Dear Crew of the USS Tom Clancy, I hope you’re making it through the inclement weather if you’re in a place where the weather is inclement. Otherwise I hope you’re making it through the winter alright, wherever you are. Thank you so much for reading The Hunt for Tom Clancy. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, or giving a paid subscription to a friend or enemy of yours. Matt Need something to do while snowed in? Over 100 dispatches in the archives. Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share

• • I wonder how long fingerprints remain on file with the New Mexico State Police if they’re attached to an unsolved breaking and entering complaint from the President’s office at the United World College of the American West. A quarter century ago, you see, someone (who wasn’t wearing gloves) got drunk at the party DJ’d by a Serbian anarchist. Then they got the bright idea to shimmy out a second floor window and crawl across the metal veranda roof of the Montezuma Castle until they got to the turret. • • They then inserted a butter knife (procured from the dish-room next to the Chihuly Chandeliers) up the gap between the upper and lower bay windows. With just the right amount of patience and tenacity, one could maneuver the latch on the window, from locked to unlocked • • . Then, palms against glass, one could push the window up and obtain entry to the office. One should have been wearing gloves, but in fairness, one was an idiot for much of their life. From that point, it was only a matter of minutes to completely redecorate the office with a roll of toilet paper taken from the downstairs bathroom next to the portrait of King Hussein and Queen Noor in the lobby of the first property west of the Mississippi to receive the label “America’s treasure” from the White House Millenium Council. (https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/Initiatives/Millennium/index.html) That Council was an organization run by then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, established by Executive Order 13072 in 1998—two years before the year two thousand. The Montezuma Castle got the designation under Section 6 of that executive order: (6) Make recommendations to the Secretary of the Interior regarding the provision of assistance from funds made available for Save America’s Treasures in the Historic Preservation Fund to public and private entities that are protecting America’s threatened cultural treasures. These treasures include significant documents, works of art, maps, journals, and historic structures that document and illuminate the history and culture of the United States. Three years after the executive order and 45 million dollars later the Castle was fully restored; it’d once been a retreat for the wealthy and tubercular or rheumatic, owing to its proximity to the Montezuma Hot Springs. These springs, sacred to the Jicarilla Apache, were a place of peace and healing before the U.S. Army took it over—daanzho, ha antsi—idn tse go, do do ne se—and, according to Pecos Pueblo people, the raising, rearing and education site of the young Emperor Montezuma. He got airlifted by Eagles back to Mexico when it was time for him to take the throne. After the Army took it over, a man The two upper floors were girls’ dormitories—Aconcagua and Chomolungma—in one wing, classrooms in another, where high school students read history textbooks written by Henry Kissinger. In the Queen Anne style turret, the ground floor was a sitting room used for flute practice, and the upper floor housed the President’s office, which, one day in 2001 got toilet papered by parties unknown. In 1978, back when the property was still owned by the Jesuits but no longer acting as a seminary, Rangoon Productions leased the property to film a low budget horror film called “The Evil.” Distributed by New World Pictures, “The Evil” is about a psychiatrist named C.J Arnold (played by Richard Crenna, who would later play Colonel Troutman in the Rambo series) who buys an abandoned mansion built over hot sulphur pits. Arnold’s plans to set up a drug rehabilitation center run into trouble when, in the basement of the structure, he finds a trapdoor to hell. The evil house takes them hostage Devilish hijinks ensue; Felicia is attacked in her sleep by a ghost that beats her and tears her clothing off, Peter tries to rappel out of the second story turret but spontaneously combusts before he can get down the rope, hell hounds run through the property, Mary’s corpse comes back alive and gets electrocuted, the Civil War general who once owned the property possesses Caroline, the Devil breaks the psyschiatrist’s mind in the Pit. The whole thing’s on youtube if you want to watch it. That’s it for this dispatch from The Hunt for Tom Clancy. Thank you for reading…and if you want to know more… Matt