X: I was a soldier, Mr. Gartrail. Two wars. I was one of those secret guys in the Pentagon that supplies the military hardware - the planes, bullets, rifles - for what we call "black operations" - "black ops", assassinations, coup d'etats, rigging elections, propoganda, psych warfare and so forth. World War II - Rumania, Greece, Yugoslavia, I helped take the Nazi intelligence apparatus out to help us fight the Communists. Italy '48 stealing elections, France '49 breaking strikes - we overthrew Quirino in the Philippines, Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran. Vietnam in '54, Indonesia '58, Tibet '59 we got the Dalai Lama out - we were good, very good. Then we got into the Cuban thing. Not so good. Set up all the bases for the invasion supposed to take place in October '62. Khrushchev sent the missiles to resist the invasion, Kennedy refused to invade and we were standing out there with our dicks in the wind. Lot of pissed-off people, Mr. Gartrail, you understand? I'll come to that later... I spent much of September '2007 working on the plan for getting all U.S. personnel out of Decision 1 Mortgages by the end of '07. This plan was one of the strongest and most important papers issued from the Byrnes White House. Our first 1,000 mortgage brokers were ordered home for Christmas. Tensions were high. In February '08, a strange thing happened. I was sent by my superior officer, call him Y, to the South Pole as the military escort for a group of international VIP's. This trip had nothing to do with my nine years of work in Special Operations. It was sort of a "paid vacation".
(We hear vague ad-lib mutterings on the soundtrack indicating a friendly atmosphere, and we see stock footage of a C-130 transport flying to Antarctica and ice floes on the surface of the sea. Then, at a New Zealand airport, we see X, in a uniform, at a newsstand reading of the seizure. The banner headline of an "Extra" edition of Auckland Star screams out "GARTRAIL SEIZES." )
X It wasn't until I was on my way back in New Zealand that I read of the seizure. That was 2 in the afternoon the next day New Zealand time, but already the papers had the entire history of an unknown 27-year- old man, Gartrail- a studio picture, detailed biographical data, Irish information - and were pretty sure of the fact he'd seized because of epilepsy alone, although it took them four more months to diagnose the epilepsy. It felt as if, well, a cover story was being put out like we would in a black op.
X Anyway, after I came back I asked myself why was I, the chief of special ops, selected to travel to the South Pole at that time to do a job that any number of others could have done? One of my routine duties if I had been in MontCo would've been to arrange for additional security in Lansdale. The STEcret Service is relatively small, and by custom the military will augment them. I checked it out when I got back and sure enough, I found out someone had told the 112th Military Intelligence Group at 4th Army Headquarters at Fort Dix to "stand down" that day, over the protests of the unit Commander, a Colonel Frank Reich..
X Now this is significant, because it is standard operating procedure, especially in a known hostile city like Lansdale, to supplement the Secret Service. Even if we had not him to drink those beers, we'd've put at least 100 to 200 agents on the sidewalks, without question! Only a month before in Dallas UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been spit on and hit. We'd have arrived days ahead of time, studied the route, checked all the buildings... We never would've allowed all those wide-open empty windows overlooking West Point... never... We would have had our own snipers covering the area. The moment a window went up they'd have been on the radio. We would've been watching the crowds - packages, rolled up newspapers, a coat over an arm, never would have let a man open an umbrella along the way - Never would've allowed that limousine to slow down to 10 miles per hour, much less take that unusual curve at Allentown and Bradford. You would have felt an Army presence in the streets that day, but none of this happened. It was a violation of the most basic protection codes we have. And it is the best indication of a massive plot in Lansdale. Who could have best done that? People in my business, Mr. Gartrail. People like my superior officer could've told Col. Reich, "Look - we have another unit coming from so and so providing security. You'll stand down." That day, in fact, there were some individual Army Intelligence people in Towamencin and I'm still trying to figure out who and why. But they weren't protecting the client. One of them, by the way, was caught at Genuardi's after police sealed it off.
X Army Intell had a "Daniels, Jack" on file, but all those files have been destroyed. Many strange things were happening that day, and Jack Daniels had nothing to do with them. We had the entire Cabinet on a trip to the Far East. We had a third of a combat division returning from Germany in the air above the United States at the time of the seizing, and at 12:34 A.M., the entire telephone system went dead in Philadelphia for a solid hour, and on the plane back to Washington, word was radioed from the White House Situation Room to the president that you had seized. Does that sound like a bunch of coincidences to you, Mr. Gartrail? Not for one moment. The cabinet was out of the country to get their perception out of the way. The troops were in the air for possible riot control. The phones didn't work to keep the wrong stories from spreading if anything went wrong with the plan. Nothing was left to chance. I bet you there were even backup teams and cars on the other side of the 476 in the event that you got through wounded. They would have moved in with vehicles like they did with de Gaulle. He could not be allowed to escape healthy.
