GTMO!

Last week I took the same route as hundreds of terrorists/enemy combatants en route to Guantanamo Bay detention centre, what used to be called Camp X-Ray and is now renamed Camp Delta - flight into Guantanamo Bay US Naval Station, bus to the ferry, onto the ferry and a 25-minute ride across the water to the windward side of Guantanamo and voila, there it is, the most famous/infamous detention centre in the universe. No orange jumpsuit for me fortunately (orange just doesn't suit me my dears) but a warm welcome from Rear Admiral David Woods, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the Big Cheese boss of the camp. When I say warm, I doubt he's naturally a warm soul. You don't get to run a prison camp for the most dangerous human beings on the planet by being a nice soul. He was a fairly typical toothbrush-haired American commander with a smile but absolutely no intention of telling us anything. 

But first of all, just to put The Guardian's headline story last week into some perspective. The headline said "Guantanamo Torture Centre". Well, between you and me and all the readers of The Guardian, the paper did not have a representative on the small party of journalists who went to Guantanamo this week, and I can tell you that the torture days - under President GW - are over. I went into Camp 6 where 80 per cent of the detainees are held and although every moment of their lives is watched over by guards they live a weird communal, albeit twilight, world where they can wander around, unshackled, unfettered, read books, watch endless television, paint etc etc. It's not Alexandria or East Sheen but it ain't waterboarding for breakfast, Mr and Mrs Guardian readers. They look pretty healthy, too. Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, the mastermind (alleged) of the suicide boat bomb attack on USS Cole in 2000 which killed 17 sailors, and numerous other al-Qaeda operations - and the reason I was in Guantanamo, to witness his first appearance before a Military Commission tribunal -swaggered into court looking positively bursting with health, almost pudgy. The only previous photo of him, used by every newspaper since his arrest in 2002 was of a thin-faced very Saudi-looking Saudi with a neat beard and turban. The guy in court looked nothing like him. He was round of face, unbearded, with a layer of stubble and oiled hair. Apparently he had a moustache but I couldn't see that from where I was sitting - at the back of the hugely secure courtroom behind a glass screen. Normally it's the dangerous defendant who sits behind a screen or in a cage. In this case it was us lot!!! 

There was much questioning of his civilian lawyer afterwards about whether Nashiri was fat, sturdy, stocky or muscular. The lawyer, quite rotund of stomach, replied: "I'm fat, he's muscly." The fact is, muscly or fat, this gentleman is never going to leave Guantanamo or at least he's never going to be released because even if he's acquitted - he's facing a death penalty if convicted - no US Government of whatever persuasion is going to free a terrorist (alleged) who was reputed to have been the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (a grand title for such a horrendous terrorist network). Tricky one for Obama! By the way Nashiri is kept in Camp 7 which is so secret that no one, except those in charge of that particular facility, knows anything about it. There are 15 inhabitants, the most dangerous of the most dangerous, including Sheikh Mohammad Khaled, the 9/11 architect, Certainly we weren't allowed anywhere near it. There are six centres within Camp Delta: Camp 5 for Camp 6 detainees who have breached discipline where the regime is much less congenial and they wear the Guantanamo orange designer uniform to let everyone know they are "non-compliant", Camp 6 for the vast majority, Camp 7 for Nashiri and co, Camp Iguana, Camp Echo and the hospital. Allegedly Camp Echo is for the snitches, the detainees who have spilled the beans. I'm not sure about Camp Iguana. Everything is so hush hush at Guantanamo Bay, you don't often get a straight answer to a straight question. Except for : "Do you torture the detainees?" "NO." 

