Special Investigator to Interrogate Al Qaeda Prisoners

he White House announced today that a special investigator has been chosen by Attorney General John Ashcroft to question Al Qaeda prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After much consideration, Ashcroft's choice was San Francisco detective "Dirty" Harry Callahan.

"Callahan is one of the best interrogators anywhere," Ashcroft told reporters. "For an investigation of this caliber, we decided to call in someone outside the FBI and CIA to take over the questioning at this point."

Controversy surrounds Callahan, who has been labeled by the ACLU and Serial Killers' Trade Union as a "dangerous, reckless monster" who will stop at nothing until he gets what he wants.

"Say what you will," Ashcroft responded to the charges, "Callahan gets results."

Inspector Callahan, who has earned the nickname "Dirty" Harry among his colleagues, fielded a few questions after Ashcroft's introduction.

A reporter from the Washington Post confronted Callahan about charges of brutality and the disregard for procedure, particularly concerning First Amendment rights. Squinting, Callahan leaned into the microphone and whispered menacingly, "What about the rights of those two buildings?"

Ashcroft began chuckling under his breath until he tumbled out of his chair.

White House officials confirmed Callahan would be traveling to Guantanamo Bay immediately to begin his interrogation of the Al Qaeda "ragheads," in his words. Already Callahan has begun his plan, requesting five minutes alone with each prisoner unsupervised, which was immediately granted by the Ashcroft.

Assisting Callahan in matters of interrogation will be his recently-assigned partner, also from San Francisco, Ruiz de Santo. De Santo, a young officer fresh from the beat to the detective squad, is excited about his opportunity to work with Callahan.

"Sure, he's a little gruff," De Santo said with a cheery smile, "but underneath that I'm sure he's a good guy. You wait and see. After all this I'm going to invite him over to the house for dinner with the wife and kids. He'll be a family man by the time we're done, I'll bet my life on it."

Callahan has recently aroused controversy by calling the trial of alleged Al Qaeda terrorist Richard Reid a "sham" and proposing trials of terrorists be cut short so they could be taken out back and shot on live television. Civil rights advocates were outraged, especially at Callahan's suggestion that current airline policies for dealing with unruly passengers be replaced.

"When I see a whacko trying to light his shoe bomb on fire, I shoot the bastard, that's my policy," stated Callahan.

The White House is optimistic that Callahan will retrieve valuable information that could lead to the dismantling of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, and perhaps even the capture of Osama bin Laden.

"By the time Callahan's through with one of those guys," President Bush said, "we'll know everything from where he was born to how many times his girlfriend farts in bed. The terrorist being questioned, I mean, not Callahan."

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So I needed some start-up capital, right? Since they shut my lights off and won't start them back up until they get a check.

I thought about going to my parents, then I remembered they have no money and would make me do chores or something for it even if they did. I thought about asking Acting-Editor Ramrod Hurley, but that dildo doesn't have access to anything at the commune, even Red Bagel's private stock of Tab is locked in the fridge and he has no combination. I thought about asking someone at the commune for the money, but they'd probably make me do chores, too, and I have an idea what kind of chores Ramon Nootles needs done.

Which left me to ask my sister. I mean, I could ask my brother, in fact I did, but he could only loan me the amount in crystals and I already tried to pay the bill with that. I needed real cash money or credit, and the only person I know is my sister. For those who need the background, my sister is the family outsider, Harvard Law grad, private law practice, does a lot of ACLU work, occasionally puts out a book or something. She's got the critics and liberals fooled, but we all know she's kind of an idiot.

I went to see her at her office and it was worse than I thought—all this big talk of success was just a sham, the place is a real dump. Her law office is all the way up on the 30th floor and she shares it with a bunch of other lawyers, though her name is first, good deal there, I'm really impressed. It's so embarrassing I felt bad for her, no one will even share an office with her. She's in this huge place all by herself, even her secretary must have weaseled a place outside to avoid it. I can't blame her, we shared a room when I was a kid and I know she snores—it would be impossible to catch an afternoon nap with someone who sounds like a motorboat.

She was happy to see me, she asked if I needed work again, but everything was cool since I have the new sitcom in pre-production. She can be cool at times—back when she was doing better and I was on hard times she gave me a job playing Lady MacBeth in her backyard. There were no other actors to act with, and no stage and I had to make the costume, but I got paid pretty well and it was a sweet gig. Sure, I didn't know anything about MacBeth or his Lady, but I substituted the dialogue from a Facts of Life episode and she couldn't tell the difference. She was on the phone most of the time anyway during the show, which I usually hate.

Soon enough I got to the part about asking for money and Addie just nodded and wrote me a check from her big fat checkbook. I told her I'd pay her back, and she said I could pay her back whenever I could. Well, of course, then I said I might not be able to pay it back and she said that was no big deal. I told her I could work it off, but she said she's already seen MacBeth. So we're still kind of in negotiations, I might do some Antony and Cleopatra stuff maybe, if I can get that Who's the Boss? script.

Then, before she took me to lunch, she said, "You know, Clarissa, I was so jealous of you growing up. Mom and dad used to dote over you all the time and say they wished I was as pretty as you and had a job in TV. But then when the acting work dried up and you found it hard to get a job, and I had all my college and developed my skills and everything worked out for me, I realized I was lucky, in the long term. I had the better deal from it all."

