I have never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but I do think that there is a long-standing conspiracy against me, and I am worried about it. Just for the record, I am going to list some of the things that have happened that seem to me to be the result of attempts by sinister forces to sabotage my life.
1. Two men visited my personal physician in 1988 and attempted to question him and to obtain copies of my medical records. They would not show proper identification and he would not give up the material requested, or so I have been told.
2. When Communion was a bestseller, my film agent showed it only to one Hollywood studio head, whom everybody knew was about to be fired over the failure of the movie Ishtar. Everybody except me, that is. He was let go and nobody else even got a look at the book. Why not? It ended up being made independently, on too small a budget to be effective.
3. After a series of legal shennanigans, the film was pulled from distribution after being shown only for a week in a small number of theaters.
4. In 1998, Parade Magazine published a false story to the effect that I had discovered that I had temporal lobe epilepsy and had made a contribution to the Epilepsy Foundation, for which they were very grateful. This story was entirely false. I called the Epilepsy Foundation. They had never heard of me. I called the magazine, and the editor I talked to said that the story had come from their publisher, who had gotten it from 'friends of yours in the Air Force.' He was so very pleased, until I told him that the story was a lie. They retracted it, but the damage was done. My book Confirmation, published a few weeks after the story appeared, did poorly. At stop after stop on my author tour, people asked me about my temporal lobe epilepsy. I will never forget speaking at the Pentagon bookstore, with a row of Air Force personnel in uniform sitting there with pure hate in their eyes.
5. By 2003, Unknowncountry was growing and we had an active subscription system. Suddenly, just at the end of that year, the company that managed our subscriptions, Payment Online, ceased to function. They were no longer processing any billing. I could not get in touch with them. They had been richly helpful before, but now became completely silent. Worse, they would not stop billing me, not even after I got an attorney to help me make certain that I had correctly cancelled the contract. I finally had to close my bank account. I could not get any information out of them about my subscribers. They simply stopped all communication. Out of worry that some kind of criminal activity might be involved, I informed the FBI. I never received any response from them, either. And Payment Online was and continues to be a viable company, serving many customers successfully. I think that the same hidden presence that has been trying to ruin my life and destroy my work for years had a hand in what was done to me.
6. After I published my book Warday, I was warned by a staffer in Ted Kennedy's office that Brent Scowcroft, then the Chairman of the National Security Council, was furious about the book, and to expect trouble. Soon thereafter, I received an extremely thorough tax audit. Initially, I was given a huge bill, but was able to force them to acknowledge the truth: that they had counted all transfers of money from checking to savings as new income. In fact, I ended up with a small refund, but not without a terrific fight. In my opinion, this audit was politically motivated and aimed at destroying me financially.
7. In October of 2010, I received notice of another tax audit, from the IRS office in Los Angeles. I requested that the audit be transferred to Texas where my accountant and all of my records are. They waited until March to tell me that they would not move it. We appealed and it is now nearly June and still no word. An appeal to the Taxpayer's Advocacy office has thus far received no response. I can certainly do the audit in Los Angeles, but I have to say that I don't trust this situation at all. I think it is another political audit.
8. And now comes the censorship of the original edition of the Key. Incredible, and equally incredible that I didn't notice it at the time. What happened was that somebody very deftly edited the book after I had already signed off on it. Not only that, the edits, I have subsequently discovered, were actually in the proof pages I sent to the printer. So they happened when those pages were in my possession, but were not done by me. (I did a lot of editing to the proofs, but most of it was correcting typos and obscure phrases, etc.) For a more detailed discussion of what happened, read this journal entry. The 2011Tarcher/Penguin edition currently available contains the original manuscript, as it was intended to be published. After I made this all public, I was dogged by people claiming that I had faked it all in order to sell books. How dare they. Insensitive, stupid swine--or people with a hidden agenda. There is even one person out there claiming that the "edits" make the book better. Sure, get rid of anything about mind control. Stick in things about evil aliens that don't exist to confuse people about who the sinister forces around here really are. That's great editing! The book was CENSORED.
I am sick and tired of all this. I don't know what to do about it except make it public. There's nothing I can do to stop it, but it has gone a long way toward ruining my life, and I think that it is just plain shameful. I have achieved something truly magnificent, which is coherent, focused contact with another level of reality. Instead of being honored for this, as I certainly deserve, I have been ostracized, demonized and hammered almost to a pulp. My books go completely unreviewed. It's as if I'm dead, as far as the community of my literary peers is concerned. When I go to conventions, people I have known for years simply stare at me from a distance, afraid to show the slightest sign of recognition. Honest reviewers cannot in conscience trash my books, so they, also, remain silent. If I should ever write anything that they feel they can trash, God help me, I'll be reviewed everywhere.
I'm tired of it and I want what I deserve from this society, recognition of the value of what I have done, not this continual sinister response. It is a dreadful way to treat anybody, let alone somebody who has worked as hard and as honestly as I have and has, in fact, created something that could be the basis for a new flowering of humanity, at a time when the powers that be have entirely failed and have betrayed the human race, and have no further reason to be respected in any way whatsoever.
I DEMAND RECOGNITION!!!!!! I WANT WHAT I DESERVE, DAMN IT!!!! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!!!!!!! *pounds fist*