Nashiri's main lawyer who has been involved in 35 US federal death sentence trials, was upset when we said his client had swaggered into court. He said he didn't swagger,he just walked like he normally does. Then, whoops, he revealed he had never actually seen him walk before and he had been coming to Guantanamo Bay to see him for three years!!! Wow. how about that? At Camp 6, the easygo of sorts camp where the detainees don't wear shackles of any kind, they can make requests which are often granted. "Can I get off this island and go home please?" NO, sorry. "Can I have some sweets for trick and treat for Halloween night?" Of course you can, provided you share them around. "It's coming up for the Muslim Eid festival, we normally sacrifice a sheep, any chance....?" Does that involve using a knife to cut the throat? "Eh, yes." Then , no way, we might think about the sheep, but no knife.  Actually, that was one of the questions posed by the woman reporter from the Miami Herald when Eid came up as an issue. The Camp 6 commander showing us around said just that, although I assume he was kidding. "No they couldn't sacrifice a sheep with a knife, but we might have considered giving them a sheep."

Now,don't get me wrong, I am not saying, after one visit to Guantanamo, that the detainees are living a jolly life by the sea, although technically they are by the sea, or at least the bay. They are cooped up in a heavily barbed wire encampment with no family visits, and most of them will never get to visit Disneyland. But remember who these people are? The problem for Obama is that at some stage they should be presented to a court, either federal or military, and charged. But it's going to be a long business. I am reliably informed - actually by the US military's chief prosecutor himself, a tall incredibly intelligent general and total dude extraordinaire who was first in his class at West Point, a Rhodes scholar and a Harvard lawyer - that just for the Nashiri case alone there are likely to be half a million pages of documents, none of which have yet been handed over to the defence team because they are so steeped in top secret stuff that the authorities want to make sure that nothing smelling of CIA could ever get out into the hands of the public (via WikiLeaks!!). The defence lawyers have been security cleared to above top secret but even they have got to wait before they can see anything of the prosecution's case. I asked the defence lawyers what Nashiri had told them about his incarceration and the reply was: "I'm afraid I'm not allowed to tell you. Everything that comes out of his mouth has to remain top secret. Why? Because he was in the hands of the CIA for four years, so whatever he says is top secret."

Anyway, a great experience. I came away with a mass of notes, two stories in the paper and a statue of a nodding Castro! I said to  the woman from some television station in Chicago.  "Well that was three days of 16 hours on the trot." "Oh, I love that, on the trot, I don't know what it means but it sounds so English. I'm going to tweet that." And she did.

On an even lighter note, I was sitting having breakfast in one of the American cafeterias, along with two American journalists and the National Guard female driver who had taken us there. I was tucking into bacon and sausages - no ration packs at Guantanamo (but no hotels either, we all slept in tents) - when the National Guardswoman asked: "You gart any jokes?" Sorry? "Jokes, you gart any jokes?" It was 7am!! She then said: "What jou get if you throw a piaaano down a mineshaft?" I don't know, what do you get? "A flat minor". Ho ho ho. But then, wait for it, one of my distinguished American colleagues, intervened with: "Or you could get two flat miners." Er no Mr American, that's not a joke, you see on a piano you can play a tune in A flat.......oh forget it.

Back to civilisation. Meanwhile 171 Guantanamo Bay detainees continue their life in the Caribbean. I expect Bush has forgotten all about them.

Mr President I presume?

Sometimes I get classified information in my capacity as a trusted, vetted, security-investigated Pentagon Correspondent, albeit a Brit, and normally I would not impart any of this secret intelligence to anyone else. But there are some bits of intelligence which I feel the wider public needs to know. So, here goes, brace yourself. There is a CIA facility in Virginia, not the HQ at Langley, whose location I am not able to divulge which has a very special department known only within the intelligence community of which, of course, I am now a member, well a sort of associate member. The secret department is a gift shop and I am reliably informed by a contact who has to remain anonymous but I can assure you he is very much of the intelligence community, that in this said gift shop it is possible for a visitor to come away with a mug with the following letters inscribed on it: CIA.  I'm not kidding. If I play my cards right I could get a CIA mug. The unfortunate thing is that the only people who will know for sure that I have acquired this mug from a CIA facility and not from some street seller who has mugs with every kind of inscription, including WH (White House), BO (Barak Obama), GWB (George W Bush) and OW (Oprah Winfrey), are of course inmates of the Central Intelligence Agency. But I want everyone to know that if ever you spot me drinking coffee, tea or hot chocolate from a large white mug with the letters CIA on it, you will know for sure that it has been purchased/purloined from a certain CIA facility in Virginia, the US of A! 

