Ratfucking / 1: Dick Tuck

Dick Tuck was a legendary political hoaxer who made a career out of making life miserable for Richard Nixon.

In 1950 both Nixon and Tuck were near the start of their careers. Nixon was running for a California senate seat against democratic opponent Helen Gagahan Douglas, and Tuck was working for Douglas's campaign.
Nixon was running an extremely dirty campaign, making every effort to portray his opponent as a communist-sympathizer. This red-bashing had already worked successfully for him in a 1946 congressional race against the democrat Jerry Voorhis, and had propelled him to national fame as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Tuck decided that he would undermine Nixon by getting himself hired as a campaign worker in Nixon's campaign, where he would secretly operate as a mole for Douglas.
As a campaign worker for Nixon, Tuck was responsible for organizing campaign rallies. He organized one such rally at UC Santa Barbara, and he booked the largest auditorium possible. However, he purposefully booked it on a day that few students would be able to attend, and then he barely publicized it at all. Therefore, when Nixon showed up to speak there were only 40 students waiting to hear him in a 4000 seat auditorium. Tuck got up on the stage to introduce Nixon and proceeded to deliver a long, rambling monologue in which he made frequent references to Nixon's cut-throat, red-bashing campaign tactics against Jerry Voorhis. Finally he announced that Nixon would now speak about the International Monetary Fund. Nixon, of course, had not planned to speak about the IMF. Therefore, when he got up to the podium he was momentarily speechless.
As Nixon's political star began to rise, Tuck continued to torment him. In 1956 Nixon was running for reelection as Eisenhower's Vice President. The Republican Convention was being held in San Francisco that year, and Tuck learned that the route taken by garbage trucks going to the dump led them right past the convention center. Therefore, Tuck paid to have all the garbage trucks bear signs that read "Dump Nixon".
In 1960 Tuck worked for Kennedy during the Nixon/Kennedy race. On the day following Nixon's first televised debate with Kennedy, Tuck hired an elderly woman to approach Nixon as he got off a plane, kiss him on the cheek, and say "That's all right, Mr. Nixon. He beat you last night, but you'll win next time." Nixon was reportedly momentarily at a loss for words.
Tuck also waged an ongoing effort to undermine Nixon's campaign effort. For instance, Tuck would pose as a fire marshall to provide low estimates of the turnout at Nixon's rallies for the media. He would also inform bandleaders at Republican rallies that Nixon's favorite song was "Mack the Knife," so that as Nixon took the stage he would be heralded by lyrics describing a rapacious conman.
In one legendary incident Tuck dressed up as a train conductor and signalled a train to leave the station while Nixon was delivering a speech from its rear platform. Reportedly, the train pulled out of the station with Nixon still speaking. (There is some doubt about whether this incident actually occurred).
In 1962 Nixon was touring the Chinatown section of Los Angeles as a gubernatorial candidate. Tuck arranged for Chinese-speaking residents of the area to greet him with signs that said 'Welcome Nixon' in English at the top, but at the bottom said "What about the Hughes Loan?" in Chinese characters. The Hughes loan referred to a highly suspect loan that the billionaire Howard Hughes had given to Nixon's brother Donald. Nixon, of course, didn't know what the signs said, so he waved happily at the sign-bearers while they all laughed back at him.
In 1964 Tuck himself ran for one of California's state Senate seats. His campaign slogan was "The job needs Tuck, and Tuck needs the job." Nixon came to town and endorsed Tuck's rival, so Tuck challenged Nixon to a debate and promised not to shave if Nixon accepted (a reference to the appearance that Nixon had a five o'clock shadow during his televised debate with Kennedy).
By 1968, when Nixon was running for President, Tuck had managed to make Nixon's campaign managers so paranoid that they began to undermine themselves. When a huge shipment of buttons printed in Greek, Chinese, and Italian arrived at Nixon's campaign headquarters to be distributed at various ethnic rallies in New York City, Nixon's campaign manager, remembering the 1962 incident with the Chinese signs, ordered that all the buttons be destroyed, just in case Tuck had tampered with them (he hadn't).
However, Tuck was up to his usual tricks during this campaign, such as when he hired several pregnant women to show up at Nixon rallies carrying signs that read "Nixon's the One."
By 1972 Nixon had decided that he needed someone like Dick Tuck working on his side. Therefore he hired Donald Segretti to conduct a dirty tricks campaign for him against his democratic opponents. In Nixon's words, he wanted his campaign to develop a "Dick Tuck capability." However, Nixon's effort to mimic Tuck's pranks lacked all humor and went badly wrong. Segretti's dirty tricks included forging letters to newspapers imputing sexual misconduct to Hubert HumphreyEdmund S. Muskie that included language denigrating blacks.
Apparently Nixon realized that Segretti's efforts were not comparable to the standard set by Tuck. In a White House conversation taped on March 13, 1973 Nixon commented that it "Shows what a master Dick Tuck is ... Segretti's hasn't been a bit similar."
- source: The Museum of Hoaxes; - what a great website!
[Just received Alex Boese's book from Amazon; I'm reading it & gonna review it]

