TOP SECRET Memo to J. Edgar Hoover

Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was, among other things, a blackmailing organization. “You may be interested in the following information furnished by a local prostitute” was a characteristic beginning for a salacious memo to the director. A report on August 8. 1958 on a Member of Congress was typical:

” [redacted] wife is the secretary to Congressman [redacted] stated that [redacted] prior to marrying the Congressman, was employed in [redacted] at which time she was having an affair with a Negro named [redacted]. She had also at one time carried on an affair with a House of Post Office employee named [redacted] and after marrying the Congressman, continued this association. During the Congressman’s recent illness, [redacted] insisted that he have a male nurse and contacted the Indonesian Embassy to employ a man who she stated had been very highly recommended to her. She endeavored to have an affair with this Indonesian who declined, stating that he is a foreigner and could be deported for misconduct.”

Prince Charles’ Memos to Staff

Prince Charles is a prolific letter writer. The memos and letters he sent to government ministers were the subject of a five year legal battle after a Guardian journalist made an application to see them under British Freedom of Information legislation. “Prince Charles wrote everything down,” his former butler Paul Burrell recalled in his memoir A Royal Duty. “Memos rained like confetti at Highgrove.” Among the examples in Burrell’s book:

Did someone pick up the seeds for the garden?

Is there a bottle bank in Tetbury?

Can you get someone to look at my telephone?

Could the china dish be mended, please?

I never want to see that paper [the Sunday Times] in this house again! As for the tabloids, I don’t want to see any of them either. If anyone wants them, they will have to find them for themselves–and that includes Her Royal Highness!

A letter from the Queen must have fallen by accident into the newspaper basket beside the table in the library. Please look for it.

New Age Priestess Elsa Patton Administers to Madonna

Elsa Patton was the most unforgettable cast member of Bravo’s Real Housewives of Miami. The mother of Marysol Patton, “Elsa the Witch” was often shown casting spells and issuing bon mots like, “I didn’t marry a gringo to have paper flowers,” and “There’s nothing better looking than a macho man dressed like a girl.” 

In 2008, Madonna’s brother Christopher Ciccone published his memoir, Life with My Sister Madonna, which revealed the relationship between his sibling and Elsa the Witch.

“Often, a New Age priestess Elsa Patton–a tall, heavily made-up blond who drives a late-model Rolls Royce–comes to the house with her daughter, Marisol, and sprinkles blessed water around all the doors. Now and again, she takes Madonna and Ingrid [Casares] out on Madonna’s small speedboat, Lola Lola, and gives them a ritual baptism in the ocean.

Once Elsa conducts one of her iconoclastic rituals on me– a treatment that Madonna has regularly, which Madonna explains to me is designed to cleanse the soul. I lie on the bed, wearing all white, and Elsa rubs hot oil with rosemary and other herbs and spices into my body. Then she goes into a trance and starts talking to me in a strange language. This takes precisely thirty-five minutes. When she’s done, she says I have to keep the oils on for the next twenty-four hours. I think I smell like roasted chicken and shower the oil off immediately.

But Madonna believes implicitly in Elsa and her treatments. When it comes to religion and rituals, Madonna’s policy–to be on the safe side– is to cover all bases… Elsa and Marisol are frequent visitors, and Madonna’s soul is repeatedly cleansed.”

Life with My Sister Madonna, Christopher Ciccone, with Wendy Leigh, Simon & Schuster, 2008.