I had friends–Fred and Ed.   These were their real names and this is a true story.   As odd products of fate and circumstance both men orbited each other for several decades.   Both men were spawned from different backgrounds, and held very different political values.   Oddly, while both men pursued life from different points of view they cultivated similar passions and similar sensibilities and on a more abstract level held similar perceptions of the essence of life.   Life was art, and life was adventure.  Life was only realized through passion and when the passion died the party was over.

Fred was originally from Arizona from modest working class, solid English stock.  He went to public school, did a stint in the Navy and then in the late fifties, early sixties as his Marxist or Socialist views started to galvanize, he crossed the pond where he lived for over a decade.   He spent time in Paris and resided for awhile in Ireland and Switzerland.  He did his share of rabble rousing, an activist from top to bottom.  He promoted civil rights and and socialist doctrine.   He was arrested on occasion and spent brief time in jail.  Didn’t matter all that much.  Fred was never the sort to believe he and his politics existed on some exalted or transcendental level.  He was a blue collar guy at a near genius level who knew any gains were made through the nuts and bolts and all its  incumbent vicissitudes.  You didn’t whine about your plight against the forces that be.  You bled for it.

It was more than probable that he served as a bag man for various left wing groups, including the IRA.    From what I was told he was on more security watch  lists than Trotsky.  Hence the trips and the residence in Switzerland.   He also made films, art films on noted subjects, a couple of them low budget productions based on the work of vaunted authors.   As a kid, either in high school or college, I saw two of them at the Philadelphia Art Theaters, never thinking I would later cross paths with one of the writers and producers.   The films themselves were  decent enough as Fred and company did their best to stay true to the material.  Fred loved the arts and as an artist himself he was a defender.  Even his politics wouldn’t supersede his love for the arts.

Fred was a romantic.  Never a bomb thrower.   Not violent.  A lover.  He enjoyed his romantic affairs and he immersed himself in the European art scene.   By day he made war on the ruling classes.  At night he made love.   Fred, if nothing else was a kind an caring guy.   His inherent sense of humanity would always trump his anger, even when the anger was righteous and directed at the social injustices of the world.

Ed, on the other hand, was of a very different stripe.  Ed was born to wealth and privilege the descendant of a Southern Jewish Family who over the decades migrated to Beverly Hills, California.   He was they archetypal rich kid, a product of private schools and then a football jock at UCLA.   He was a prankster with a keen sense of humor and a great brain.  Early on, he had no direction.  Direction came less through his own volition and more through the accidents of fate.  His family’s business went broke.  A bad sales deal left the business in shambles, the money drained through lawyers and theft.

For Fred, it meant a new start–pick a direction.  He, like Fred, ended up in Europe.   He wrote screenplays, mainly for the cheaply produced Italian Sword and Sandal Epics.  He wrote for a few of the early Spaghetti Westerns. No lofty, arty pieces like Fred.   These were those early sixties versions of action adventure, Roman Soldiers, Hercules, Gladiators.   If it had hair on its chest, Fred did the writing.  If it didn’t have hair on its chest, then it was bare breasted and if it made it to the states it did so in a more puritanical form.

Ed didn’t care.  They paid him in the dark, but they paid him in cash.  He wrote enough scripts to make a decent living.   He resided in Italy, and later he lived in London.  He also lived in Switzerland. Around the same time Fred was living there.

Besides his screenwriting efforts, Ed had another source of income.  He was working for Army Intelligence.   He worked in Europe, usually playing Cowboys and Russians.   He told me on many occasions how he hated working Venice, because in the night fog he never knew what was coming out of the shadows.   He nearly got himself killed in a small Venetian side street, but fortunately, when he heard noises behind him turned to his right to fire and not to his left.   The bullet caught him in the shoulder and not in his chest.   As for the shooter, it turned into a very bad day.   Ed was an excellent shot with keen eyesight.  His only fault, he lamented, was lousy depth perception.

In his spare time Ed chased down surviving wanted Nazis who choose to remain in Europe and not flee with the rest to South America.  They were called “Werewolves,” and many had assumed respectable positions as respectable citizens.  Under false ID, of course.   Some of the less fortunate had gone to ground and avoided Western justice courtesy of the networks and covens, who survived by working for either the Americans or the Russians.  Or both.  Otherwise, Ed spent his time in romance.  He was the true romantic, falling in love at the flash of an eyelash.  He loved women.  He loved romance.   Romance was rare and illusive in the modern age, he felt.  He preferred fantasizing about life in another era.

Fred and Ed both knew history.  I learned more from listening to them then I could from any college professor.   They were encyclopedic about world history.  Ed once remarked he would have given enough to learn what Pope Leo l said to Attila the Hun that turned him back at the Po.  It was those kind of  references that were wonderful and caused one to marvel at the passion that fed life into obscure and aging data.  When the two met up, years later, writers in Hollywood, the would discuss such facts for hours on end.   It was their world, a world that was inhabited by few others.   That and their passion and appreciation for the arts were what kept them going, even long after the glory days were put behind them and life was safe and at least somewhat predictable.   When their chief worries, the spooks and the gremlins had long faded into remarkable pasts and now there were only the bills to pay and the arrival of old age.

The two would argue every once in awhile.  Ed thought Fred’s politics were ridiculous and antiquated.   While Fred disliked the capitalistic system he had come to terms with the unlikelihood of its imminent collapse.  However, with the years, so came the dilution of absolutes, and both could view their own beliefs with humor and more than a trace of irony.   In short, underneath all the rhetoric, they were keenly aware there were places where sophistry prevailed, leading to at least the obscure conclusion both points of view contained elements that were totally full of shit.

The two didn’t meet that often, but they emailed and spoke on the phone, realizing  over years of correspondence how their paths were so intertwined.  How their lives intersected.  How Fred at times, in sensibility at least, was the object of Ed’s endeavors at saving the world from the great Red Menace.   Cat and mouse throughout Europe.  Each in the arts in some way.   Each with a hidden agenda.   And, later, each finding more commonality with each other than with most creatures in the world.   Even those who shared similar views were never bound to them like these two were bound to each other.   The layers of commonality were like armor against the corrosive intrusions of politics.  Sharing passions was far more compelling than sharing political similarities.   It is the true glue when sitting across from each other.  For two ideological warriors it was what was most precious and what they had left.

And then there was something else in common.  A woman.  I was sitting with Ed when he got a call from Liesel.  Ed and Liesel had once been an item, the two makings of an on and off passionate affair that spanned several countries, at least.   She was calling him from Los Angeles.  She was visiting a friend.  Oh really.  Who was the friend?   Fred.  She was dating Fred around the same time she was dating Ed.  Isn’t it wonderful they could all meet up again?

Yes, indeed.

Fred and Ed died several years ago, each from his own petty vices.  Ed from drinking and eating.  Fred was a smoker and died from lung cancer.   Ed died in Oklahoma, and Fred died in Venice, California.   With their passing, so passed a bit of living history.  And with that so did a great repository for history itself.   I miss them both as they don’t make many like them anymore.  Such a drag.

While I consider myself a decent and successful business person, hat literary side the creeps in every now and then, causing me to abandon all  he distractions in the wee hours of the night, so I can sit down and write something.   The last thing, a romantic mystery thriller, modern California Noir, was The Blood Orange.

I have been told there are some eight thousand plus authors on Facebook, so I am proud to be selected as number 50 in Ron’s list of 100 top Facebook authors.

You can find my other works listed, among other places, on this Amazon link….http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=basichis&x=0&y=0

Anyway, on that note…I just wanted to thank Ron Knight, Purveyor of Middle Room for including me this year on his list of 100 Top Authors on Facebook.   Ron contributes on a daily basis insights into the modern publishing world and the writers of today, their challenges and triumphs.     His website , Up Authors.com, and  his posting son Facebook are always entertaining and informative.  Here is the link….http://www.upauthors.com/blog

You can also check out the list on http://www.authorronknight.com/

Minstrel’s Alley will be discounting its ebooks for the holiday season. The discount applies to all electronic publication editions, including Kindle, iPad, Barnes & Noble, Sony eReader, Smashwords, and Kobo.

We thought the holiday season would be a good time to introduce new readers to our books, ” said Minstrel’s Alley Publisher, M.J. Hammond. “People will be buying electronic reading devices for Christmas and other holidays.

“The Blood Orange, by Gordon Basichis, is our latest publication,” said Hammond. “The novel is a modern day take on the classic Los Angeles Noir Detective novels of Raymond Chandlder. As with his work, Los Angeles is a principal character in a modern day romantic mystery thriller that incorporates old California Bandit legends with contemporary intrigue. It’s a great story that would also be the perfect LA film.”

Hammond recommended The Guys Who Spied for China, also by Gordon Basichis. “It’s a roman a clef, based on Basichis’ experiences uncovering Chinese Espionage Networks in the United States,” she said. “It was a quarter-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.”

For the complete story and the full public relations release… please go to this link.

Before we wear out are hands patting ourselves on the back for the success of the Osama Bin Laden mission, there are a few things to consider in the aftermath.  While on one note the raid was a true success, and we did kill Osama Bin Laden, I am compelled to critically review the story of his discovery and demise.   Frankly, some of the official explanation, sounds a bit like a legend, meaning a mixture of  truth and fiction.   As one who has enjoyed, if that is the term, a brush with this kind of thing, I find the explanation detailing our discovery of the terrorist’s whereabouts a little sketchy.

The article, among other things,  by Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times only piques some of my suspicion.   In his article entitled,  Why the Hurry to Gloat About Bin Laden, Goldberg  wonders why this administration raced to announce they found a treasure trove of intelligence.   He writes…”It’s a bit like racing to the microphones to announce you’ve stolen the other team’s playbook even before you’ve had a chance to use the information in the big game.”

Indeed.  Goldberg astutely writes that any World War Two buff knows the shelf life of this sort of intelligence is actionable for a brief period.  Assets scramble and go to ground.  Terror cells reconstitute.  Evidence is destroyed.  Trails grow cold pretty quickly.   So as Goldberg writes, when the administration did announce to the world the Bin Laden killing mission produced  a treasure trove of intelligence they were essentially giving up the goose who laid the proverbial golden egg.    They would have sent Al Qaeda running for cover.   It doesn’t make sense that the administration would employ such a tactic.  Or does it?

Having spent a number of years working with a certain gentleman who specialized in this kind of thing,  I well know the value of disinformation.  Sometimes I even helped him with the story.    But on his own this man I worked for  was  a consummate professional, a Good Shepard from the OSS onward through a number of agencies, chairman here, co-chairman there, who among other things specialized in advanced communications.  He was an expert in radio, meaning microwave technology and extreme low frequency radiation.   And as an information expert,  he could tell a whopper of a tale and make it believable.    In the intelligence business you are supposed to lie.  You are supposed to be good at it.  Lying in the right places is perceived as an asset and not a character flaw.   He would also tell the truth at times, or enough of it to lead certain media people to places he wanted them to visit.  But that’s another matter.  For now, and for the purpose of this little tome,  we will stay on disinformation.   Basically, you bullshit your way to success.

I remember being squeamish at times, thinking his alchemical mixtures  of fact, fiction, and post-modern mythology would never have any currency.  No one would believe it.  Not the adversaries.  Not the media.  But I was wrong.  He would smile at me.   Tell them with conviction, and they will believe it, he would say.  This was in the eighties and nineties.   Times when there actually was some statistical relevance.  And here we are today where even the most batshit theory gets its due, has a few rounds with the muddleheaded who would rather believe anything but the obvious.

I recall stories that were in the best of instances partly true and were bought hook, line, and microphone.   Just make the story plausible.  Give it some depth, some value.  Supply a few details.   Make it satisfactory, a nice arch without any glitches or holes in the fabrication that may come unraveled before the bleary eyes of a persistently gullible and oversaturated media  who in the main knows as much about the relevance of history as I do about the mating habits of mollusks.  The media who in turn serves up its half-baked fare to what is largely a population of lockstep, sieve-brained electron dependents, posing as intellectuals.  So in essence, when you are spreading disinformation, save for a  diminished and discerning few who would rather employ critical thinking than fall for the okey doke, you have a win-win situation.   You disseminate the bullshit as source information, and they buy it as gospel.  They buy it in books from talking heads that are getting paid as fill for the real truth in advertising, the commercials.

So here were are with the administration announcing that they have a treasure trove of information.  From past experience, as  Jonah Goldberg considers, you shouldn’t announce what you have and by consequence blow your opportunities.    Keep it to yourself, right?   Use this highly valued information taken from the cold, dead hands of Osama Bin Laden and cowboy time chase down the badly shaken and destabilized Al Qaeda.

That would make sense.  If you had this treasure trove of intelligence.  But suppose you don’t have the treasure trove of intelligence.  Suppose you have instead a bunch of old papers from an old man who long ago had been marginalized and had in a word bupkes in terms of current intelligence.   Well now.

Then you would tell the world you had the treasure trove of intelligence.  In fact you would announce it every chance you had.  As I learned during my stint doing what I was doing, you give them believable bullshit about what you have on them and then watch them run around from one to the other.  You watch where they go who they see, listen to what they say.  You roll out big time the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Communications Intelligence (COMINT), and the Electronics Intelligence (ELINT) and  of course where you can Human Intelligence (HUNINT).  You watch, you listen, you eavesdrop on every fart from every terrorist you confirm or suspect. You watch where they run and you see who they talk to.  You listen in.    And from that you can determine the big stuff–how they have reorganized, their communications flow, methods of  operations.  You can learn of their banking and financing, their weapons purchases.   It’s the proverbial stone in the proverbial pond.  You watch and see how the ripples spread.

Perhaps this is your real treasure trove of intelligence.   This is how you stir the pot, as my associate used to say, rattle their cage, he would say that too, and see what happens.   This is the good stuff.  This justifies you telling the world that you have garnered all this valuable information as a result of the raid.   It’s good provided you don’t do it too often and press it too hard.  Otherwise, the other side gets suspicious and starts to regard it as possible disinformation.  And then your legend is blown.

So that’s one aspect.  A possibility among the myriad possibilities where the ever mutating news story festooned with hyperbole, congratulatory confetti,  and too much celebration.  Among other things, I wonder what forces were on alert in case the mission went all wrong and it was necessary for more than a couple dozen SEALS to confront the Pakistani Army, lest they be taken prisoners.   Failure and embarrassment, which no right think minded President, certainly not this one, would ever allow.   But I digress.

Here is the thrust of what I am driving at.  Mind you this is speculation. As all things in this arena, speculation is healthy.   We are not talking about conspiracy here.  We are talking about reassembling the same facts in different logical patterns to see what other conclusions can be reached.   It is called in some circles Alternate Analysis or, better still, Analysis of Competing Hypotheses.  It is healthy.  It is respected.  But most often, out of convenience, it is ignored.  Anyway, here we go.

Suppose Al Qaeda considered Osama Bin Laden a burden.  A fossil.  A figurehead that was great for the recruitment posters, but otherwise an expense they could no longer afford.  Rumor has it he was running out of bucks.  Not a good place to be when you are a man on the run.   So now here he is, a pain in the ass. Like old gangsters and others who have outlived their reign, others in Al Qaeda decided Osama has to go.   I mean we have all seen the video of him slumped, grayed, and channel surfing.  A potential embarrassment to any respectable terrorist thug.

So what to do?  Well the West wants him more than that twelve minute special on the Home Shopping Network.   He is a symbol.  He is the figurehead who killed thousands, ruined lives, helped to ruin an economy, and changed the way we lead our lives.   He is the asshole responsible for our having to take off our shoes and wait in long lines at the airport.   He is the dark shadow over our lives.   We tell our kids, forget about the bogeyman.  If you aren’t good, Osama Bin Laden is coming to take you back to his cave.

So what to do?   Well…how about allow the West to get wind of his whereabouts.  Use your communications channels.  Drop a few hints.   A tip here and there.   Lead them to where you want to go.    As it has been a thousand times before.   Make sure the courier is followed.   And while you are at it serve Bin Laden a bunch of outdated or phony information.  Disinformation.  Give the great man a lot of bullshit intelligence to make him think he is still in the loop.   And when the West finally decides to move on him, what will they find?  The bullshit information you have been feeding him for the past six months.  Information that says a lot and reveals enough to make it plausible, but ultimately leads to a dark, dead end.  Meanwhile, Obama is dead and out of the way.  He is a martyr and will live forever in the minds of all who follow.

And this crappy information you provided.  This spurious bunch of nonsense, interspersed with enough fact to make it plausible but in the end hardly actionable.   This may well be the “treasure trove” of information.   Maybe not.  But then again…maybe so.    This is part of that world.  And nobody is really saying.

In fact, at the end of the day, the real treasure trove of intelligence that may be had is not necessarily all the documents.  Instead it may well be the crashed helicopter that we left in the compound.  The same helicopter that, as reported in ABC News, the Pakistanis, for a price of course, may show to their good buddies, the Chinese.  The  same Chinese from whom the Pakistanis just purchased advanced fighter jets.   Oh, that didn’t make much noises in the news cycle?  What a coincidence.

So in the end the Chinese may end up with our advanced technology.  We may have in exchange a dead old man who I personally am happy to see has gone off to harass his 72 virgins instead of American citizens.

Or…the helicopter that “crashed” was not operational.  And we left it there for the Pakistanis to give to Chinese so they can reverse engineer it, only to discover up the road it was just a plant.  A typical helicopter with trimmings and nothing more.   One more piece of disinformation.

Had to say.  It always is.   That’s is but one reason the intelligence game is not for the literal minded.

Here is the link on Kindle Rank.  Just click on the Kindle Rank Link for the The Guys Who Spied for China, and you can read the first five thousand words.  You can order the book off of Kindle, and you can buy the trade paperback from Amazon.Com, Barnes and Noble and numerous other sites and spaces.

Considering the current tension in relations between the United States and China, many will find this a worthwhile read.