Covert Briefs [was Re: Benjamin Truehaft]

[Ron Torrella]

It ain't long, Ben, and you've read it already, but for those who don't
get this .... interesting publication, here goes....

From: CAQ Magazine Article: Covert Briefs
URL: http://www.worldmedia.com/caq/articles/summer_briefs.html

COVERT BRIEFS

  by Terry Allen

  ***** DISCORDANT CUBA POLICY *****



   First the feds tried to break Manuel Noriega by blasting him out of
   his sanctuary with rock and heavy metal music. At the six-week-long
   siege at Waco, Texas, the FBI Top 40 played to drive out the Davidians
   included the sounds of sirens, sea gulls, off-hook telephones,
   bagpipes, crying babies, dying rabbits, crowing roosters and dental
   drills, plus Alice Cooper and, in a particularly vicious touch, Nancy
   Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walking, over and over.

   Now the US is trying to bring Cuba to its knees with untuned pianos.
   Despite the trade embargo, California piano tuner Benjamin Treuhaft
   was granted a special license to ship 126 old pianos and parts to Cuba
   for distribution to music schools and promising students. Treuhaft
   became a common sight in Havana, pedaling his bicycle though the
   streets making house calls to tune and repair local instruments.

   But soon, his Send-a- Piana-to-Havana campaign ran afoul of the US
   government officials who must have been holed up reading Kafka and
   watching Three Stooges movies during the piano campaign's early
   stages. They quickly rallied to action.

   This April, Treuhaft received a notice from the Treasury Department
   announcing its intention to slap him with a $10,000 penalty for
   violating the embargo on trade with Cuba. Tuning with the enemy, said
   his mother, celebrated pinko writer Jessica Mitford, who was hounded
   by the McCarthy witch hunts of the '50s, is still punishable by 10
   years in prison.

   Treuhaft had originally applied to the Commerce Department to export
   the pianos as humanitarian aid and saw his request rerouted,
   bizarrely, to the Office of Missile and Nuclear Technology.
   Apparently, that office failed to recognize the weapons' potential of
   music and eventually gave him the OK. Had I asked to ship TOW missiles
   to Iraq, Treuhaft said, they probably would have approved it right
   away. But pianos took a few extra weeks.

   In the official forms Treuhaft filled out, he pledged that the
   exported items would not be used for the purpose of torture or other
   human rights abuse. He felt secure in that pledge since None of the
   pianos will be painted white, have candalabras placed on them, or be
   played by anyone wearing a sequined jacket. But when Washington
   bureaucrats questioned whether pianos were indeed humanitarian aid
   Treuhaft conceded that the fiendish communists just might find a way
   to use them for military purposes.

   Administration officials, on condition of anonymity, speculated that
   the aim of the policy was actually to protect the pianos since it is a
   true fact that Cubans torture and abuse their pianos by playing salsa
   on them which, according to Treuhaft, involves pounding the keys twice
   as hard as anyone else.

   With the fate of the free world in the balance, US officials are
   standing firm and the mission of musical mercy is currently stalled.
   Meanwhile, Treuhaft continues to threaten democracy as we know it from
   the Underwater Piano Shop he runs in San Francisco, so-named because I
   sometimes tune below C level. On the wall is a photo of Fidel, whom he
   refers to as a nice old fart.
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