This is a guest post by Gregory Widen,
author of Blood
Makes Noise. Gregory studied film and screenwriting
at UCLA, and penned scripts for the films Highlander, Backdraft, and The
Prophecy. He’s a native of Laguna Beach, California and he lives in Los
Angeles. Blood Makes Noise is his first novel.
I remember the
moment I got the idea for Blood Makes
Noise. I was visiting a friend in an unnamed Latin American country who was
a field officer for the CIA. Now, this friend has been involved in all sorts of
craziness, including – on direct orders – supervising not only the murder of
certain bad individuals, but “making it hurt.”
Despite a life of
anecdotes like this, in the nights we spent drinking, the only time I ever saw him
express disgust for anything was the following anecdote: “On 9/11, the FBI
office in Miami was given the photos of the hijackers. This was critical – it had
to get to Washington immediately – and they
sent it by FedEx. Why not e-mail? Because there wasn’t an agent there who
knew how to attach a photo. That is
all you need to know about the FBI.”
I’d already
decided at this point to write a novel titled Blood Makes Noise, centered around the craziness that accompanied
the disappearance of Eva Peron’s corpse in 1955 Argentina. I knew my hero would
be a troubled CIA officer sucked into those events and nearly destroyed by
them. But when you write a novel, character and plot are just two of three
things you need. The third, and often most elusive, is a unique background that
provides the kind of catalyst to propel characters forward beyond the
requirements of plot.
It occurred to
me that I might have just found my catalyst.
As my friend’s
white-gloved butler served us bourbon martinis at precisely six o’clock, I
pressed further. Everyone knows of the historical mistrust between the CIA and
FBI, but I quickly learned just how toxic it had been in South America – to the
point where the CIA and Hoover’s FBI were nearly in open warfare with each
other.
Prior to the
CIA’s creation in ’47, the FBI had always been in charge of spying in South
America. But Truman, who never trusted J. Edgar Hoover, now wanted to hand that
responsibility over to his new agency. From that moment on, Hoover committed
himself to strangling the baby CIA in its crib.
As servants
built a fire in the living room, “drinks” became a cocktail party as various local
spooks arrived. There was the BND (German spy agency) guy, another who’s family
ran Cuban Intelligence, and some current and retired CIA. Working through my
third martini, I soaked up the stories.
Despite Truman’s
change, Hoover managed to keep many of his people in place, effectively creating
an FBI-run CIA within the CIA. As the agency fought to get control, Hoover just
went to greater lengths to discredit it.
As the party devolved,
I remembered a dinner commitment. My friend’s crew decided to join me. Off we went
to a large dinner party most memorable for the moment my friend informed me that
my host was the son of the country’s biggest narco boss. I worried I’d unknowingly
made some terrible mistake. But he only smiled wryly: “No. Thank you. It would
have taken me months to make this meeting happen by accident.”
Both the drinks
and stories kept coming: how in an effort to discredit the CIA, Hoover had
ordered his men – while a CIA team burglarized a foreign embassy – to fire
shots outside to alert the security people within. Or the time the CIA had arranged
the defection of a KGB officer in Buenos Aires and Hoover, wanting the credit –
and to embarrass the CIA – had his boys grab the defector in a restaurant
first. But a CIA team arrived at the same moment and a brawl broke out between
the two groups, trashing the place.
It was chaos in the
CIA stations down there at the time. The old FBI officers still in place did
everything possible to frustrate and humiliate the new arriving CIA personnel, including
burning their files when they were finally ordered out. Those days in South
America, sighed an old hand, were one wild circus.
As evening crawled
to dawn, I knew now the atmosphere my character would be thrust into: a freshly
minted CIA officer arriving in Buenos Aires and going to war against the old
FBI hands still in place. A young man whose greatest threat would turn out not
to be the KGB, but the people in his own embassy.
Walking home
later, I thought, not for the first time: It’s
funny where ideas come from.
