Before that she talked for a while about America’s deep conservatism and their ongoing fear of socialism, and I told her about how the CIA, or maybe it was the FBI, funded major exhibitions of Abstract Expressionist artwork in Europe at the beginning of the Cold War in order to show intellectual Europeans that in America an individual was free to express themselves in whatever way they wanted to, whereas in Russia an artist was basically producing propaganda for the Communist regime. It annoyed me that I’d said ‘the CIA, or maybe it was the FBI,’ because really I knew very well it was the CIA, the FBI handle domestic affairs, obviously, and don’t get involved with that sort of thing and I don’t know why I mentioned them, now it sounded like I didn’t know what I was talking about. You can’t say to someone ‘the CIA, or maybe it was the FBI,’ and expect them to take you seriously. [...]