More Links:
- NPR radio interview with Dick Tuck!
- Did Dick Tuck Cause Watergate?
- Dick Tuck on Wikipedia

James Randi / 2: What's The Matter, Folks, Don't You Like Money?

James Randi, a.k.a. The Amazing Randi, magician and author of numerous works skeptical of paranormal claims, offers "a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power." His rules are little more than what any reasonable scientist would require. If you are a mental spoon bender, you can't use your own spoons. If you are going to see auras, you will have to do so under controlled conditions. If you are going to do some remote viewing, you will not be given credit for coming close in some vague way. If you are going to demonstrate your dowsing powers, be prepared to be tested under controlled conditions. If you are going to do psychic surgery or experience the stigmata, expect to have cameras watching your every move. For more information on the James Randi Paranormal Challenge see www.randi.org, or send e-mail to randi@randi.org or snail mail to:

JREF
201 S.E. 12th St (E. Davie Blvd)
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815
U.S.A.

After collecting the million dollars, successful psychics should contact B. Premanand of the Indian Skeptic, who will pay Rs. 100,000 "to any person or persons who will demonstrate any psychic, supernatural of paranormal ability of any kind undersatisfactory observing conditions." "Mr.Prabir Ghosh willpay Rs. 20,00,000 to anyone who claims to possess supernatural power of any kind and proves the same without resorting to any trick in the location specified by Prabir Ghosh." Also, the Australian Skeptics will throw in an additional $100,000 (Australian), $80,000 for the psychic and $20,000 for anyone "who nominates a person who successfully completes the Australian Skeptics Challenge." If you nominate yourself, and are successful, you get the whole hundred grand. Finally, the Association for Skeptical Inquiry (ASKE), a U.K. skeptic organization, offers £12,000 for proof of psychic powers.

- source: the Skeptics' Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll. Subscribe to the the SkepDic newsletter: it's free.

Maskirovka, the Name / 1

Operation Bagration was launched just over two weeks after D-Day, on the third anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 22 June 1944. By the close some two months later Germany had suffered its most crushing defeat of the war - the complete destruction of Army Group Centre, involving the loss of some 350,000 men - and the Soviets had advanced menacingly close to the borders of the Reich. A major factor in Soviet success was their use of maskirovka to achieve surprise. The Soviet Military Encyclopaedia defines maskirovka thus: "The means of securing combat operations and the daily activities of forces; a complexity of measures, directed to mislead the enemy regarding the presence and disposition of forces, various military objectives, their condition, combat readiness and operations, and also the plans of the commander... maskirovka contributes to the achievement of surprise for the actions of forces, the preservation of combat readiness and the increased survivability of objectives." It permeates down to the lowest tactical level and includes all measures, active and passive, designed to deceive the enemy. Although the word is sometimes translated as 'camouflage', this belies its much broader meaning which includes: concealment (skrytie), imitation using decoys and dummies (imitasiia), manoeuvres intended to deceive (demonstratinvnye manevry) and disinformation (dezinformatsiia). - source: Jon Latimer, Deception in War, The Overlook Press, Woodstock & New York 2001

