Sisters of the Revolution Read online

  Selection for and Constraints upon the Photo-op

  I’ve been fascinated by Margaret A. my entire adult life. I entered journalism precisely so that I’d have a shot at firsthand contact with Margaret A. and have systematically pursued that goal with every career step I’ve taken. (I realize that to most members of JATROF it is the implications of the Margaret A. Amendment and not Margaret A. herself that matter most. The words of Margaret A., however, for a brief time radically changed the way I looked at the world. Since losing it, I’ve never ceased to yearn for another glimpse of that perspective. Surely of all people, JATROF members can most appreciate that such a goal does not belie the ideals of the profession?) Accordingly, I studied the Bureau of Prison’s selection preferences, worked my way into suitable employment, then patiently and quietly waited. I lived carefully. I kept myself as clean of suspect contacts as any working journalist can. When finally I was selected for one of Margaret A.’s photo-ops, Circumspection has been rewarded, I congratulated myself. Reading and rereading the official notification I felt as though I had just been granted a visa to the promised land.

  An invitation to meet Simon Bartkey had been attached to the visa, however. Naturally this disconcerted me: an in-person screening by a Justice Department official is quite a bit different from scrutiny of one’s record. But I told myself that I’d been “good” for so long that my professionalism would see me over this last hurdle. Thus one month before I was due to meet Margaret A., my producer and I flew to Washington and met this Justice Department official assigned to what they call “the Margaret A. Desk”—an “expert” who cheerfully admitted to me that he had never heard or read any of Margaret A.’s words himself. I couldn’t help but be impressed with the show they run, for the BOP has it down to a fine procedure designed to ensure that everything flows with the smoothness and predictability of a high-precision robotics assembly. Besides providing an opportunity for one last intense scrutiny of the journalists they’ve selected, to their way of thinking, a visit to Simon Bartkey sets both the context journalists are supposed to use as well as the ground rules.

  Let me note in reminder here that Simon Bartkey has survived three different administrations precisely because he’s accounted an “expert” on “the Margaret A. situation.” Since the early days of the Margaret A. phenomenon, each administration has fretted about the public’s continuing fascination with her. Bartkey expressed it to me in these words: “This ongoing interest in her defies all logic. Her words—except for a few hoarded tapes, newspapers, and samizdat—have been completely obliterated, and the general public has no access to them, and certainly no memory of them. The American public has never been known to have such a long attention span, especially with regard to someone not continually providing ever new and more exciting grist to the media’s mill. Why then do people still want to see her? Why haven’t they forgotten about her?” (How it must gall politicians that Margaret A. has for the last fifteen years enjoyed higher name recognition than each sitting U.S. president during the same period.)

  Though it was the most important event in my life (I was nineteen when it happened), I can’t remember any of her words. I was too young and naive at the time to hold onto newspapers and the ad hoc ephemera figures like Margaret A. invariably generate, and certainly never dreamed that her words could be expunged from the internet. And like most people I never dreamed a person’s words could become illegal. One hears rumors, of course, of old tapes and newspapers carefully hoarded—yet though I’ve faithfully tracked every such rumor I’ve caught wind of, none has ever panned out.

  For perhaps twenty of the fifty-five minutes I spent being briefed by him, Bartkey took great pleasure in explaining to me how the passage of time will ultimately eclipse Margaret A.’s public visibility. Leaning back in his padded red leather chair, he announced that the generational gap more than anything will finally isolate those who persist in “worshiping at the altar of her memory.” His fingers stroking his mandala-embossed bottle green silk tie, he insisted that Margaret A. can mean nothing to college kids since they were only infants at the time of the Margaret A. phenomenon. He might conceivably prove to be correct, but I don’t think so. The kids I’ve talked to find the Margaret A. Amendment so irrational and egregious an offense against the spirit of the First Amendment that they’re suspicious of everything they’ve been told about it. If no records of Margaret A.’s words still exist, neither do reports of the massive civil disorder their civics textbooks use to justify the passage of the amendment. The fact of the Margaret A. Amendment, I think, has got to fill them with suspicions of a cover-up. Consider: the only images they connect with Margaret A. now are the videos and photos taken of this U.S. citizen living in internal exile, a small middle-aged woman dwarfed by the deadly array of missiles and radar installations and armed guards surrounding her. I doubt that young people are capable of understanding that anyone’s particular use of language in and of itself could have threatened the dissolution of every form of government in this country (much less provoked the unprecedented, draconian measure of a constitutional amendment to silence it). I’ve seen the cynical skepticism in their faces when older people talk about those days. How could any arrangement of words on paper, any speech recorded on tape be as dangerous as government authorities say? And why ban no one else’s speech, not even that of her most persistent followers (except of course when quoting her)? Young people don’t believe it was that simple. When I listen to their questions I’ve no trouble deducing that they believe the government is covering up the past existence of a powerful, armed, revolutionary force. They consider the amendment not only a cover-up but also a gratuitous measure designed to curtail speech and establish a precedent for future curtailments.

