Fusion's Fractured Fairy Tale

February 24, 1995. Having met the requirements stipulated under North Carolina Law, Greg Dority, #13 is issued a Security Guard and Patrol license.

For whatever reason (see Simon Winchester passage), Greg finds himself in Albania, and makes the acquaintance of Shaun Going, who makes the news by being arrested with his cousin and two UNMIK police officers on their way back to Kosovo from Montenegro.

Maclean's Magazine, in Canada, does a story on Shaun Going, and Greg Dority is quoted in the article:

"Shaun took responsibility and helped his Albanian workers escape," says Greg Dority, head of Sterling Security Inc., a Washington, N.C.-based consulting firm that specializes in the Balkans. "Chaotic and dangerous times tell a lot about a person. Shaun is one of the good guys in the region."

"Shaun puts together things that have been destroyed by war," said Dority. "He's one of the bigger builders in Pristina."

This doesn't really tell us a lot about Greg, but one of the other sources, from the article, Simon Winchester, has written a book on his experiences in the Balkans during the Kosovo war, a fact nicely pointed out by Fusion himself.

If you can find the August 21, 2000 issue of Maclean's magazine you will see an article about Canadian Shaun Going, who was arrested by the Yugoslav apparat in Montenegro the first week of August last year.

Both author Winchester and Mr D are quoted in the article. This is interesting in another sense because it lends credence to certain speculation about an event in Winchester's next book "The Fracture Zone."

During the Kosovo War, Winchester stops over in Tirana before joining General Jackson in Macedonia. On pp 174-75 he describes a dinner at the Black Rooster where he, his assistant, the aforementioned Mr Going, and "an American named ****, who came from North Carolina" got together.

Since Winchester has been associated with MI-6 long before his heroics in the Falklands and Buenos Aires in 1982, Mr Going is rather well connected, and Mr D is, well ... Mr D -- it would have certainly been interesting no doubt to be privy to that conversation only hours before the Brits went in to Kosovo...

The following is an excerpt from Winchester's The Fracture Zone: a Return to the Balkans

Shaun Going's anecdote is included at the beginning of the excerpt for completeness' sake, while the 'meat and potatoes' are bolded.

The old customs and blood feuds between families remains a powerful force in Albanian tradition. I was told of a young man from a southern village, a university-educated, English speaking engineer named Tony who worked in a factory in Tirana, who had met a young woman at a carnival earlier in the year and had playfully pinched her backside. She had thought little of the incident, had laughed it off - indeed, had been rather flattered. But a few days later she made the mistake of mentioning what had happened, in passing, to her brother. The brother in turn told their father, and then a sudden thundercloud descended.

The family patriarch decided that, in line with the ancient customs of his clan, the girl's honor had been besmirched. Vengeance should now be wrought. An example should now be made.

"And so, despite the protests of the girl," I was told "her brother and another boy from the family took the bus down from Kukes, where they lived up north, and they went down to the village where the young man lived. They rounded up all the young men in the family - not just the bottom pincher, but all of his brothers and his cousins in the village - and they took knives to them and sliced off their noses. Just cut them off, there and then. No questions, no arguments. They told the men why it had happened, that it had been ordered by the clan leader to make their position known, and that the mutilated fellows should never dare set foot in Kukes again. And they took off and went back home.

"Everyone understood. There was no question of a crime having been committed, except for the bottom pinching that started it all. There was no question of an investigation or of any further punishment. That, so far as everyone was concerned, was an end to the matter."

Except it wasn't quite. The young engineer, who would then come to the Tirana office wearing a small handkerchief taped to his forehead, which hung down and obscured the gaping and cartilaginous hole in his face, saved up money to have plastic surgery in Italy. His employer begged him not to: The sum he had saved, a thousand dollars, may have been difficult to come by, and a third of the Albanian average annual income, but it would not buy a satisfactory replacement. But the boy went anyway, and had something grafted onto his face that looked much like a big toe, only lopsided. He had since gone back to his village, ashamed ever to show himself again, taking comfort only in the knowledge that his brothers and cousins looked as ugly as he did.

I was told the story of Tony by the one friend I had in Albania - an Irish-Canadian engineer from Calgary, whom I had encountered many years before on Sakhalin Island, in the Russian Far East. He name (sic) was Shaun Going, and he ran a company called DRC, Inc., which specialized in "construction and disaster services". What that meant, basically, was that wherever in the world was in need of urgent repair, for whatever reason - war, earthquake, hurricane - he and his men would swarm in and make good and mend. Hi had been in Sakhalin trying to put up houses for the oilmen who were beginning work in a place ruined by years of Communist neglect. Now he was here in Tirana, building encampments for the refugees. And he was readying himself for Kosovo because, he knew, "just as soon as the war is over, people will need to have new houses, new offices, new everything. I have the men and the equipment, and I can go in like a small task force. It's exciting stuff!"

Shaun Going was an eternally amusing, energetic man, the kind of perpetually upbeat figure for whom nothing seemed ever to be a problem - though I knew from Sakhalin Island that his business had been run fairly close to the wind, and that he had never amassed the kind of fortune that one suspected could be made out of the world's endless supply of disasters. Here he had a worthwhile contract with NATO, and he had already, "through contacts," acquired a plot of land in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

"The moment the soldiers get there," he said excitedly, "they're going to need showers, latrines, offices. I'll send in a team within hours of the invasion. I'll build them all they need in double-quick time. then I'll hang around, bring in more people - rebuild the housing. I guess it's pretty bad over there, huh?" And he gave me a slew of telephone numbers, and asked me whether, if I managed to get into Kosovo, I might call him with an assessment of the damage that had been done. "I need to know how much to bring in, in the way of material, men, you know. A call from you, from someone on the spot, would be very helpful."

Mr. Going was a hustler, all right. But on the other hand he seemed to be having so much fun doing what he did, he seemed to take so positive and optimistic an attitude to it and was clearly so well liked by so many of the Albanians I met - "Mr. Going is the King of Albania" I was told, unprompted, by a total stranger who had heard of him - that it would seem churlish to suggest that he was a man who exploited human misery. And besides, who was I, or who was any writer who came to these parts to see and write about wars and disasters, to pass any judgement at all? Wars and disasters throw up all kinds of humanity, and Shaun Going was one of those you meet on the periphery, not as noble as the fighters perhaps, but yet with his own kind of nobility, for sure.

He took us to a restaurant called the Black Rooster, which has a courtyard with a thatched roof that was kept wet and dripped sheets of water into old stone runnels, and we ate trout from Lake Ohrid - a fish so rare, and from a lake so clear and deep that Enver Hoxha banned anyone but himself from fishing it, on penalty of thirty year's hard labor. the fish was interesting, but rather more so was the man Shaun brought as his guest - an American named Greg, who came from North Carolina, said he was a journalist working for George magazine in New York, and by his own admission paced the streets of Tirana at all hours of the night gathering, as he put it, "financial intelligence."

I never quite knew what to make of him. He was tall, languid, educated, he spoke with an elaborately courteous southern drawl and he dressed impeccably. He had a strange accent, an odd manner: He kept referring to "the province" which he claimed to visit regularly, when he was speaking of Kosovo, and on those few occasions he used the word he called it Koss-oh-vo, with a long second o. He referred to his present home as being in a nation called Alb-ah-nia.

He gave the impression, as I am sure he half-intended, that he was some kind of American spy - which, when I compared him with the handful of real spies I knew, he almost certainly was not - or else was an extremely inept one. His journalistic contacts were far fewer than he suggested at first, and when I pressed him he could cite only having done an occasional piece on local casinos for a Texas-based journal devoted to gambling. I was puzzled by him, and after spending half a day wandering the back streets fo the city with him and getting hopelessly lost, I concluded that he was probably one of those Walter Mittyish characters who are often thrown up by the atmospheres of strange cities like Tirana - sad men who attach themselves, limpetlike, to the journalists and other temporary figures who briefly settle during the crisis, who eke out an existence in a more drab and banal way than they pretend, and who then, and before they are discovered, pack up and move on somewhere else. I had seen such people before, in Kabul, in Beirut, in Buenos Aires, and he seemed to fit the modus operandi. But then again, maybe Greg was indeed a senior spymaster for the Albanian desk back at the circus, and I had been royally duped.

At any rate, Greg registers here on FreeRepublic and starts posting on or around the beginning of March under the nom de plume Fusion, referencing articles from the still fictitious or non-web accessible "Albania Briefings", to be later written by himself.

In order to get these articles online outside of FreeRepublic, Greg contacts the webmasters of Beaufort County Now, a web page covering his home county in North Carolina, and offers to start writing a column, "The G. Spot" (Charmingly risque', n'est pas?)

This is Greg Dority writing. I wanted to take a moment and tell you both how much I enjoyed visiting with you Tuesday. In 45 minutes I learned more about the local political scene than one could garner in a month of reading the WDN. Thanks for your insight -- especially you Ashley, your views on the dynamics of national political races is most appreciated -- I hope to learn more in future visits.

Stan, if the offer of writing a column for Beaufortcountynow.com is still open I think I would like to give it a shot. I am well experienced with internet activism and like to work on the longer, more substantive, pieces. I have thought about it some and would suggest an initial series of four columns, running one about every two weeks.

The first one would be entitled "The Republican Way of Doing Business" or something along those lines. This piece would focus on a program I am quite familiar with that Senator Helms is pushing very hard now. In a nutshell, an American firm from Raleigh is preparing to privatize four wood mills in the Serb half of Bosnia in a project that, after two years of development, has escalated to one with significant Foreign Policy ramifications for the new administration.