James Randi / 1

"Another young chap, named Uri Geller, an Israeli, used to be a fashion model in Israel, and also a club magician. He worked in nightclubs, and theaters, platforms of various kinds... as a magician. He was sent here by heaven to save mankind. He's already averted WW III. He does funny little things where he bends keys by sleight of hand, reads the contents of sealed envelopes by similar means, and he has scientists convinced that he's real. I've often asked these scientists, "Why don't you call in a magician when you're doing this kind of thing, when you're considering these matters to see whether they have any real scientific worth?" And they always say: "Well, we don't need a magician because we're scientists. We're highly educated people. We're good observers…"That's all very true. There's one thing they seem to forget…If I have a toothache, I don't go to Einstein. He may have developed the Theory of Relativity -- fine, intelligent man -- man with a great education -- kindly, amiable, old gentleman…Yeah, I would have gone to him perhaps if I had been ignorant -- If I thought that, because he's so intelligent, he knows something about dentistry. I can buy a scalpel. That doesn't make me a surgeon. I can buy a violin, but I don't think you'd want to hear me play. The fact that I have a…scalpel or a violin doesn't make me a surgeon or a concert violinist. By the same token, I can't develop the black hole theory in physics, as one gentleman did not so long ago…and then was consulted on the Uri Geller matter. He said: "Uri Geller is absolutely genuine. I know because I'm a scientist." It doesn't mean he has the ability to detect these things at all! Only a professional magician can detect a professional magician. That's what I am, and that's what I think Uri Geller is."
- Excerpt from psychicinvestigator.com
- Books by James Randi: Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions; The Faith Healers; The Truth about Uri Geller.

Science of Guerrilla Warfare / 1

Most wars are wars of contact, both forces striving to keep in touch to avoid tactical surprise. The Arab war should be a war of detachment: to contain the enemy by the silent threat of a vast unknown desert, not disclosing themselves till the moment of attack. This attack need be only nominal, directed not against his men, but against his materials: so it should not seek for his main strength or his weaknesses, but for his most accessible material. In railway cutting this would be usually an empty stretch of rail. This was a tactical success. From this theory came to be developed ultimately an unconscious habit of never engaging the enemy at all. This chimed with the numerical plea of never giving the enemy's soldier a target. Many Turks on the Arab front had no chance all the war to fire a shot, and correspondingly the Arabs were never on the defensive, except by rare accident. The corollary of such a rule was perfect "intelligence," so that plans could be made in complete certainty. The chief agent had to be the general's head (de Feuquière said this first), and his knowledge had to be faultless, leaving no room for chance. The headquarters of the Arab army probably took more pains in this service than any other staff.

- source: T.E. Lawrence, Science of Guerrilla Warfare, 1929

More links: Wu Ming, Lawrence of Arabia: On the Fight against Copyright, 2003.
['Eventually, Lawrence states that "the contest [is] not physical, but moral." As a matter of fact, a good portion of "pirates" give the contest an unequivocal ethical value. They think that the Net's horizontal nature and gift economy must be defended, and that private property of popular culture is a contradiction in terms. Lawrence ends the text with an admonition that ought to cause a loud buzzing in all those corporate ears, and persuade the bosses that repression is not the solution. The whole legislation on copyright is to be radically reformed. "Copyleft" open licenses are to be adopted on all levels. Prices are to be cut. The rivers of money are to be diverted, so they no longer flow into some superstar's pockets and are invested in quality increases and better platforms for on-line sales. There are already many experiments going on...']
- if you read Italian or Spanish, check this out: Wu Ming 4, Junto a los rios de Babilonia: Apuntes sobra la teoria de la guerrilla de T.E. Lawrence [ITA] [ES]

Vintage Mischief with Sounds & Noises / 2

...controversy erupted in 1992 when Teen Talk Barbie exclaimed, "I love shopping," "Meet me at the mall," and "Math class is tough." This last phrase struck an especially sour note, given the under-representation of women in the sciences---a state of affairs Shirley M. Tilghman argues is directly attributable to "the low expectations that our education system sets on the performance of females in physics and math."
Thus, it seems inevitable that a group of feminists, anti-war advocates and culture jammers should have hacked Barbie's voice box this past December. The Manhattan-based Barbie Liberation Organization claims to have performed corrective surgery on 300 Teen Talk Barbies and Talking Duke G.I. Joes---switching their sound chips, repackaging the toys, and returning them to store shelves. Consumers reported their amazement at hearing Barbie bellow, "Eat lead, Cobra!" or "Vengeance is mine!," while Joe chirped, "Will we ever have enough clothes?" and "Let's plan our dream wedding!" A spokesman for the BLO told the New York Times, "We are trying to make a statement about the way toys can encourage negative behavior in children, particularly given rising acts of violence and sexism."
Intriguingly, the WELL's hacking conference features a topic started in 1992 called "Hacking Barbie: hardware challenge!" Software/hardware engineer Bob Bickford, who was an active participant, hazarded a technical explanation of the BLO hack.
"From what I understand, the two dolls are manufactured by companies that use the same 'voice box' parts," he writes. "Given that, the engineering was trivial; the real 'hack,' or bit of cleverness, was in finding out which two dolls this was true of."
Todd Johnson, an electrical engineer, adds, "I would guess that the entire module was swapped rather than a ROM since you'd be less likely to blow something out that way. It's a tremendous thing, in any case. I wish I had one!"
Johnson isn't alone. The BLO's hack has evolved, ironically, into what Howard Rheingold has only half-joking called "an underground business opportunity." A BLO member told NPR's Scott Simon, "Nobody wants to return [the dolls]...We think that our program of putting them back on the shelves [benefits] everyone: The storekeepers make money twice, we stimulate the economy, the consumer gets a better product and our message gets heard."
- source: Mark Dery, Hacking Barbie's Voice Box: 'Vengeance is Mine!', New Media magazine, "Technoculture" column, May '94 issue

