January 7, 2020
Pret A Manger, Downtown, 17th and K Street
Washington, District of Columbia
Big flakes of snow fall outside the warmth protected by these plate glass windows.
Today, I found an interesting meeting at SETA, a think tank established by the Turkish Government. I signed up using Eventbrite. Walked in wearing my Carhartt coat and black Knockabout hat. Asked for the coat room. Asked for the bathroom key. Grabbed a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Found nothing open in the front row, so I took a seat in the second row.
Pulled out my trusty Lumix camera. Took five two shots of the panelists. Then my camera battery died. I pulled out battery two, dropped it into the slot. It didn’t have a charge. Pulled out battery three. Dropped it into the slot. Nothing. I found myself fuming, “I’m in a room full of photojournalists without a working camera”. I pulled out my cellphone and took footage for TikTok.
Time to hook up my charger. I don’t want to have that rookie mistake occurring again. If I put myself in position again, I don’t want to miss the chance to take pictures of high level think tank staff again. At least I have a few images to prove I sat close and knew when to show up. I hope to log at least one embassy or think tank a day as I make my way around Washington. Plus, it beats having to buy lunch. Dang, the house only served coffee and it wasn’t good Turkish coffee either.
The panelist gathered to debate a question: The day after Soleimani are the US and Iran headed to war? I pulled the sheet of all the panelists and yet have to read it. One panelist, Mark Perry, feels fairly certain we will engage because Mark Esper and Mike Pompeo have the president’s ear and the two have a military solution for all scenarios. I believe the two were classmates at West Point in 1986, the year of my second senior year at Michigan State. In fact, Perry raised that alert that the pair had pretty much become the brains of the entire industrial military complex. And that’s definitely not what the framers of the American Constitution intended.
I listened closely. And I had an opportunity to pose a question, which the moderator “collected”. I really wanted to know. America has begun to rely on the surgical strike. We found and assassinated Osama Bin Laden with a highly capable task force. We struck General Soleimani with astounding speed and effectiveness without killing a large number of civilians. So why would we fight a conventional war, attacking from the border and deploying jets from carriers? This is exactly what I said. “If we could grab the knight, we probably have the intelligence to snatch the bishop and the king. If one can snatch the bishop and king, why engage pawns and rooks”? Kadir Ustun, Executive Director of the SETA Foundation, shot me a look that suggested I had hit a nerve if not spoken out of church.
I worry about myself. Here I am glorifying the American Military and the way we’ve done business in the world. I didn’t say that we probably had a sword of Damocles over anyone in the Iranian power structure. I didn’t say, “Why should we play ball when we just sacked the quarterback at will”? I know what has advanced in artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain. I once worked with Dr. Louis Wingers, who has been doing really fast programming for the CIA since you were a twinkle in my eye. The entire Iranian order of battle is not only known, but all of them have a blockchain identifier in a ledger of movements.
Okay, fucking A, every friend I ever had in high school or college would cheer me if I said just that around a pitcher of beer. I have to confess to my daughter that I’m so close to turning into a facist and a jingo.
Here’s the weirdest thing. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m losing my mind. I walked into a Starbucks. A man smiles at me. I can see he’s writing out some business analyst form. He has perfect hair, wavy and black, handsome as the legendary Harvard man women hoped to meet on the train while traveling to a seaside resort. I sat down.
He turned to me, smiled again, and asked, “Are you Mr. Hendrickson”? Who sits in a coffee shop waiting for a Mr. Hendrickson and writes up analyst documents. And there’s a way I can answer that question yes. Corrine Aino Juntunen began her life as Corrine Aino Juntunen, the daughter of Wally Hendrickson. “No, I’m sorry. I’m sure Mr. Hendrickson will be along soon”. And I left because no space existed in the cramped Starbucks for me to spread out and write.
The room was full of people attending or graduating from top foreign policy schools. I sat by one of these top students and we talked. I told him, “In Lafayette Square, I encountered a protest of Persians, not Iranians. Never call an expatriate of Iran who left after the fall of the Shah an Iranian. I posted the video on TikTok. One TikTok friend identified the flags as Iranian; however, it was the flag of the era of the Shah”. He said to me in all seriousness. “I would be careful what you put on TikTok. The Chinese run all kinds of analysis over it. You could find yourself tracked and assassinated by an Iranian agent”. “Nah”, I said in good humor. “The assassin will fuck it up and I’ll never have to work again after the publicity”.
And elderly woman in the front row dropped her pen near my foot. She struggled to reach it. I, of course, picked it up. I read what it said, all of it written in Arabic. I gave it back to her. I could tell from her poise and energy that she had a long life of physical agility. Maybe she dropped her pen. Maybe she wanted my fingerprints? Maybe I’ve read too many spy novels.
I turn on my cell phone. I missed a job order for an errand. A fellow named Daniel D. asked me to deliver two pounds of Playbox Wheat Paste to Lafayette Square at Five in the late afternoon. That’s a cheap and simple buy at the art supply store. Wheat Paste has a political use. Street artists slosh it on when putting up paper cutouts and posters onto walls. Banksy uses wheat paste. Swoon uses wheat paste. So I had an invitation to make fifty bucks helping out an elusive street artist put up pastes near the White House. God, I love this town. As Henry Kissinger said, “It’s not paranoid to be paranoid”. So maybe I deliver the wheat paste and bam, the lead gets delivered to my head?
I could get knocked off for super rudeness and horrible ethnocentrism. In the middle of the presentation, I performed a count of ties. All of the natural born Americans wore jackets, relaxed jackets and a collar shirt, worn without a tie. The tie died a horrible death in the nineties as we tried to blur the boundary between the blue and white collar. A consultant cut one right off my neck, summer of 1991. All of the dignitaries from Turkey wore tailored suits, tailored shirts carefully pressed and perfectly knotted silk ties in red or blue, knotted with a Windsor knot. And we were the visitors and hence should have dressed up!
I loved my visit to the Indonesian Embassy. All the men wore the informal Batik shirts, totally relaxed, formal clothing left in the closet. I totally wanted to buy every single one of the Indonesian diplomats shirts!
Secret Agent Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iaR3WO71j4
Lyrics
There's a man who leads a life of danger
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger
With every move he makes another chance he takes
Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow
Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name
Beware of pretty faces that you find
A pretty face can hide an evil mind
Ah, be careful what you say
Or you'll give yourself away
Odds are you won't live to see tomorrow
Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name
Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name
Swingin' on the Riviera one day
And then layin' in the Bombay alley next day
Oh no, you let the wrong word slip
While kissing persuasive lips
The odds are you won't live to see tomorrow
Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name
Secret agent man
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: P. F. Sloan / Steve Barri
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