustment” as later practiced by Takeshi in VL.