Friday, December 21, 2007

Conspiracy Theory Contest

When I saw the cable news tape showing smoke rolling out of a window in the Old Executive Office Building in D.C. this week, I just hoped one of my favorite old buildings wouldn't be seriously damaged. It took Terry to remind me that lots of important things could be lost in the fire. Her first guess was CIA interrogation tapes. Now, the Washington Post's Al Kamen is having a contest to guess "What Was in That Office, Anyway?"

That fire in Vice President Cheney's digs in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Wednesday naturally has everyone in Washington speculating about its origin. Arson might seem a bit far-fetched to folks outside the Beltway, but it would not be the first time a small conflagration was planned by a White House official.

We recall that Watergate burglary mastermind G. Gordon Liddy plotted firebombing the Brookings Institution -- "as a diversion," he writes in his memoirs -- to get into the security vault and steal Daniel Ellsberg's Vietnam War papers.

I think this contest will be worth watching--nobody can spin a conspiracy theory like a government worker.

No comments: