Issue #23/78, November 18 - December 2, 1999  

The Russian government has a problem: Western journalists writing negative-Nancy pieces about their campaign in Chechnya. So they sick'd the FSB on snoopie First World journos, and wound up detaining self-proclaimed Northern Irish Catholic oppressor and Eton graduate Anthony Loyd, correspondent for The Times of London. Loyd was subjected to a less-than-harrowing detention, in which he was accused of being a spy, which, in spite of his very public service in the Gulf War for the British Army, he simply laughed off. Afterwards, Loyd was able to milk his rap session with the FSB for all the fame it was worth and then some, much to our egos' annoyance. By Loyd's own account, the once-feared heirs to Dzherzhinsky, Yezhov and Beria behaved more like Andy Griffith and Don Knotts than like the human rights monsters that they're supposed to be.

Ever-anxious to ingratiate ourselves with the powers-that-be, especially if it means harming our competitors, we here at the eXile decided to offer our services to the FSB so that the next time they detain a Western journalist, they will be able to effectively torture him or her and extract the desired confession they failed to squeeze out of Loyd. So here it is, the eXile's Top Ten Tips on how to get a Western journalist admit that he's a spy:

1. After you have strapped him to a chair and bound his wrists to the armrest, you produce pictures of his corporate Volvo, and threaten to strip it of its temporary tax-exempt status
2. Place him in a damp cellar room overnight with water dripping slowly from a pipe; in the morning, produce a print-out of both his telephone number and the telephone number of his overseas literary agent. Threaten to put a block on all phone calls to and from his agent.
3. Place his head in a vise, and strap him to a table. Then, produce copies of articles from the Moscow Times and Interfax's English-language service, each attached to a cut-out copy of the suspected journalist-spy's own bylined articles in his own newspaper dated days after the Times' and Interfax articles, proving that he merely rewrote local copy and sold it to his editor overseas. Then, threaten to mail the evidence to his editor.
4. Deprive the suspect of sleep for two days in order to loosen his will. Then threaten to send translated copies of menus from several budget restaurants around town, proving that he's milking his newspaper's expense account far in excess of what he should be doing.
5. Tweeze the suspect's eyes open, Clockwork-Orange-like, and force him to watch video and slides of each and every Serb killed by NATO's bombing campaign, while reading aloud said suspect's own disingenuously angry anti-war articles about Chechnya. Not that this will work--the suspect will likely only become more convinced of both his and NATO's righteousness--which is why you'll have to end the three-day interrogation by detaining his maid and producing a draft law barring all foreign journalists from employing maids. He will cave within minutes.
6. Place the subdued suspect's leg over a very, very slow-roasting fire. Force him to brush a marinade on his leg at regular one-hour intervals, while happily boasting, in a ridiculous 1930's Negroidal accent, "M'm, m'm! Dat's finger-lickin good!" Just as the skin begins to bubble, produce a draft law requiring foreign journalists to pass a Russian language proficiency exam which will prove that the journalist-spy knows a). The Cyrillic alphabet and b). how to say "hello" and "goodbye" in Russian.
7. Introduce his girlfriend to a bunch of Latin guys at Voodoo lounge.
8. Threaten to give scoops to his friends so that they get promoted before he does.
9. Offer him a real job in investment banking or law.
10. Just wendel him, baby.