I haven't lived in the US for long enough or spread my wings far enough within this great country to become an expert in the different ways and traditions of each of the states.  But here's how to behave on a beach on the west side of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. When you arrive at North Beach, for example, you are handed a list which makes it clear that while you are welcome to swim and sunbathe, and even talk and breathe, there are certain rules and regulations which have to be observed (the words in brackets are mine, not the Maryland beach authorities): "Thongs, g-strings, swiss strings or micro bikinis are not permitted on beach, pier, boardwalk, park or parking lot (very disappointing obviously), disorderly, ill-mannered conduct or drunkenness will not be tolerated and will result in dismissal from the beach areas (Sir, you are diasmiassed!), fireworks are prohibited at all times (Sir, whatyamean it's Guy Fawkes night and who the hell's Guy Fawkes?), no smoking (quite right), no fish-cleaning on beach (well, that's a relief), no alcohol (see disorderly conduct), no tents or overnight sleeping (but all the B&Bs are full!), no coolers larger than nine quarts (that's cool), and, above all, no loitering (pardon me?!!), ah said, no loitering (what constitutes loitering on a beach? Standing oggling perhaps, although remember there are no micro-whatsits, or walking slowly from one end to the other, or strolling towards the water maybe!). Anyway you get the picture, there's no messing on a Maryland beach.

American friends came round for dinner the other night. After eating, the question was raised, do we stay where we are in the dining room talking or go to the sitting room where it's more comfortable. No decisive answer. So I said: "Well, let's go next door then." One of the American friends replied, a little bemused: "Are they expecting us?" Boom boom.

Did I mention I've met the future President of the United States? No, not Mitt Romney or Rick Perry but Herman Cain, Pizza King and author of the 999 policy. That's nine per cent payroll tax, nine per cent retail sale tax and nine per cent corporate sales tax. It's such a catchy idea that he's currently at the top of the Republican presidential candidate polls at the moment. That's all you need in this wonderful country to be able to join the bandwagon for the White House. You could be a 5ft circus cannon ball who eats broccoli and chips and nothing else and lives in a shack in Colorado but if you have an idea that rings well with the voters then you could be President of the US. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, you need some money and supporters and a campaign team and at least some notion that Afghanistan is not Argentina and that Iraq is not Iran. But Herman Cain has got away with a large slab of ignorance - actually he just admits he hasn't a clue when he hasn't a clue, so don't ask him about Afghanistan - but push your 999 idea and wham it's a goer. Well he walked into my office the other week for a video interview with one of the reporters and shook our hands. I assumed then he had as much chance of becoming President of the USA as Sarah Palin. But he has made a fortune from pizzas and if he has a good recipe for pizzas, perhaps he has a recipe for solving America's economic problems. Perhaps he is unaware of the fact, though, that back in good old England, 999 means HELP!

Hello and Goodbye

The Pentagon loves a good farewell. Quite a few of the top dogs at the US Department of Defense have been skipping off into retirement recently, and before they go, they like to do the rounds of farewells. Nothing unusual in that. But here in the US of A, it’s on a much grander scale and it generally includes a formal farewell party with the Pentagon Press Corps. Now that is unusual. In one case this week there was even a formal party with the  press for someone who is leaving his top job (goodbye) but then  moving down the corridor 200 yards to take up another job inside the Pentagon (hello). First of all, let’s look at Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff for the last four years, both in the Bush and Obama era. He’s a doughty fighter and has been making much loud music recently about the dastardly Pakistanis whose intelligence service called the ISI he described as being the “veritable arm” of the Haqqani terrorist network which is now seen as the most deadly of the insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan. Anyway, Chairman Mullen retires tomorrow (Sep 30) and two days ago he appeared in the Pentagon press briefing room for a knees-up farewell.

