Lewis Lapham Lights Up

He's sitting behind a desk that's buried under towers of books. He is, as always, dressed elegantly: a starched white shirt with gold cuff links beneath an impeccably tailored blue suit with a natty paisley handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket.

"The second question was: You're coming in on the final tack at the Hay Harbor on Fishers Island in the late afternoon -- what tack do you take? I don't remember what the answer was, but I got it right because I had sailed at Fishers Island."

He pauses theatrically, telling his story with the unhurried confidence of a man who is rarely interrupted.

"The third question was: They mentioned the name of a girl who was known on the Ivy League circuit for being a ravenous nymphomaniac. And the question was: Does she wear a slip?"

He takes another drag, emits another cloud. "I didn't know, because I'd never had carnal knowledge of the young lady. I explained that I'd heard rumors of French silk and Belgian lace but I couldn't vouch for my sources."

At that point he walked out of the interview, he says, disgusted with the know-it-all smugness of his CIA interrogators. "I said, 'Gentlemen, I'm sorry I've wasted your time. Goodbye and good luck.' "

Then he went home to San Francisco, where his grandfather had once served as mayor, and he began his journalism career as a reporter for the Examiner.

Wow! What a story! It explains so much. Not only does it hint at why the CIA has screwed up so often, from the Bay of Pigs to 9/11, it also suggests why Lapham -- the blue-blooded great-grandson of a founder of Texaco -- has been lobbing elegantly crafted literary grenades at America's ruling elite for decades.

It's a great story, so great that it sounds . . . just a tad too good to be true. Which calls to mind Lapham's "Tentacles of Rage" fiasco.

That essay, a spirited attack on "the Republican propaganda mill," ran in the September 2004 issue of Harper's. In it, Lapham wrote of watching the 2004 Republican convention and "listening to the hollow rattle of rhetorical brass and tin." Alas, the magazine arrived at the homes of subscribers before the Republicans had actually convened. Bloggers had a blast carving Lapham new orifices.

But he swears his CIA story is really, truly true. And he apologizes for faking his convention coverage. Well, sort of.

"It was a mistake, but to my mind a very minor one," he says. "I put it in to meet the September deadline, to give it timeliness. . . . I wasn't putting words in anybody's mouth or remarking on something that didn't happen."