Sure, whatever. I nodded and smiled and pretended to think it was not funny, but mostly I was just thinking we should eat some place with ribs. I hope now she doesn't want the money back since I basically worked it off being all like her psychiatrist and stuff.

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Jimmy Riddle Hoffa. The name itself practically oozes mystery. Goopey, gelatinous mystery. Where did he come from? Where is he now? What happened between him coming here and him being wherever he is now? And what's with the kooky middle name?

James Riddle Hoffa, Sr. was born in Brazil in the nineteen tens. Several years later he was spotted in Indiana wearing a fake mustache. Experts are at a loss to explain how a boy of seven made the trek halfway around the globe, other than to say this: Hoffa was one tough bastard. Rumor has it that he holed up in the pancreas of a longshoreman as an infant, traveling the world over before bursting from the man's chest when he was ripe. This reportedly happened during a poker game, and few in attendance were left untouched by the experience, or the splattering gut juices. Asked to comment on the larval Hoffa, poker player Lefty Sanchez was heard to comment: "Sheeeeyit!"

Hoffa came to prominence as a grade-schooler in Indiana, where he organized a Student Union at the age of eight and brought the elementary school to its knees, effectively bringing an end to book-learnin' in the state of Indiana forever. It was an especially sweet victory for Hoffa, who had been demoralized when the Sibling Union he formed with his brother Tom and sister Nancy was crushed when management brought in scab siblings in the form of his newborn twin brothers Maxwell and Chuckie Hoffa.

Jimmy Hoffa dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen after a violent altercation when strikebreakers attempted to teach the class arithmetic. He went to work as a loading ramp at a local grocery warehouse, and eventually worked his way up to dolly, making thirteen cents a day. These were solid wages during the depression, and few dared complain about the working conditions for fear of losing their jobs. The ownership did as it pleased, and often fired men for parting their hair in the middle or spelling their names with a "D".

Workers toiled in thirteen-hour shifts, but were only paid for three hours a day, since the owners refused to pay for walking time and counted breathing as taking a break. Tensions finally came to a head when the owners fired five men for inhaling too much of the warehouse's oxygen, and the young Hoffa took this opportunity to form a worker's union. He was already well known among the workers for having formed several unions during this first three weeks at the warehouse, including the Left-Handed-Man's Union and the Guys-Waiting-In-Line-For-Gas-401. But this was to be Hoffa's most serious union yet, and he rose to the challenge admirably. Hoffa made the union stick and before long the warehouse owners caved and provided the workers with a coffee can to urinate in, ending years of pissing in each other's pockets. It was a major victory for organized labor and a telling harbinger of things to come.

Before long, Hoffa had convinced workers at several neighboring warehouses and dog tracks to join his union, which he was calling the Teamsters Union because he never learned to write that good. Hoffa spent the next several years traveling around the country, getting anyone and everyone to join his union if they weren't in it already, or to join again under a fake name if they were. Within a decade, the Teamsters had 8.7 billion members, which was impressive both because Hoffa had enlisted everyone himself, and also because that figure was nearly double the world's population at the time. No one was sure how many of those members were deceased, imaginary or canine, but the numbers spoke for themselves and business owners practically shit concern when Hoffa mentioned the word "strike." This was mainly because they also belonged to the union and were tired of getting splinters from carrying around picket signs all the time.

Everything was fantastic for Hoffa until he was arrested in 1967 and charged with trying to unionize the Mafia, and keeping the entire $1.9 billion Teamsters Pension Fund under a mattress in his house. Hoffa was sentenced to ten years in prison, and was forced to defer the Teamsters Presidency to his protégée, Frank Fitzsimmons. In 1971, then-President Richard M. Nixon, a three-time Teamster himself (also under the names Michard N. Rixon and Bobo Freelove) granted Hoffa a pardon, under the condition that he would stop trying to unionize the Nixon family.

Hoffa made a bid to regain control of the Teamsters Union upon his release, running on the platform of needing to double-unionize the union members to protect them from the tyranny and unfair practices of the Teamsters Union itself. One day in 1975, Hoffa was invited to a meeting with a Teamsters official and a local mob boss to explain what the hell he was talking about, and he was never seen again.

Local police and federal investigators were confident they would find Hoffa's body before long, since it was very likely he had unionized his kidnappers during his disappearance and finding them would be a simple matter of searching the records for a Kidnappers 299 Union. Unfortunately these efforts proved to be fruitless, and neither Hoffa's body nor his assailants were located in the next 25 years.

Rumors abounded following Hoffa's disappearance, and over the years several theories have developed explaining Hoffa's whereabouts. Law enforcement agencies believe Hoffa was kidnapped and killed by the Mafia, who were concerned that by regaining control of the Teamsters Union, Hoffa would succeed in unionizing the Mafia and then nobody would ever get killed. But few can agree on where Hoffa's body ended up.

Some believe his body can be found buried under the end zone at Giants Stadium, or they point to the Giants' "Take Home a Chunk-o-Hoffa" promotional give-away from during their 1976 season. Others believe Hoffa's body was cemented into the walls of an L.A. nightclub, or a parking garage that was built in Michigan the year he disappeared. Still others believe his body was shot into space using a gigantic catapult operated by Don Knotts, though law enforcement officials have been reluctant to endorse this theory.

But where, you ask, did Jimmy Hoffa's body really end up?

Ever eat a Slim Jim? Now don't ever let me hear you say that the Mafia doesn't have a sense of humor.

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