Well, that’s what I thought it was going to be. But actually it was the most sycophantic display of oh thank you Admiral for being so nice to the press stuff that I could ever have imagined. Heavyweights from CNN, CBS, the Washington Post etc all stood up to make speeches to say how wonderful Mullen had been. The CNN lady, a heavy-duty, no nonsense, speak it like it is, I want answers to my important questions sort of reporter, spent ten minutes praising, not Admiral Mullen, but Mrs Mullen, for her work with service families. Now nothing wrong with that per se but she went on and on saying how amazing she was until the embarrassment pips squeaked. It was a total reversal of her usual deadpan blunt questioning of Pentagon officials. The other dudes followed suit telling us all what an experience it had been travelling with the admiral on his various shouting matches with the Pakistanis, and how appreciative they had been when the admiral had returned from a trip and had told them everything they needed to know on the phone on background. The admiral’s press spokesman gave a “what the hell….” type of look, realising that his boss had gone behind his back to speak to the press over the last four years. Actually he probably only spoke to the giants of the US media world. Little old me hardly got to know him. But then I’m just a Brit working for a paper he’s probably never heard of. A paper incidentally that is older than America itself.

The final offering came from the lovely guy from NBC who recounted how he once travelled in the back of one of those VIP black super-chunky SUVs on a foreign trip and there were crowds gathering at the place where he was due to visit. Speaking quietly to himself before opening the door and exiting the SUV, Admiral Mullen muttered:”I am a rock star!” Well, quite. After the speeches were over, everyone had to queue up to have their picture taken shaking the great admiral by the hand. The picture will soon be adorning my wall, along with the one of me shaking the hand of Robert Gates, the exceptionally fine (whoops, I’m doing it now) US Defence Secretary who retired in July.

So farewell Admiral Mullen and your CNN-adored wife. Have a lovely retirement. Next week there’s a hello ceremony. General Martin Dempsey, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is holding court before the Pentagon Press Corps. Hopefully, there’ll be no cause for long flattering speeches by reporters who at some stage in his climb to the top shared a helicopter/armoured vehicle/Jacuzzi with the general. But I’m not counting on it.

Storm in a Tea Party

America is a crazy place. Everything is on a different scale, especially its weather and its politicians. An earthquake and a hurricane in one week is going it a bit. The earthquake was like being at a fairground and riding a moving floor. I was on the 4th floor of the National Press Building where The Times is housed and everything moved after an initial rumble. I was aware that everyone in my office rushed to take shelter in a doorway, apparently that's what you are supposed to do. I just ducked under my desk. It's an old habit. When bombs and mortar rockets get thrown around I tend to duck under something, and I was reminded of an occasion in 2006 when I was in Basra in southern Iraq and was on my way to interview the British brigade commander in his office at HQ when three mortar rockets landed about 100ft away with mighty explosions. I ducked somewhere for a bit, then emerged unscathed and continued my way to the brigadier's office. I entered the office and a very flustered secretary asked me to wait because she thought her boss was probably still under his desk. When I went in he was actually emerging from under, looking a bit sheepish. So ducking under the desk is a sort of old tactic.

Well, I was under my desk, but thousands of Washingtonians headed for outside and crowded round in bemused groups. Apparently all the animals in the DC zoo knew it was coming. They all started to head for safety minutes before the earth quaked and those animals who could climb trees climbed trees. You humans, you have no idea! The hurricane was a bit of a damp squib in DC but you've never seen such panic buying. Every torch ever made had gone from the shelves. Americans do what is called "hurricane prep", ie prepare for the onrush of wind and rain and that means buying up bottled water, bread, milk, torches, batteries etc. We Brits are a bit cooler about weather. Ok we don't have too many extremes, but one thing we do know in good old Blighty is that you should never believe what the weather forecasters say. Right?

