by Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB
A “killer bee story” is one that is made up from whole cloth. The name harks back to a time when Murdoch took over a newspaper in Texas. His writer reportedly came up with a fiction and presented it as fact. An early forerunner, perhaps, of the marvelous story of 19 Arab hijackers getting onto 4 planes without benefit of a boarding pass!
In the original killer-bee story, it was said that killer bees would soon be flying up from South America and crossing the Gulf of Mexico into Texas, making life difficult and scary. Never mind that the offending bees did not exist.
Memphis Tennessee, of All Places
The killer-bee story I wish to discuss today is the one that Wikipedia (i.e., CIA) recalls in its article on our late Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, under the heading “The Memphis Trousers Affair.” Wikipedia says this:
“On 14 October 1986 [3 years after Hawke succeeded him at the Lodge], Fraser, then the Chairman of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, was found in the foyer of the Admiral Benbow Inn, a seedy Memphis hotel, wearing only a pair of knickers and confused as to where his trousers were. The hotel was an establishment popular with prostitutes and drug dealers. Though it was rumoured at the time that the former Prime Minister had been with a prostitute, his wife stated that Fraser had no recollection of the events and that she believes it more likely that he was the victim of a practical joke by his fellow delegates.”
Actually, it’s quite decent of the CIA to include that disclaimer. I recall reading the incident in 1986, or hearing it on radio. I don’t recall any disclaimer. Had there been one, I wouldn’t have believed it anyway. We were told outright, with no hesitation, that Malcolm got rolled by a prostitute — i.e., had his cash taken — and then she took his pants, too. The eminent (humiliated) man had to call his wife, to get some clothes with which to leave the motel!
It’s only been a few years since I realized that the story is strictly killer bee. For one thing, do you know Mr Fraser? Hardly the prostitute type! Also, nothing would motivate a ‘call girl’ to do the pants-theft. It had to have been done by an enemy. And if so, the enemy may as well do the whole thing without there being any prostitute.
For at least 30 years before “Memphis,” the CIA had been getting people to lose their senses by slipping a mickey into their drink. Clearly, Oz’s prime minister was done in by agents and then by the media, no? I admit to having found him ‘unimpressive’ after the putative event. My apologies to you now, Sir. And to Tamie.
What a crazy world we live in, with perhaps thousands of people making a living by smearing persons who try to be good. Pa-the-tic.
Malcolm treated me cordially one time when I was working on an article commissioned by the Carnegie Institute. (I almost never get commissioned work!) My spouse had noticed in the literature that Jimmy Carter, Malcolm Fraser, and a few others had collaborated on an unusual declaration – “The Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities.” He suggested I pop over to Collins Street to interview Fraser.
This stuff was right up my sociobiological alley. I can’t stand any talk of “universal human rights.” What a crock! You only have rights if your conspecifics have a willingness to protect you from the perennial and ubiquitous bullies in your society. Really, it’s a shame that people are taught that rights somehow exist on their own.
Anyway, I went to town with the article and just now looked it up so I could quote from it. However, one has to pay to read it! If you have a library code, you can find it under the title “Toward a Moral System for World Society: A Reflection on Human Responsibilities” (1998).
I note Mr Fraser’s daughter said yesterday that she and the family were shocked by his sudden, unexpected death. I hope it was not by foul play. But you can’t rule it out, can you? Have you ever seen the Youtube video from 1967 regarding Prime Minister Harry Holt’s “accidental” death by drowning? Absolutely nobody raised an eyebrow — and he was a serving prime minister!
Just one of those bad currents in the water, you know.
POSTSCRIPT
Dalia has asked me to document my remark about the CIA slipping things into drinks. (Oh, if only that were the worst they got up to!). Well, OK:
Forty years ago, the then vice president of the US, Nelson Rockefeller (who himself died “on the job” or as they sometimes say “in the saddle”), put together a royal commission, as it were, to investigate, in 1975, so-called excesses of the CIA. (In other words, to cover up the really hot ones.)
They found that the CIA’s “Technical Services Division” (always be wary of names like that) had studied both the use of radiation and hallucinogenic drugs, to alter or control human behavior. You can read about this, in Frank Rochelle’s current lawsuit on behalf of many veterans who were cruelly radiated.
I now quote from the New York Times of January 5, 1994:
“The program was a big umbrella with different things under it,” recalled Scott Breckenridge, a C.I.A. deputy inspector general in the 1970s and author of C.I.A. and the Cold War (Praeger, 1993). “Could it help with interrogations as a truth serum? [Yep] Could we program people to block their memory to defend them against interrogation? [Yep] At first they thought of it in defensive terms [or claimed to]. But then they began to think of it as something they might use on the opposition.”