Publicity Stunts / 2

According to book publisher/humorist Bennett Cerf, "One of the first press agents who turned publicity into a million-dollar business was the late Harry Reichenbach. This master of the art of exploitation has been called 'the greatest single force in American advertising and publicity since Barnum'. One of his earliest exploits was to salvage a little restaurant that had everything but customers. He put a simple bowl of water in the window with a sign reading, 'The only living Brazilian invisible fish'. Increasing crowds gathered to observe this phenomenon. Some swore they could see the invisible fish make the water move. Reichenbach promptly hid a little electric fan in the corner to blow ripples on the water. 'There it goes', the crowd would cry, and then, for no apparent reason, would go inside to eat dinner. Business boomed for weeks. Reichenbach claimed later that the proprietor simply couldn't stand prosperity; he tried to serve the invisible fish as a course."
- via Claude Hall. In the picture, the invisible fish.

Pranks at the DaWWWn of our Age / October 1997

Dear Invisible Cottage,

A friend of mine who will remain "anonymous" has been comitting a "prank" which exposes the possibilities of legal "inverse hacking" of the web. The friend, who is a "webmaster," managed by luck to acquire the domain "www.graphics.com"...it happens that there is a bug in Netscape that, if you put a ? after any domain, it looks up the domain but converts all the "/graphics/" urls in the page to "www.graphics.com." Therefore, people mistyping urls on many high profile sites has resulted in my friends server getting as many as 18,000 calls for missing graphics a week. To take advantage of this situation, he wrote a custom CGI which returns random graphics...which are all Barbara Kruger-esque slogans. To see what I mean, try some of the urls below:

http://www.corel.ca?
http://www.packardbell.com?
http://www.mindsync.com/timeon.html
http://www.toysrus.com?
http://www.tabson.com/Computerlinks.htm

Many of the travel agent sites hit it, but with time- and user-specific URLs that are impossible to duplicate.
What is so funny about all this is that the corporate domains shouldn't be able to legitimately complain, because in fact, they are responsible for massive "unwanted" traffic on his server, and he should be able to use whatever CGI he wants to respond to legitimate missing images called from his server. I don't know if it would hold up in a court of law, though.
Regards,

Luther Blissett

[Gustav:] Follow-up, anyone?

What's the Matter, Haven't you got any Sense of Humor?

There is at least one thing I would less rather have in the neighborhood than a gangster,
And that one thing is a practical prankster.
I feel that we should differ more sharply than Montagues and Capulets or York and Lancaster,
Me and a practical prancaster.
If there is a concentration camp in limbo, that is the spot for which I nominate them,
Not because I don't like them, but simply because I abominate them.
The born practical prankster starts out in early youth by offering people a chair,
And when they sit down it isn't there,
And he is delighted and proceeds to more complicated wheezes,
Such as ten cent X-rays to see through people's clothes with and powders to give them itches and sneezes,
And his boutonnière is something that people get squirted in the eye out of,
And their beds are what he makes apple-pie out of.
Then as he matures he widens his scope,
And he is no longer content to present people with exploding cigars and chocolate creams with centres of soap,
So he dresses up as an oriental potentate and reviews the British fleet,
Or collects a little group of kinspirits and a few pickaxes and a "Street Closed" sign and digs up a busy street,
And if people are jumpy about their past or present private lives he hints that he is writing his memoirs and is devoting an entire chapter to their particular skeleton,
And finally he reaches the apex of his career when he slips into somebody's bathroom and fills up all the modern conveniences with water, and then adds raspberry gelatin.
(Ogden Nash, 1902-1971)
- Read Ogden's verses
- Ogden Nash Teacher Resource File

Noms de Plume and Literary Hoaxes / 1

On October 26, 1809, the New York Evening Post carried the following announcement, 'Distressing - Left his lodgings some time since and has not since been heard of, a small, elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker.'