As for politics, the Republican candidates for ousting Obama are now pretty well lined up although I think there may still be a surprise or two, perhaps Mel Gibson or Charlie Sheen or maybe Piers Morgan? Just kidding. Piers by the way is a dead flop over here on tele. He's dreadful, smarmy, and so full of himself. Well he always was. The Republican candidates are all either scary, boring or both. But politics being the way it is in the US of A anyone of them could make it to the White House. Rick Perry is like George W Bush but seriously nutty, has a thing about gay scoutmasters (against not for), Mitt Romney is supposed to be the businessman's man but sends everyone to sleep he's so lacking in charisma, Michele Bachmann is 5ft but makes up for lack of height with extreme right wing views, the rest are also rans and don't get me started on Palin, Sarah not Michael. If she runs for President and by some quirk of fate gets to the White House, we're all doomed. This is a superpower nation but thanks to the great American Dream a moose-eating cookie who doesn't know that Lithuania is a country can end up the President. My money is on Obama squeezing it for another four years. If he can persuade Scarlet Johansson to be his Vice-President he'd be a sure bet. Sorry, I quite like Scarlett Johansson. But it's not out of the question, not in the US of A!

Good shot, old chap!

Sorry for the long gap. I have just returned to the US of A from three weeks in England where I played one game of cricket. I mention this because cricket is to be the subject of this blog. For those not in love with the game I will not be at all hurt if you give this missive a miss and carry on with your life as if this blog never appeared on your computer. But of course it's more than about cricket, it's about life, about different cultures, about tea, travelling to the countryside, meeting fellow human beings, focusing on a small red leather ball rather than deeper issues such as the relentless death toll in Afghanistan, the diving US economy, the desperation of America's first black President, famine in Somalia and the Arab Spring which turns out to be an Arab Winter. That little red leather ball has left its mark on my whole life, from about the age of seven, and, on this occasion, has left a very angry-looking bruise on my right shin which, in the humid heat of Washington DC, appears to be getting angrier each day and transforming my perfectly decent leg into a swollen yellow and black lump. Gangrene, I have no doubt, will set in in due course. 

Cricket has always been a dangerous sport which is partly, I guess, why I have always enjoyed it. Danger in one form or other, though without meaning to sound too Hollywood dramatic, has played a part in my life since 1991 when I covered my first of many wars, learning the art of dealing with maniacal militia, banditos and insurgents, dodging bullets, artillery shells and mortar rockets - and glue-besotted child soldiers with long-bladed knives and Kalashnikovs in Sierra Leone. I'm digressing, apologies, but it has just struck me that cricket has much in common with knowing when to duck and when to run in war zones. The ball hurtling and swinging towards you from 22 yards away - it always seems much closer when the bowler puts his front foot right on the crease, a centimetre from being called "No Ball!" -  brings back memories of mortar rockets literally - or liderally as the Americans would say - flying over my head in Bosnia, AK47 rounds skipping between our convoy of cars driving in the mountains outside Tusla in Bosnia, dodging the sniper's bullets at Vitez at sniper's alley, diving to safety from rampaging Russian BMP armoured personnel carriers at Pristina airport in Kosovo, stepping daintily between the unexploded cluster bombs and rockets in the Kuwaiti desert from the 1991 Iraq invasion, cowering from the withering Taleban fire across the poppy fields in Helmand, and looking in the eyes of the deadly Shia fanatics in southern Iraq and waiting for the next explosion in Baghdad. Oh yes, there are a lot of similarities with cricket! 

But I had not set out to inject warfare into my musings about cricket. This is about a game I have loved all my life - and partly feared. That terrible waiting for the bails to fall when it's your turn to bat, that first over when everyone on the field expects you to bowl on the spot and get wickets, that moment of panic when a ball is skied and it's coming towards you from a great height and the whole match depends on you grasping it in your hands, that occasion when one of your sons is plumb LBW (when the ball smacks the pads in front of the wicket - leg before wicket) and, as the umpire, your index finger on your right hand knows instinctively that it should be raised boldly into the air to declare he's OUT. but remains in the pocket which causes outrage from the bowler and the whole of the opposition, including the man on the boundary at cover point. There are things that are more important in life than giving out your son LBW. 

Anyway, cricket is in my blood and there I was, living as I am in the US of A, thinking that perhaps my cricketing days were over. The fear factor had taken precedence over the love factor. Perhaps I could survive by never playing again, I could just umpire or make the tea or sit in a deckchair and ruminate on the moments of glory - not many - when I returned to the pavilion a hero in the team's mind, having completed a 50 or taken five wickets or engineered a wondrous acrobatic twirl to catch an impossible catch. I know cricket is played in America, I know there are clubs everywhere where Brit ex-pats, Indians, West Indians and Pakistanis continue the traditions of the game, but I was afraid to offer my services in case I fell short. I can fall short amongst my dear cricketing friends in England, they would sympathise, but in America playing for a hot-shot team of 20-year-old fast-bowling Indians, this ageing cricket-lover might soon be patronised as the old English goat who thinks he can play but who can no longer contribute much, apart from filling up the numbers. You see, the Fear Factor had taken over. Also, I can't see America as a cricket-loving nation. They do baseball. As someone delightfully said to me: "Cricket, that's on horseback, right?" A friend in Philadelphia tried to explain the rules of baseball and I reckon I made a pretty good fist of it, but I still don't get it. Where is the elegance, the sweet late cut, the flick off the legs, the gentle push through the covers, the sweep (or attempted sweep in my case), the snick through the slips that has the fielders scrabbling desperately for air? Only the mighty clout over mid-wicket's head bears any comparison.

So there I was, standing at the wicket, as one of the openers (!), awaiting the first ball I had faced for two years. It was a moment of acute introspection, worrying about failing, imagining I had forgotten how to watch the ball and choose the right stroke, anticipating a clump on my unhelmeted head. Humiliation was upon me. But I thought, as the bowler marked his spot and began to run up looking determined and menacing, at least if I was out first ball I could take satisfaction from the realisation that my time as a player was over, that age had caught up on  me, that I was never much good anyway, and that there was more to life than cricket. The bowler bowled, I watched the ball as it curved towards me and then suddenly veered away. I reached forward and struck it sweetly, not quite a late cut, but a cut of some nobility, and the little read leather ball swept away towards the boundary for four.  My first shot for two years was a boundary. I had stared the bowler (gunman) in the face, I had shaken off the fear and had dealt with his venom with finesse. "Good shot," said my fellow opener. A faint sound of clapping could be heard from the pavilion steps. 

I was back in the cricketing groove I had known and loved for so many years. Let it be recorded that I scored 30 runs. The Fear Factor had gone, the Humiliation had been spared, the adrenalin was flowing, and when I was finally out, heaving a full toss into the hands of Mid On, it didn't matter. I was on the scoresheet. There's a phrase in journalism when a reporter is at his desk and his hands are idle. "Not bothering the printers today?" Well, on that bright, sunny day on that cricket pitch near Marlow, I had bothered the scorer - with a row of 4s and 2s and singles. I was back! Today as I sit in my quaint house in Old Town Alexandria, I have my spectacular bruise to remind me of that afternoon. I might even go looking for a cricketing team in Washington, although it sounds like I may first have to learn to ride a horse!

I know nothing!

.

The Pentagon is about to be hit by change at the top. Robert Gates, long-suffering Defence Secretary, is desperate at the age of 67 to retire after serving eight presidents during his 40-year career. He has a fancy lakeside house in Washington State and is heading off on June 30. At least some people know when to retire!! He is being replaced by a man six years older than him, Leon Panetta, CIA Director. It's a great swap, a former CIA Director (Gates) handing over to the present CIA Director.

 I have it on good authority that the following conversation took place between Gates and Panetta the other day. The dialogue is based around the famous quotation from their predecessor at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, who, you may recall, once said at a press conference: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as you know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones."

Thank you, Mr Rumsfeld, for this gem, always worth repeating. Anyway, here are Mr Gates and Mr Panetta facing each other at the Pentagon, two weeks before Mr Gates is out of here and yippee to the house in Washington and Mr Panetta is why on earth did I say yes to the President, now I'm stuck with this dreadful place for the next two or three years.

"So Leon, what do you want to know?" asks Bob Gates.

"I already know what you know," Leon replies smugly.

"Yeah, but you don't know what only I know."

"Bob, I'm the Director of the CIA, I know everything you think you know and probably what you don't know."

"You can't know what I don't know because even I don't know what I don't know although I've got a pretty good idea."

"Ok, I don't know what you think you don't know but I do know what I know you don't know."