Ah, the opposition. That means us. Everybody who isn’t a member of the Technical Services Division. Wait, wait! Or even someone who is! After all, Fort Detrick scientist Frank Olson’s family was compensated many years ago when a mickey of LSD – served non-consensually to Frank – caused his suicide. He jumped out the window of a hotel. Really that’s only the cover story. He was hurled out of the window by the CIA. Apparently Olson had raised a few forbidden questions at Fort Detrick.
Well, now that we are on the subject of Fort Detrick, do you recall my article of December 6, 2014, reviewing the book, Plague, by Kent Heckenlively and Judy Mikovits? Judy also knows too much, from her days at Ft Detrick. Not about LSD — that’s old hat. She knows how viruses are lab-created and inserted into human cell lines.
I’m not going to go there today, as this article is supposed to be a tribute to Malcolm Fraser. But please contact me if you want to investigate the viral causes of chronic fatigue syndrome and other ferocious ailments.
Update / March 28, 2015.
I am in shock from attending the Fraser funeral. Pleasant shock. Despite three prime ministers attending, there was not the slightest hint of Canberra politics. Although described as a state funeral, it was completely run by the family. And what a family! Sons, Hugh and Mark both spoke forcefully. Hey, when did you last see a man speak forcefully? The Scots Church priest did likewise. The real kicker was Rachael, the granddaughter. Fraser’s offspring have no inhibitions about saying the man was great. Granddaughter Hester eulogized him in song: “May your humanity integrity and wisdom Always serve to remind us that the world can be a better place if good men speak their minds, With fire in their hearts….” Crikey!
Silly old Australia, on some kind of egalitarian kick, has always outlawed high praise. That startled me when I moved here 35 years ago. I now say Good riddance to Tall Poppy Syndrome. Outside the church stood hundreds of Vietnamese Australians (they stood in the cold for over 2 hours) holding signs such as “Thank you, Mr Fraser, you were the voice of humanity” (referring to his protection of refugees). When I got back to Adelaide last evening I was touched to see the Oz flag and the Aboriginal flag flying at half-mast for a “fallen leader.”
OK everybody, we can be great now. So let’s get on with it.
Maybe “they” were sending the former PM a message, that they could do anything to him – and that he should “keep in line”.
You don’t want retired politicians speaking out do you… like the Former Canadian acting Prime Minister Paul Hellyer, (Minister of Defence) declaring the USA to be “in grave danger”, exposing the Shadow Cabal controllers and called upon the American people to elect a new Administration committed to transparent disclosure.
Good-oh. Let’s make a list of things we wouldn’t put past them. Below are some rules for the list, some parameters.
First I’ll give an example. In New Hampshire there was the side of a mountain that looked like the craggy face of an old man. People were fond of it, and it made for a bit of tourism. “The Old Man in the Mountain.” Then after being there for yonks, it collapsed a few years ago. My first thought was that this fits into the program of not letting us have landmarks. I told a fellow conspiracist, but he was aghast at my stupidity.
Here are the parameters:
1. The item has to have actually occurred.
2. You’re proposing a plausible theory as to what happened (e.g., that Malaysia was being ‘rapped on the knuckles’ for hosting a 9-11 truth conference, or a former prime minister was being warned to fermez his bouche).
3. There is a competing natural explanation (landslide for the Old Man in the Mountain, instrument failure for MH370, or John Denver being too preoccupied with a new song to notice the “Empty” signal.)
4. It can’t be out-and-out libelous. We don’t want Gumshoe to get sued.
Speaking of keeping those truth speakers in line…with Malaysia losing two airliners in 2014, after a Revisiting 9-11 conference was held in late 2013 in Kuala Lampur, by a prominent group….is there a ‘keep in line’ message there? I wouldn’t put it past them…
A German passenger aircraft (Germanwings) went down last night flying a French Airbus 320 over the French Alps. A terrible tragedy.
What do the French and Germans have in common?
Both just signed up to join the China Development Bank (AIIB)
Just saying……
I googled for “Admiral Benbow” (the name of the hotel) and found that I am not the only person revisting the pants story. The Telegraph had this to say yesterday:
“But the more likely story is that Mr Fraser was the victim of a tall Texan blonde with a tattoo above her breast who police reported had pulled the same trick on a number of wealthy Memphis businessmen in the months after Mr Fraser lost his trousers.”
Pardonez-moi, but if they know this blonde and they suspect her of robbery, that’s a crime, right? Was she booked?
Go, police!
Bewdy. Listen to this. Again from the Telegraph:
“Taxi driver Roy Wilson gave the stricken former PM a pair of his own trousers. ‘Ah never got nothing for them. That man didn’t even say thank you. They was good trousers,’ he said later.”
Jeepers, when you start doing a second-read of these things you wonder how the media has the chutzpah. Look, how many taxi drivers do you know that carry a spare pair of trousers? How many men are enormously tall like Fraser? Have you ever known a public schooler (Fraser: Geelong) to omit the thank you?