  Needless to say I didn’t share such observations with Bartkey any more than I offered him my theory that the new generation is not only suspicious of a cover-up but also dying for a taste of forbidden fruit. While doubting its vaunted potency (or toxicity, depending on one’s point of view), they long to know what it is they’re being denied. This sounds paradoxical, I admit, yet I’ve heard a note of resentment in their expressions of skepticism. The dangers of Margaret A.’s words may not be apparent to them, but by labeling the fruit forbidden—fruit their elders had been privileged enough to taste—the amendment—which they consider a cover-up to start with—is provoking resentment in this new generation coming of age. Rather than developing amnesia about Margaret A., the new generation may well become obsessed with her. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if new, bizarrely conceived cults didn’t spring up around the Margaret A. phenomenon.

  I don’t mean to imply that I’d approve of bizarre cults and obsession with forbidden fruit. The fascination I and others like me feel for Margaret A. is probably as incomprehensible to the young people as the government’s fear of her words. (Our diverse reactions to Margaret A. seem to mark a Great Divide for most people in this country.) But something about the very idea of her—regardless of whether her ideas are ever remembered—the very idea of this woman shut up in the middle of a high-security military base because her words are so potent … well, that idea does something to almost everyone in this country, including those who find the Margaret A. phenomenon frightening (excepting, of course, the anti-free speech activists). If I were Bartkey I’d be worried: it’s only a matter of time before the Margaret A. Amendment is repealed. And if Margaret A. is still alive then, things could explode.

  Margaret A.’s “Security”

  All we ever saw of Vandenberg proper was its perimeter fence and gate. Even before we’d handed our documents to the guard three people wearing nonmilitary uniforms converged on us and ordered us out onto the tarmac. One of them then climbed into the van and turned it around and drove it somewhere away from the base; the other two ordered us into a tiny quonset hut off to the right. This confused me, and I wondered whether there had been a foul-up of some sort, or whether the background checks had turned up something about one o
f us the Justice Department didn’t like. (I even wondered—fleetingly—whether for some convoluted tangle of reasoning they kept her there in that quonset hut, outside the base’s perimeter fence).

  What followed in the hut rendered my speculations absurd. Bartkey had of course made us sign an agreement that we be subject to strip searches, that we use their equipment, that all materials be edited by them, and that we submit to an extensive debriefing afterwards. I bore with the strip and body cavity search without protest, of course, since journalists are commonly obliged to endure such ordeals when entering prisons to interview inmates. (I’m sure colleagues reading this know well how one attempts in such circumstances to put the best face on an awkward, uncomfortable situation.) Nor did I protest the condition that the Bureau of Prisons be granted total editorial power, for obviously the Margaret A. Amendment might otherwise be flouted. But their insistence that we use their equipment—that bothered me for some elusive, hard-to-define reason. Bartkey had explained that their equipment ran without an audio track, and since no one by the terms of the Margaret A. Amendment could legally tape her speech, my conscious reaction focused on that obvious point. But as I was putting my thoroughly searched clothing back on I learned that I could not take my shoulder bag in with me and realized that not only would there be no audio tape, there would also be no pen and paper, no laptop computer, no note-taking beyond what I could force into my own, ill-trained mental memory. Naturally I protested. (I am, after all, the woman who relies on her computer to tell her such things as when to have her hair cut, what time to eat lunch, and how long it has been since she’s written to her mother.) It made no difference, of course. I was told that if I didn’t choose to abide by the rules they’d take the producer and crew in without me.

  After hitting us with another review of all the ground rules, they herded us into the windowless back of a Bureau of Prisons van and drove us an undisclosed turn-filled and occasionally bumpy distance. The van stopped for at least a minute three separate times before pausing briefly—as at a stop sign, or to allow the opening of a gate (I deduce the latter to have been the case)—and then moved for only two or three seconds before coming to a final halt. When the engine cut it only then came to me in a breathless rush that what I had been waiting for nearly half my life was actually about to happen. Margaret A.’s words are forbidden. Yet for a few minutes I would have the privilege of hearing her speak. Only “trivialities,” granted, they would allow nothing else—guards with radio receivers in their ears would be on hand to see to that: but still the words would be Margaret A.’s, and even her “trivial” speech, I felt certain, would be potent, perhaps electrifying. And I believed that on hearing Margaret A. speak I would remember all that I had forgotten about those days and would understand all that had eluded me throughout my adult life.

