5

Oct. 22, 1961

Dear Ice-cold Lava,

If we are to correspond, I would like to leave Modene out of it. Can we discuss other matters? I am, for instance—believe it if you will—ready for your theory on narcissism. Why don’t you give me some idea of that? I expect your formulations can apply to a few people one knows. Yes, and what you may have to say on psychopathy.

As for myself, I am in a strange place. My career is in irons. No tradewinds blow. Hints, however, of a new wind. A bird streaking across my inner sky turns abruptly to fly back in the direction from which it came. Or, at least, that is what I glimpsed while my eyes were closed. Then, an hour ago, a phone call from your husband. I am to have dinner with him at Harvey’s Restaurant on Saturday, October 28, at 7:00 P.M. General Edward Lansdale, he states, will accompany us. A job for me is to be part of the evening’s agenda, promises your good man Hugh. Then he hangs up.

Do you know what lies behind all this?

Your Harry

October 26, 1961

Dear Harry,

Let me answer your questions later. First off, I think I will take on your curiosity about narcissism and psychopathy. It leads, you see, to a point I want to make about you and, even more, about me. So, herewith, in extreme summary, my thesis on narcissism—a pot of notions!

To begin, cleanse your mind of the common impression that a narcissist is a person in love with himself. That diverts us entirely from the real point. The crux of the matter is that you can detest yourself intimately and still be a narcissist. The key to narcissism: One is one’s own mate. Where relatively normal people are able to express a good share of their love and hate toward others, the narcissist is worn out by these emotions, for Alpha and Omega engage in endless trench warfare within. The self is seeking for an armistice with itself that almost never comes.

This fundamental inability to have relations with others is revealed most clearly in a love affair. No matter how close and loving two narcissists may appear to be, it is merely a reflection of their decision to be in love. Underneath lies spiritual depletion.

Yet, the paradox, Harry, is that no love can prove so intense on occasion, and so full of anguish and torture, as the love of two narcissists. So much depends on it. For if they can succeed in coming close to the other person, they can begin to live in a world outside themselves. It is like taking the leap from onanism to honest copulation.

About psychopathy, I speak less confidently. It is kin to narcissism, yet critically different. While other people are never as real to the psychopath as the inner strife between his Alpha and Omega, the trench warfare of narcissism is now replaced by slashing combat within. Both Alpha and Omega keep raiding each other, looking to gain immediate power. Tension, not detachment, is the prevailing condition. Indeed, this tension is so great that the psychopath can make love and/or attack others physically while feeling no responsibility for the act. After all, a psychopath lives in the dread of not being able to find any action that will decrease his or her tension; whatever offers relief, therefore, carries its own justification. The fastest relief for a psychopath is the sensation of lift-off provided by a sudden shift of psychic authority from Alpha to Omega. That is why psychopaths can be charming one instant, barbaric the next.

Needless to say, the reality is never so simple as my schematics. In life, the psychopath and the narcissist are, in fact, each trying to become more like the other. The narcissist wants to be able to get out of detachment, to act out; the psychopath looks for detachment. It is better to perceive the two as poles in a spectrum of displaced personality that extends across the gamut from the most hermetic narcissism to the most uncontrollable, brutal psychopathy. As a small example, your Modene began, I suspect, as an absolute narcissist—her parents must have doted on her so totally that she was left contemplating nothing but herself. Now, via the ministrations of Sammy G., she is on the road to becoming a bit of a psychopath.

I don’t want you to think of me as being naught but judgmental. What I say of Modene can apply in some degree to myself as well. I, too, am an only child, and no one could have begun as more of a narcissist than myself. (How, after all, could I have conceived of Alpha and Omega if I had not lived with them from early childhood?) So I do not judge Modene—I am well aware that narcissists are drawn toward the psychopathic.

Curiously, yet logically, there is one vice, therefore, that tempts both narcissist and psychopath. It is treachery. The psychopath cannot help himself; in raw state, his treachery is not under his control. (Which is what we mean when we speak of psychopathic liars.) Since the psychopath oscillates between Alpha and Omega more rapidly than most humans, Omega or Alpha feel entitled to violate whatever promise the other made in the previous hour. The narcissist, more congested, tends to explore the nuances of betrayal rather than to exercise it. Always present, however, is that balked desire to break out. Treachery is the means to such acceleration.

So, I come closer to my intimate passion. It is to betray Hugh. Not carnally. My sexual vow is the armature of my sanity. How I know this, I cannot say, but I keep my sexual vows. Yet the urge to betray him is profound. I sublimate such instincts by writing to you. I form a bond with you. An enclave of two. It frees me for other purposes.

You see, I have real intimations of what I desire. The great ship of this nation is not rudderless, but the compass is skewed. I cannot tell you what a shock the Bay of Pigs has been for those of us in the Agency who merely looked on. If we do not know how to steer a course through history, then who can? We are supposed to serve the President, but most of our Presidents have had an inner light so dim that we have been obliged to take the lead ourselves.

Now we have a President who is alive, who can recognize error, is human, vain, wise, willing to learn, and with a keen nose for the balance between prudence and risk. It is crucial that he be well informed. He deserves that. He leans—with one-hundredth part of himself, or do I exaggerate?—upon the Montagues. Nonetheless, that one part in one hundred is very much alive. I believe he is as ready to listen to me as to Hugh.

