Last week, Yale University Press published Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, a book based on notes taken by Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev while he had access to Stalin era archives in Moscow.  In the book, it’s revealed that Ernest Hemingway was on the list of the KGB’s operatives in America.

Hemingway was allegedly recruited in 1941 while on  a trip to China, was code named “Argo,” and “repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness to help us” by meeting up with soviet agents in Havana and London.  The late 40’s meetings however, failed to produce anything substantive that the Russians could use, and the book claims the author failed to “give us any political information.”

Hemingway helped the US government during WWII by patrolling Cuban waters in his private fishing boat, an activity during which he made several coded notes, and one enemy sighting. 

Given his desire to work for the Americans, and his inability to deliver anything of use to the red manace, there is speculation that Hemingway’s KGB efforts were more about adventure (or material for a novel) than ideology.

- Robert Laurie

During the Bush years, Dems complained loudly that Vice President Cheney was taking meetings that were closed to the press, and off the record.  The evil he was concocting during these engagements was said to be sinister indeed, as be-suited men sat around tables in dark rooms, smoking cigars, wringing their hands, and planning the end of freedom as we know it.

Well, today Biden has made it clear that there’s yet another Bush administration policy that the Obama team will be continuing.

According to a piece in the Los Angeles times, Biden’s Friday schedule begins at 11am.  He’ll spend one or two hours of his day in a roundtable regarding health care.  After that, he has six or seven hours of time that’s unaccounted for.

The reason?  According to the VP’s official schedule, “The Vice President will spend the remainder of the day in meetings that are closed press.”

Great, so I’d like to go on record as the first to claim that this afternoon, Biden will be spending his time in off the record, closed press meetings, huddled around a table in a dark room, smoking cigars, wringing his hands, and plotting the end of freedom as we know it.

After all, if the last guy did it, we should all be hyper-vigilant to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, right Dems?

 Transparency is, as always, Obama’s word of the day.

- Robert Laurie