  This pre-contact assumption derived not from romantic dreams cherished from adolescence, but from what I had (discreetly) gleaned about the conditions of Margaret A.’s life of exile. I had learned, for instance, from a highly reliable source formerly employed by the Justice Department, that the Bureau of Prisons had run through more than five hundred guards on the Margaret A. assignment, all of whom had quit the BOP subsequent to their removal from duty at Vandenberg.2 What continues to strike me as extraordinary about this is that the guards assigned to Margaret A. have always been—and continue to be—taken exclusively from a pool of guards experienced in working in high security federal facilities. Each guard previous to meeting Margaret A. is warned that all speech uttered within the confines of the prisoner’s quarters will be recorded and examined. Before starting duty at Vandenberg each newly assigned guard undergoes rigorous orientation sessions and while on duty at Vandenberg reports for debriefing after each personal contact with Margaret A. Yet no guard has ever gone on to a new assignment following contact with Margaret A. Another curious statistic: those assigned to audio surveillance of the words spoken in Margaret A’s quarters inevitably “burn out” during their second year of monitoring Margaret A.3 Consider: Margaret A. is forbidden ever to speak about anything remotely “political.” How then can she so consistently corrupt every guard who has had contact with her and disturb every monitor who has been assigned to listen to her (non-political: “trivial”) conversation?4 It never occurred to me to wonder what Bartkey meant when he said that all conversation with Margaret A. must be confined to “trivial, non-political small-talk.” He and other officials outlined for me the sorts of questions I must avoid raising—ranging from the subject of her confinement, the Margaret A. Amendment, and the public’s continuing interest in her to the specific points upon which, according to rumor (since documents no longer exist, one can refer only to rumors or fuzzy nodes of memory), she had spoken during the brief initial period of the Margaret A. phenomenon. I think I assumed that the corruption of her guards had more to do with Margaret A.’s personality than with the “smalltalk” she exchanged with them (never mind that this did not address the monitors’ eventual termination by the Justice Department). Thus as our escort opened the back door of the van I told myself I would now be meeting not only the most remarkable woman in history, but probably the most charismatic, charming, and possibly lovable person I would ever have the pleasure of knowing.

  Contact with Margaret A.

  While my producer and crew unloaded the BOP’s equipment from the van, I—the one who would later be asked on camera for my observations and impressions of Margaret A. and the conditions of her confinement—strolled around the tiny compound surrounding the quonset hut I presumed to be Margaret A’s. At first I noticed little beyond the intimidating array of surveillance and security equipment and personnel. The twenty-foot steel fence reinforced with coils of razor wire and topped by a glass-enclosed, visibly armed guard post cut off view of everything outside the compound but the hot dry sky. (The southern California sun in that environment seemed stiflingly oppressive.) Several hard-eyed uniformed men carried automatic rifles. Was it possible they thought we might attempt to spring Margaret A.? My consciousness of the eyes of such heavily armed men watching, waiting, anticipating shook me, making me feel like a jeweler opening a safe for robbers, fearful that with one “false” (i.e., misunderstood) move I would be a dead woman. Because Margaret A. is not a “criminal,” one forgets how dangerous the government has decreed her to be.

  Yet the weight of this official presence exerted a subtle impression on me I became aware of only when speaking with Margaret A. The uniforms, the guard post, the overdetermined regulation of our every movement and intention conspired to make me forget that Margaret A. has never been arraigned before a judge much less stood trial before a jury.5 Thus when I spotted the scraggly little plants growing in a corner of the compound’s coarse dry sand, I instantly perceived an “extra privilege” generously bestowed upon her by the BOP, and so rather than enter Margaret A’s quarters with a sense of how intolerably oppressive it would be to live immured within that steel fence and guard post with its glaring mirrored windows and menacing weaponry permanently looming over one, I thought how fortunate Margaret A. was to be able to walk around outside in her compound and “garden.”

  I make this confession in order to illustrate how subtly perception can be influenced. It strikes me as counterintuitive that the heavy presence of surveillance and security would contribute to a perception of the legitimacy of Margaret A.’s incarceration, yet apparently the Justice Department’s experts believe this, for that oppressive presence is never censored out of videos and stills, while a variety of small concessions that Margaret A. has won for herself have never survived the BOP’s editing.6

  Thus when I entered Margaret A.’s quarters accompanied by three guards and a crew grumbling over the antiquation of the BOP’s equipment, I looked at all I saw through peculiarly biased eyes. It’s not so bad, I thought as I surveyed the first of Margaret A.’s two rooms. I noted the cushions softening the pair of wooden chairs with arms and was astonished at the beautifully executed wo
ven tapestry covering a large part of the ugly toothpaste-green wall. It’s not as bad as most jail cells, and is certainly far better than the underground dungeons in which most political prisoners are kept, I reminded myself. It occurs to me in retrospect that probably I wanted to believe that Margaret A. lived in tolerable circumstances so that the chances of her hanging on as long as it took to achieve her release would be reasonably high. And so before Margaret A. came into the room, my eyes fixed on the small computer sitting on a table near the outer door while I mused on how because of that computer Margaret A.’s way with words (and perhaps even her words themselves) might have a chance to survive, and rejoiced that in spite of the Margaret A. Amendment the BOP weren’t sitting as heavily and oppressively on her as they do on most political prisoners.

  But then Margaret A. appeared and for a few crazy, breath-stopped instants time seemed to halt. After greeting the guards (whose faces, I mechanically noted, were suddenly suffused with wariness and unease) she simply stood there, a small stout figure in gray cotton shirt and pants, looking us over—as though we were there for her inspection rather than the other way around. I struggled a few agonized seconds with frog in my throat and glanced at the guards in expectation of an introduction. But looking back at Margaret A. I realized the absurdity of my expectation and scorned myself for taking the guards as hosts at an arranged soiree. Though I had no idea of it at the time (and I still don’t quite understand how it worked), that moment marked the loss of a professional persona that had hitherto sustained me throughout my career in journalism.