Was the deal to be understood as a loan? How was the lender (“Mr Roy Wilson” no less) going to collect the trousers back? If he drove the eminent person to his hotel, dressed in the loan garb (I mean where else could Fraser be going other than to his room?), wouldn’t he just wait and take the goods back, on the spot?
I now show you, O Gumshoe Fans, the next sentence in the Telegraph:
“The unproven suggestion was that Mr Fraser had been rolled by an attractive woman he met at the Peabody.”
Um. Let’s see. It’s not given as a quote. It is a “suggestion.” OK, then, whose suggestion? Must be a real live person with a brain that could figure out some connection to the “Peabody.” And now we find that it was an “attractive” woman. So it’s more than just a speculation, right? I mean you can speculate that he was with a woman (indeed that’s what we all did speculate, or at least I did). But I had no data with which to picture her attractiveness. If anything, I pictured her as a kind of loser since she was, according to LIVING HISTORY, a pants-thief.
Oh wait. Is this the same lady, with the tattoo above her breast, that does the regular rolling, or a different one? The author of this March 21, 2015 Daily Telegraph piece is Matthew Benns. “Malcolm Fraser and the Mystery of How He Lost His Trousers (and His Dignity) in a Seedy American Hotel.”
What say we have Dee interview him, in her famous way?
Gee, chutzpah is a remarkable thing. I think I’ve got to get some.
Ahem. I’ve found a challenge to the Roy Wilson story. In 2000, Jim Hanas of the WeeklyWire of Memphis saw fit to tell us the following about Fraser:
“The man remained composed — as composed as pantslessness would allow — as he waited for a cab and negotiated with the bellman for a pair of pants that didn’t fit. When the taxi arrived, he rode away….” Well, I suppose a bellman is more likely than a taxi driver to stock the necessaries.
Oops, I have located another variation, this one by Paul Sheehan, in the Sydney Moring Herald. In an Oct 7, 2002 article, Sheehan ‘suggests’ something:
“It is 16 years since I last wrote about Malcolm Fraser. It was after he lost his trousers, and a lot more, at the Admiral Benbow Inn in 1986. Back then, when I called the former prime minister to tell him I had the Memphis story, there was a silence…. I felt sympathy for him, and so left out a few details that would have made the story even more lurid than it became.”
I’m just DYING to know what Sheehan knows, and how he knows it. Perchance he received a call from the tatoo’d lady?
Or could it have been the disgruntled taxi driver? (“Blow, blow, thou wintry wind….”)
In today’s paper we have Sheehan prepping us for Australian involvement in torture, including “the use of sleep deprivation, temperature extremes and sensory bombardment.”
Note: I’m not suggesting the two subjects are interrelated.
Oh well, maybe I am.
OK I am.
Update from Mary Maxwell, March 28, 2015.
I am in shock from attending the Fraser funeral. Pleasant shock. Despite three prime ministers attending, there was not the slightest hint of Canberra politics. Although described as a state funeral, it was completely run by the family. And what a family! Sons Hugh and Mark spoke forcefully. Hey, when did you last see a man speak forcefully? The Scots Church priest did likewise. The real kicker was Rachael, the granddaughter.
Fraser’s offspring have no inhibitions about saying the man was great. Granddaughter Hester eulogized him in song: “May your humanity, integrity, and wisdom Always serve to remind us that the world can be a better place If good men speak their minds, With fire in their hearts….” Crikey!
Silly old Australia, on some kind of egalitarian kick, has always outlawed high praise. That startled me when I moved here 35 years ago. I now say Good riddance to Tall Poppy Syndrome. Outside the church stood hundreds of Vietnamese Australians (they stood in the cold for over 2 hours) holding signs such as “Thank you, Mr Fraser, you were the voice of humanity” (referring to his protection of refugees). When I got back to Adelaide last evening I was touched to see the Oz flag and the Aboriginal flag flying at half-mast for a “fallen leader.”
OK everybody, we can be great now. So let’s get on with it.
The real reason Malcolm was in Tennessee?
To see Dr Lester VanMiddlesworth.
Now put that in your drink, when you figure out the implications of what that means!
Hint: Vela Incident
Are you saying that an Aussie leader needed to be de-panted because he was going to make a fuss over the Israelis testing N-weapons atmospherically?
Maybe in those days one would complain about Such-and-Such a nation having N-weapons. But they are available on the open market nowadays. At least one country is actually using them. (I won’t say which, but it’s contiguous to Canada and Mexico.)
When Dalia interviewed Malcolm Fraser, he made no bones about Israel’s culpability for the attack on the USS Liberty. I say big dingo, who cares. All the nations work for the same boss and will hurt one another when so instructed.
I like what Malcolm’s son said at the funeral: “I feel that that the world is a less safe place today [because of Dad’s passing.]”
Fabulous. Is there anyone else of whom we could say that? Is anyone looking out for Australia?