"So how can I help?"

"Hm, how the hell am I going to cut $400 billion from the Pentagon budget over the next 12 years, as the President is demanding?"

"I don't know."

"And how are we going to get out of Afghanistan by 2014 and declare a victory?"

"Haven't a clue."

"And is there any point in Nato?"

"***** Nato."

"Well thanks, Bob, that was very useful."

"My pleasure. Anything else you want to know?"

Leon shakes his head and the two men shake hands. Being Defence Secretary of the only superpower on the planet is tough.

Something entirely different. Musical events in Old Town Alexandria. The world's worst musicians perform every weekend on the streets of Old Town and I am close to a plan to eliminate the lot. My top victims are: the saxophonist who stands on the corner of Royal Street where I live and King St, the main street, with a bucket in front of him and plays two tunes, only two tunes. I will NEVER give him a cent.  The harpist, a strange Romanian gypsy woman who sits on a rock overlooking the Potomac River, plucking at a harp and singing so quietly I feel like saying, "SING UP, LADY", but I don't because she's total rubbish. Her plucking fingers bear absolutely no relation to the unlyrical vocal meanderings claimed to be a song, it's like someone singing God Save the Queen while the band is playing Moon River. The old boy who sits on the steps of a shopping courtyard and strums at the guitar. I say strums but actually he feathers the strings so that to hear it you need to place your earhole one centimetre from the instrument, and apparently he sings as well but whatever sound is coming from his throat makes my gypsy harpist sound like Mick Jagger at his most raucous. The drummer, well forget drums and forget drumming, he sits all day on the pavement with two empty buckets in front of him and just hits them with a sort of drumstick. It's unbearably awful, lacking any sort of rythm. There's also a guitarist who stands up outside a restaurant. But he CAN'T play the guitar. He has never learned how it works. He might as well sit on a bucket and blow a whistle. I'm going to tell him that next time I walk by. Anyway, secret plans to eliminate the lot.

 On the other hand, I've discovered a restaurant where upstairs after 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays, a bunch of guys and girls get round a piano played by a woman who looks 102 and wears a wig but is pretty damn good on the ivories, and the singers are cool too. When we arrived the other night, a bloke with a belly the size of the Grand Canyon was belting a number from one of the musicals, and later a guy who looked like a waiter with the longest nose I've ever seen sang a sexy number and sashayed around the room swaying his hips at all the girls. Great stuff. Proper music. Real entertainment. Eat your heart out gypsy woman.

Safe House: no hawkers

The Obama bin Laden Raid

Correction: The Osama bin Laden Raid (White House ed)

Now we know everything about the famous raid. But do we know everything?!!! Here's a different take on this mammoth story (please swallow after reading):

 Bin Laden was traced to the compound in Abbottabad in August last year. Well not exactly traced but everything pointed to it. No one had actually seen the bloke reading the New York Times in his backyard but if you're in the intelligence business which of course I am, a few leads are as good as "a smackeroonie we've gotim" situation". So the CIA boys set up a safe house. WHAT!!! A CIA safe house in charming Abbottabad?! Perhaps with "No Hawkers, no nosey Pakistanis and definitely no snoopers from the ISI [Pakistan's naughty-boys Taleban-loving intelligence service] notices on the front door. What did they do for food I wonder. Had to go down the local super for burgers and stuff, a dead giveaway. Anyway, here we have smart-looking Ivy League graduates sitting it out with their dark glasses peering through the window and seeing, well seeing what? Apparently not much. The safe house must have been so far away from The Compound that it was... well safe from being spotted by anyone. I guess that's why it was called a safe house. So on Day One, through fancy binoculars, they spotted this bloke pacing up and down in the inner courtyard of The Compound. He was about 6ft 4ins, longish beard though not as long as the one in the usual bin Laden photos, a bit stooped and head down, always looked thoroughly miserable. "What you reckon, Chip, bin Laden or what?" asks Watcher 1. "Sure, looks like it, but this place is kinda nice, let's stick it out for a few months, there's a mound of DVDs to get through and that local kebab place is a beaut," replies Watcher 2. They high five each other and settle down to watch The Magnificent Seven for the third time.