Then, two weeks later, an item appeared saying that a man fitting that description had been spotted on a stagecoach heading for Albany. Ten days later, the paper carried a news story that the Columbian Hotel had found a handwritten manuscript he believed to be written by the mysterious Knickerbocker. Seth Handaside, the hotel manager, decided to sell the manuscript in order to settle the bill the elusive boarder had failed to pay.
Months later, the book, a two-volume set, appeared in bookstores (selling for $3), bearing the title The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. It was a huge success. The author of the book and the elaborate hoax was Washington Irving, who wanted to create a huge publicity campaign for the book and have a little joke on the reader. The name (Died/rich) Knickerbocker was his private joke.
- source: James Charlton and Lisbeth Mark, The Writer's Home Companion

The famous History of New-York was published in 1809. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of old Diedrich Knickerbocker, to whom was assigned the authorship, was preserved for a number of months. The first announcement of the book stated that the manuscript had been found by the landlord of the Columbian Hotel in New York among the effects of a departed lodger, and had been sold to the printer in order to offset the lodger’s indebtedness. Before the manuscript was disposed of, Seth Handaside, the landlord, inserted in New York and Philadelphia papers an advertisement describing Mr. Knickerbocker and asking for information about him. When acknowledgment of the authorship of the book was finally made by Irving, it was difficult for his fellow New Yorkers to believe that this unsuccessful young lawyer and attractive “man about town” could have produced a work giving evidence of such maturity and literary power. He had secured an excellent position in New York society, a society which in the earlier years of the century was still largely made up of the old Dutch families. In the ‘veracious chronicle’ of Mr. Knickerbocker free use was made of the names of these historic families, and it is related that not a few of the young author’s Dutch friends found it difficult to accord forgiveness for the liberty that had been taken with their honourable ancestors in making them the heroes of such rollicking episodes.
- source: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XV. Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I.

Black Printed Matter / 2

H 317. 'Die Soldatenfrau' Leaflet was a bogus Wehrmacht leaflet printed for the benefit of soldiers who had not been on home leave for a year. It explained that if their wives reported that they were pregnant but denied even a hint of infidelity with German civilians or even foreign workers there was no cause for alarm. The cause was probably psychological, induced by over-exertion in the war industries or the abdominal swelling and flatulence caused by the German bread. It was mentioned, too, that overwork was liable to induce infertility and premature ageing. The purpose of the leaflet was to induce feelings of anxiety about conditions on the home front.

- source: Ellic Howe, The Black Game, Queen Anne Press/Futura, London 1982

Publicity Stunts / 1

In the earliest days circus-type ballyhoo had been employed, and the first recorded Press Agent, Harry Reichenbach, was in fact lured away to the 'Moving Pictures' from Barnum and Bailey's Circus. The first film he was hired to publicise was - The Return of Tarzan. His method was effective. He booked into a smart New York hotel just across from the theatre where the picture was opening, and a wooden crate was delivered to his room. He then called room service and ordered fifteen pounds of raw meat to be served for his luncheon. The waiter on arrival let out a piercing yell and dropped the meat... a large lion, wearing a napkin, was sitting at the table. The waiter sued Reichenbach and the headlines blossomed.

Francis X Bushman was nervous about the possible non-renewal of his contract so he hired Reichenbach to impress his Studio by underlining his popularity.
Reichenbach made Bushman walk with him from the Grand Central Station all across New York to the Studio offices. By the time he arrived the easily identifiable figure of Bushman was being followed by enthusiastic thousands, traffic was jammed and the Studio Heads witnessed a most impressive chaos from their windows. What they had not noticed was Reichenbach walking immediately behind Bushman and dribbling several hundred dollars' worth of nickels and dimes through a hole in his overcoat pocket.
- source: David Niven, Bring on the Empty Horses, London 1975
- note: David Niven plays a cameo role in Wu Ming's novel 54 (William Heinemann, London 2005)