The North Carolina bid has been declared the winner this week and the folks from Raleigh head back to Bosnia for negotiations early next month. Senator Helms has been very active in steamrolling European red tape and pushing this plan forward. The final result will be much cheaper wood for North Carolina furniture makers (they import a good deal from China now) and extensive exports to Bosnia for North Carolina saw mill equipment manufacturers -- as well as providing a significant Foreign Policy victory for President Bush (In the six years since Dayton, Bill Clinton's team failed to sign a single privatization deal in country).

I realize this type of article might be a bit heavy for local readers, however it would serve a number of purposes besides introducing the readers to the series. First, it shows that Republicans know how to compete in the global market on a far higher plane than Democrats who have forgotten what "free markets" mean. This is significant in Beaufort County where the Democrat controlled machine is destroying the local economy and their medieval efforts to bring in new business have been dismal to say the least.

Secondly, it provides original sourcing on a story that is going to get a fair amount of attention when it breaks in the next month or so. When the Financial Times and/or Business Week are running sidebars about Americans privatizing in Bosnia, our initial national audience is going to remember that they first saw it on beaufortcountynow.com. This provides increased readership and credibility for the next piece which transitions well from this one.

"Will Jesse Run? (Of Course!)" is the second piece. We know he is so we might as well take the lead and run with the story first. Senator Helms and his staffers are going to be well aware of Beaufortcountynow.com after our first commentary and this will help me in getting friends and colleagues to go on the record with quotes well before his August announcement date. I can assure you our conservative friends will pick up on this piece and link several hundreds (at least) of new readers to the site.

Once we have demonstrated to our Beaufort County core readers that we know what we are talking about, I think we should switch to the local scene and take a very hard examination of Eve Clayton for the third piece. I don't want to go into to much detail in email but I have rather strong suspicions she is not all she claims to be -- and may in fact be involved in criminal activities with her husband. I think we need to present our readers with a hard -- but fair -- look at their congressional representative.

Hopefully this schedule allows us to run the fourth piece as President Bush's next European trip is winding down in late July. As you are probably aware, since Putin made his surprise stopover in Kosovo Sunday, the White House has been leaking that President Bush will go to Kosovo (Camp Bondsteel) at the end of the trip. This is very significant. Wednesday (today) NATO is meeting and will probably at some point soon decide to invade/intervene (without US involvement) in Macedonia to halt the civil war between the government and US backed KLA separatists. This is not something the average person sees in the WDN each day but it will represent a huge foreign policy decision for the President and may further divide the cabinet factions (Powell / Rumsfeld, Cheney).

I was in Kosovo before, during, and after the NATO war in 1999 and have excellent sources on the ground and in various agencies of the governments involved. I write a good deal on this topic and I can assure you that following the sequencing of pieces 1-3 this one will have significant national (and international) readership, especially if we can time it to run a day or two before he reaches Kosovo.

This may be a more involved outline than you were looking for however I hope it gives you some ideas of my thoughts on the matter. If after the initial four pieces we think we have something we could take a break in August and resume after Labor Day which would give me more time to learn about the local scene and what is going on in Beaufort County. Future pieces could then also serve as a platform for examining ideas you and local Republicans might wish to develop.

Regardless, as mentioned before, it was great meeting you guys after hearing so much about you and I hope we continue to correspond. Let me know what you think about the writing project and even if you just absolutely hate it don't hesitate to tell me that either. Honesty always the best policy and criticism of the work comes with the territory -- as I am sure both you fellows are well aware.

Thanks for signing on. Ashley, Legrande and myself are very much looking forward to your first entry.

Considering the level of your dissertation, I feel many of our readers will have to put on our "thinking hats" so we can get a handle on the commentary. Well maybe I'm just speaking for myself but a little "brain food" never hurt anybody - especially our readers.

What follows are a series of columns stylistically and gramatically indistinguishable from Fusion's posts here on FreeRepublic.

In Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, and now in Macedonia -- I've seen what dedication and brutal efficiency in the usage of approved Western methodologies can result in. Every country mentioned above has seen new governments brought to power in the last half decade -- with the exception of Macedonia which will join the list by the end of the summer.

This is G checking in after my visit to Washington, DC last week. As you are well aware by now, the NATO attempt to arrest alleged war criminal Radovan Karadzic last Friday in Bosnia was a spectacular failure. His Bosnian Serb security force had been tipped off to the raid and was ready -- resulting in more than a dozen SFOR casualties and several British special forces operatives killed on the ground. From Brussels, to London, to DC they are in shock now -- and scrambling to keep the lid on this story.

By this time, Greg and Fusion are posting to Beaufortcountynow.com and Freerepublic sequentially, with the article appearing on Beaufortcountynow.com in order to be presented as 'legitimate' on FreeRepublic.

I concluded that he was probably one of those Walter Mittyish characters who are often thrown up by the atmospheres of strange cities like Tirana - sad men who attach themselves, limpetlike, to the journalists and other temporary figures who briefly settle during the crisis, who eke out an existence in a more drab and banal way than they pretend, and who then, and before they are discovered, pack up and move on somewhere else.

Poor Stan and Ashley. Little did they know what they were getting into. They should have stuck to BBQ recipes or something. