Alphabet Soup

SATIRE:

The Real World Behind the Initials

By Les Aaron

The heads of the ITDPF delivered a call to the OCCBT, “Charlie, it’s me, Fred. Better get Barney on the phone. Something urgent has come up.”

“What’s up, Charlie?”

“The jig may be up. When you get Barney on, I’ll explain.”

“Hang on.”

“Barney here. What’s doing, Charlie?”

“We have Fred on the other line, Barnie.”

“What happened?”

“Barnie, it looks like we may all be in hot water.”

“Why do you say that, Fred?”

“During the hearings for 911 the other day, Janet Reno was being questioned.”

“Okay.”

“And she was being asked about her meetings with us…”

“Oh, oh.”

“And one of the commissioners asked her to explain…”

“Oh my God.”

“Well, Reno looks up with a very befuddled expression and asked anyone if they could help her out here…”

“It came to that?”

“And of course no one could…”

“It came to that did it?”

You know, Barnie, we should have expected that it might happen some day…”

Why?”

“Well, you can only operate in the dark for so long under these obscure initials.”

“but that’s precisely what allows us to operate so long…”

“And that could be good,” chimes in Charlie.

“Why?”

“Because nobody knows what to ask us…”

“That’s our strength.”

“Yes, you could look at it that way. And we’d be fools
not to recognize that.”

“Right you are.”

“There is a real danger, however, that we may all face now.”

“And, pray tell, Fred, what might that be?”

“Somebody might figure out what our obscure initials stand for.”

“Little chance of that I would think.”

“How can you say that?”

“Well, they are not used or published anywhere in the government or Agency records. We’ve seen to that.”

“And a good move it was.”

“But just the same, they might try to puzzle it out.”

“Well (wink! Wink!) we should be able to worm our way out of that one…
Wouldn’t you say, boys? “

“But what if they persist?”

“We could always refer them to a sister agency.”

“And how will that help?”

“We can assume that our sister agency will refer them to another sister agency and by the time they’ve worked their way half-way through the loop, they will have forgotten why they wanted to speak to us in the first place…”

“Very Kafkaesque…. Yes, you can see the castle but you can never get there. Don’t you know?”

“And by that time, we’ll have our own program of disinformation in place.”

“Like what?”

“Well, this is good. I’ve never talked about it before…”

“And that is?”

“What if we traded on initial each…Say for example,
I trade you say the “I” from “IDTPF” for your “O”.
In “OCCBT”….So now I would become ODTPF and you would become ICCBT.

“Wow…”

“Fred, you’re a genius, man.”

“It would take them another twenty years to realize that we are the same agency.”

“Yes, we could go on that way anonymously forever theoretically. How did you think this one up?”

“Well, gentlemen, in twenty years I’ve run the IDTPF nobody has ever sent me a memo, asked me a question, or even remembered my name. You don’t get power like that in Washington being an amateur, my man. Do you?”

“I would guess not.”

“Hey, just for the heck of it.”

Go ahead Charlie.”

“It just might be fun to sit down together and talk about what we really do.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Make it kind of a board game….you know, just so we get to know each other a little better.”

“You’re kidding of course.”

“Of course.”

“Because you know that just might throw us off our game.”

“And can’t have that can we.”

“No, I guess we can’t.”

“It would definitely erode our shield of invisibility.”

“But it would be nice to see each of you in person some time, some place.”

“Get off it, Barney. Why ruin a good thing.”

“Yeah, Barney, you’re being to sound like an old-fashioned romantic….
Next thing you know, you’ll be asking our real names…”

“No, can’t have that, old chap.”

“Sorry, I guess I just got carried away.”

“No problem. We all have our moments…”

“Well, gentlemen, it was a pleasure chatting. Must get back to what I do best.”

“And that is…”

“Nothing, old sod. Nothing.”

Charlie, Barney and Fred cracked up at their own wittiness and the line went dead.


Author: Les Aaron