A Fly on the Wall in Barack Obama's White House

"Exactly, sir. Without some indication that you are doing everything possible to track terrorists, we know that the Republicans will try to lynch you."

Courtesy: weaselzippers.us

(PATAGONIA) - White House, sometime in late January, 2008...

"Well, Mr. President, that about wraps up our national security briefing. Will there be anything else?"

"One thing. The total information awareness program, you didn't say anything about that."

"Excuse me, sir. I don't know what you are taking about."

"You know...that program you have to monitor electronic communications. I thought it was called TIA or DARPA or something like that."

"We still have DARPA, sir. That's our technical program to develop new defense strategies."

"What about TIA? Isn't that your data mining program."

"Not any more, sir. Congress cut off our funds for that back in 2003."

"I have it on good authority that the data mining project still exists."

"What authority would that be, sir? You can't mean that you believe Alex Jones?"

"Jesse Ventura, too......and others. It's common knowledge."

"That's classified information, sir, top secret, in fact."

"We'll, I'm the president. I have top secret clearance. Tell me what you've got going on down there"

"It's called PRISM, sir. We record and store phone calls and emails and the search them for signs of terrorist activity."

"How exactly do you do that?"

"You don't want to know that, sir."

"I have the right and responsibility to know."

"That's true, sir, but if information about the details of this program ever leak out, someone may have to take a fall for it."

"So are you telling me that you are the fall guy now and the buck will stop with you?"

"We need this tool to track terrorists, sir. If things get hairy, you can fire me and then figure out what to do next."

"What about my political opponents? I think they know about this and they want me to keep it going."

"Don't worry about them, sir. We've got you covered. We feed them just enough information to keep them reasonably assured that the program is going without violating secrecy codes."

"That's where Alex Jones comes in?"

"Exactly, sir. Without some indication that you are doing everything possible to track terrorists, we know that the Republicans will try to lynch you."

"That was a poor choice of words."

"Sorry, sir. This is my first meeting with a president of color."

"Do I have your word that none of this will ever get out."

"It's top secret, sir. The secret is safe with us."

"OK, I guess that will be all for today, thank you."

"One more thing, sir...."

"What's that?"

"Mrs. Obama would like to pick up some carrot juice and a bunch of radicchio on the way home, sir."

"How do you know that?"

"It just came through on my blackberry, sir."

Eddie Zawaski is a contributing Salem-News.com writer based in Patagonia, Argentina.