So I discover that what I learn from Hugh is not enough. I want more. You may speak of this as egregious vanity, but I wish in some most determined part of myself to become my own intelligence center.

It is madness, you will say. Too inchoate for Little Miss Lava.

No, I tell you, not so. Half of everyone in the bloody Agency has the same passion and keeps it in the same closet. Few of us dare to admit to it. I do. I want to know what is going on. I want to influence the steering of the ship. Despite my warps and flaws, I feel as capable of fine judgment as my husband, and he is wiser than anyone I know in the Agency or anyone else in this holy swampland, Washington, D.C.

What, you may ask, can you contribute to our surround of two? Plenty, buddy. I have taken care of that, you see. You were right. Your career was indeed in the doldrums. Hunt failed to come through for you after the Zenith stint. On your performance, he described you as “sporadic in work habits and often distracted.” Perhaps the fault comes down to the time you spent with Modene in bed. You were on the good ship to nowhere.

All the same, I said to Hugh the other day, “You’ve got to do something for Harry.” He answered, “I don’t know that I want to. He bollixed up BLUEBEARD.” It was the first time he admitted that you were Harry Field.

I pointed out to Hugh that you had gone reasonably far. Others in such a squalid op might not have attained anything at all, not even the lady’s lips.

“He didn’t use his position to advantage. He could have gotten so much more. On the other hand, if he was that much in love, then he was singularly lacking in the integrity to tell me to stuff it.” So went Hugh’s judgment.

Do you know, I think he is secretly fond of you. Hugh approves of almost no one’s work, but you are his godson and he does not forget that. We discussed suitable jobs until he came up with what I think is the right one for you. It is to serve as liaison between Bill Harvey and General Edward Lansdale in the new Cuban op that is now shaping up. I don’t have to underline how super-octane this promises to be. I can tell you in confidence that it is called Operation Mongoose in honor of that ferocious ferret from India renowned for its skill in killing rats and poisonous snakes. MO/NGOOSE, you see. MO refers to the Far East, and most conveniently is a Pentagon digraph rather than one of ours. Helms chose it. He thinks it will confuse the nosy among us. The curious in the Agency will assume it’s something we and the Pentagon are up to in Asia.

Actually, Mongoose is overseen by Special Group, Augmented, General Maxwell Taylor as Chairman, standing in for Bobby Kennedy. (If you think Jack is agitated about Cuba, I can assure you that Bobby is virulent on the subject, intimately virulent. So there’s lots of push to get a great deal done. The idea is to overthrow Castro by any variety of means.)

General Lansdale has now been put in charge of Mongoose and, directly under him, representing the Agency contribution (which promises to be nine-tenths of Mongoose), is your old pal Bill Harvey.

Hugh and I discussed it carefully. This is an out-of-category job. It could prove prestigious or nugatory, and that, Harry, is not entirely up to you. You could be in the lap of the gods. Career advancement so often depends on recognizable career slots—this many years spent at minor Desk A, then abroad to minor Station A (read: Uruguay), then larger Desk, larger Station, und so weiter. You, dear boy, are a little out of category and will probably remain so. Liaison, however, will keep you close to some active people. Lansdale, for example. He is, by all reports, a consummate maverick and has had an army career that is not at all typical. He never went to West Point, nor served in the regular army, merely a reserve commission in ROTC. All through the thirties, he worked in advertising and public relations, and during the war for OSS. (Propaganda, I expect.) After VJ Day, he wangled an assignment to the Philippines as a Major in the Reserve, and began to distinguish himself. I’m sure you must know something of his now legendary career. He was immortalized by Graham Greene (invidiously) in The Quiet American and made much of by Lederer and Burdick in The Ugly American. Fact is, he turned the Philippines inside out and proved most instrumental in defeating the Communist Hukbalahap. Next, he just about managed Ramon Magsaysay’s successful bid for the presidency. Recently, has been very close to Diem in Vietnam. The man has credentials. Maverick, but inspired.

The immediate problem was how to sell you to Lansdale. Hugh knows him barely—in fact, Hugh plans to get to know him better at dinner tomorrow night. It was Cal did the deal. I prevailed on Hugh to call Cal in spite of their recent chill over Pigs, and your father, who knows Lansdale and has worked well with him in the Far East, certainly came through. Right on the phone from Japan, he gave the following quote to us which is, indeed, the same recommendation he gave to Lansdale, nothing less than, “Harry’s a good young man and getting better all the time. I’m fortunate in being able to call him my son.” Then he added to Hugh, “Don’t tell your godson. It’ll swell his head.”

Hugh wasn’t about to. I do. For your morale. Which, Harry, you are going to need. The reason Hugh chose Harvey’s Restaurant for your dinner is that you are not only going to be liaison between Lansdale and Harvey, but between Hugh and Harvey. If that doesn’t make you enough of a conjunction, you will also keep nourishing me every step of the way. Just as I am going to keep on feeding you. I know that I am now indulging the worst hubris, but I do believe we are two of the purest spirits in the Agency. Even when it comes to treachery, the CIA still needs purity of intent.

Aren’t I mad? Listen, love, I know that after Berlin, the thought of working for Harvey can hardly appeal to you, but this I will say: Hugh has some absolute grip on Wild Bill. You need fear nothing there. I’m working on Hugh to find out what it is, but can promise that it’s powerful.

I do hope you will keep up your end of things now by giving me a full account of the dinner tomorrow night.

Love, conspiratorial love,

Kittredge