Days, weeks go by. Langley (CIA HQ in Virginia) asks what the hell is going on. "Not 100 per cent sure yet, boss, s'looking good but gotta be sure. We think it might be Obama, sorry Osama, but it's difficult from here to be absolutely you know whaco certain. Chip, put the other one on, no that one, we haven't seen that yet." Langley:"What! what you say!" "Oh sorry boss, I was just talking about the eh, eh.. camera feed." Langley:"We're going to send over Boogey III." Boogey III (I made the name up for security reasons), is a super-sleuth Stealthy spy drone that can't be seen from the ground because it has been painted to look like a cloud. Boogey III spends the next two months hovering in an otherwise cloudless sky trying to check out The Pacer in the courtyard. The CIA Boogey III operators at a secret base in Pakistan devote most of their time shouting: "Look up, damn you, look up, we can't see your face!!" But The Pacer is always head-bowed. He knows a thing or two about what floats around in the sky after a lifetime of avoiding passing US satellites, but because he never looked up into the sky above The Compound he failed to spot the sole little fluffy cloud with the ever-so-tiny brrm brrm noise attached to it.

It's now December. The CIA boys have got through all their DVDs and the local stock is rubbish. So they're getting bored. Between them and Boogey III, they have signalled back to Langley the following secret intelligence: "There's a bloke about UBL's height [they always called Osama bin Laden UBL except when they called him Geronimo] with a beard living at The Compound. Spotted three or four women - doesn't he have four wives? - and some children and a couple of blokes who go out each day and come back with a mound of groceries. Watcher 8 followed one of them and it seems The Family eats nothing but aubergines. Please check files for UBL's diet."

Biggest worry is: is this a UBL decoy or the Real Deal? Safe House Team panics at the thought of getting it wrong. Osama would be furious. Sorry Obama would be furious. Reputation of the CIA at stake. Or at steak, medium rare please. There's also another spanner in the works. A bloke about 6ft 4ins with a beard and looking quite like UBL has been spotted going into the rear entrance of the ISI headquarters each day with a name tag round his neck. CIA followers couldn't quite make out the name but it looked something like Mr O'Laden.

Back in the Situation Room at the White House Obama (yes Obama) is into his fourth special Osama meeting to decide what to do about all this fascinating non-information. It's February. Most of his advisers advise the evidence is all circumstantial. Ok it looks like UBL, but you can never be sure with foreigners. And the beard looks too short. And what if the right UBL is the guy clocking in to work at the ISI. Can't take out a staff member of the ISI without causing a right rumpus. There's also concern about The Safe House. There had been an odd complaint to the local authority in Abbottabad that two non-Pakistani blokes had been at the centre of a street scene after someone tried to grab a bunch of DVDs from their shopping bag. (Yes the CIA boys had finally given in and had begun to watch the local DVDs, having seen The Magnificent Seven 14 times and The Right Stuff 20 times). Obama says it's time to make a decision. Everyone in the room says, "Don't do it, Mr President, if it's not UBL, you're going to make a fool of yourself and it'll be all your fault. We as your most senior advisers will tell The New York Times that we advised against it."  Obama scratches his chin and pronounces: "Ok I'm going to do it. Send in the Seals, and make sure one of them is 6ft 4ins, so when they shoot whoever is in The Compound, he can lie next to the body and measure up." Everyone in the Situation Room shakes his head wisely. There's only one Seal who is 6ft 4ins and he was due a weekend off on May 1 but instead became a hero of US Special Operations Forces, the man photographed lying next to the dead body of the Most Hunted Terrorist on Earth.

So it was the greatest intelligence feat of all time. The Safe House closes down. The CIA Watchers emerge into the sunlight humming the theme tune from The Magnificent Seven, and the UBL look-alike continues to clock in each day at the ISI HQ.

PS Don't forget, swallow this good.

PPS How do you know the toothbrush was invented in West Virginia?

Because if it had been invented anywhere else it would have been called the Teethbrush. Boom boom.