In July 1969 President Richard Nixon & CIA director Richard Helms paid a secret visit to UCLA for a meeting with Head of Computational Studies Walther Fuchs.
It was after dark and Nixon & Helms were smuggled in a rear fire exit. Both were disguised and wore false beards and glasses in case they were spotted by some inquisitive student working late on her dissertation.
In the study of Fuchs the 3 relaxed with Havana cigars and Hennessy Cognac. The study was lit by moonlight filtering through the thick drape curtains & a single green reading lamp on the worn teak desk.
The walls were lined with antique leather bound books and a few more modern tomes with titles like “packet mode switching” and “The fundamentals of Electricity”
Nixon exhaled slowly, blowing a couple of smoke rings before taking a large sip on his Cognac.
Helms eyes moved around the room constantly as if searching for something elusive.
Nixon – “Walter, we need your help & what you do must remain absolutely secret, you can’t even tell your Mother”
Fuchs – “Of course, anything for my Country Sir”
Helms – “we want you to develop a system which we can use to capture peoples communications”
Nixon – “….it should appear entirely voluntary, so that they divulge their innermost secrets at will”
Helms – “It will develop over time with more & more people becoming increasingly interconnected…..”
Nixon – “if you help us we will invest billions of dollars here at UCLA & develop a whole new industry to support it’s growth….”
Helms – “we will use it to fight International Crime & to defeat the Commies…”
Fuchs – ” there……there is something I’m working on it’s called ARPANET”
Helms – “sounds good but why don’t we call it the International Net……..or INTERNET..”
Nixon exhaled and blew smoke rings across the room.
2012 has been a pretty miserable year with freakish weather on both sides of the Atlantic, in the U.K the highest rainfall since records began saw people washed out of house and home and businesses ruined. In the USA Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast and several lives were lost, homes ruined & businesses destroyed.
2000 people rioted today, at least 40 people were injured & thousands of police were called to quell the upsurge. This wasn’t on the High St but at Apple’s main manufacturing site, Foxconn, in China.
In the U.K today we slumped to another level of misery with unemployment hitting 2.57 million, the highest for 17 years. What a tragedy especially for our youth with levels above 21% for 16 – 24 year olds.
We have seen trillions wiped off stock markets worldwide, the FTSE 100 has lost over 10% of it’s value in the last week alone & our TV screens have been filled with hysterical traders and concerned politicians.
On 4th July 1776 the 13 American Colonies declared their independence from the British Crown & established the United States of America by publishing the Declaration of Independence.
There are always plenty of laughs to be had in BBC’s “The Apprentice” – that’s what its all about after all, rather than a serious look at