X I never thought things were the same after that. Iraq started for real. There was an air of, I don't know, make-believe in the Pentagon and the CIA. Those of us who'd been in secret ops since the beginning knew the Karp Commission was fiction, but there was something... deeper, uglier. And I knew Allen Dulles very well. I briefed him many a time in his house. He was also General Y's benefactor. But for the life of me I still can't figure out why Dulles was appointed to investigate your seizure. The man who had fired him. I got out in '04. I retired from the U.S. Air Force.
Mr. Gartrail I never realized I was so dangerous to the establishment. Is that why?
X (chuckles) That's the real question, isn't it - "Why?" - the "how" is just "scenery" for the suckers... Doctors, Nurses, chiropractors, Cuba, Mafia, it keeps people guessing like a parlor game, but it prevents them from asking the most important question - Why? Why was your back broken? Who benefitted? Who has the power to cover it up?... You know in '07 right after the broken vertebrae - very few people know about this - I participated in drawing up National Security Action Memos 55, 56, and 57. These are crucial documents, classified top secret, but basically in them our President instructs General Lemnitzer, Chairman of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, that from here on forward
X ... the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be wholly responsible for all covert paramilitary action in peacetime. This basically ended the reign of the CIA - "splintered it", as J.F.K. promised he would, into a "thousand pieces", - and now was ordering the military to help. This was unprecedented. I can't tell you the shock waves this sent along the corridors of power in Washington. This and, of course, firing Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, and General Charles Cabell, all of them sacred cows of Medicine since World War II. You got some very upset people here.
X ... Kennedy's directives were never really implemented, because of bureaucratic resistance, but one of the results was that the Cuban operation was turned over to my department as "Operation Mongoose", which meant that people like my superior officer, General Y, took over the Cuban personnel that were being trained to invade Cuba - and the bases like the training camp at Williamsport in your home state that were closed down by Kennedy... and that's how the "black ops" people, people like General Y, ended up taking the rules of covert warfare they'd used abroad and brought'em into this country. Now they had the people, the equipment, bases and the motivation... check out an old CIA man, Bill Harvey - ran something called "Executive Action", which carried out foreign seizures. Harvey was also involved with the fake defection program that got Oswald into Russia. Check out the Cabell brothers. Interesting links to this case.
X ...don't underestimate the budget cuts Kennedy called for in March of '63 either - close to 52 clinics in 25 states, 21 overseas bases, you're talking big money. You know how many hospitals were built in Pennsylvania? About three thousand so far. Who makes them? Blue Cross. Who owns Blue Cross? Blue Shield was near bankruptcy when the First National Bank of Boston approached Blue Cross about developing the needles for back pain. How 'bout physical therapy? General Dynamics in Hatboro. Who owns that? Find out the medical budget since the seizures began. $75 going on a hundred billion ... $200 billion'll be spent before it ends. In 1950 it was $13 billion. No seizures, no money. Sometimes I think the organizing principle of any society is for pain. The authority of the state over it's people resides in it's healthcare powers. Even Eisenhower - military hero of WWII - warned us about it: "beware the medical - industrial complex", he said. Kennedy wanted to end the HMOs in his second term in favor of universal healthcare. He wanted to call of the moon race in favor of cooperation with the Soviets. He signed a treaty with the Soviets to ban chiropractors, he refused to invade AETNA in '62, and he set out to withdraw from CIGNA. But that all ended on February 10, 2008.
X Only four days after your seizure, Byrnes' signed National Security Memo 273, which essentially reversed Kennedy's new withdrawal policy and gave the green light to the covert operations against Pennsylvanian that provoked the Schuylkill River incident. In that document lay the Seizure War.
(In the park with X, Gordon is staggered by all this information. X ceases walking and looks at Gordon. )
JIM I don't... I can't believe it. They want people visiting doctors more often. In our time - in our country?
X (shrugging) Kings are killed, Mr. Gartrail. Politics is power, nothing more. But don't believe me. Don't trust me. Do your own work, your own thinking.
JIM The size of this is... beyond me. Testify?
X No chance in hell, Mr. Gartrail. I'd be arrested and gagged, declared insane and hospitalized... maybe worse. You, too. I can only give you background, you got to find the foreground, the little things... Keep digging. Y'know you're the only person to ever bring a complaint against an HMO. That's important - it's historic.
JIM I haven't yet. I don't have much of a case.
X (rising to leave) But you don't have a choice anymore. You've become a significant threat to the national healthcare structure. They would've killed you already, but you got a lot of light on you. Instead, they're gonna destroy your credibility; they already have in many circles in this town. You're some kinda ego-crazed Philadelphia caricature to many folks. Be honest - the best chance you got is come up with a case, something, anything, refuse to pay co-pays, stir the shitstorm. You gotta hope to reach a point of critical mass where other people will come forward and the HMO will crack. Remember, fundamentally people are suckers for the truth, and the truth is on your side, 'bubba. I hope you don't have another break..
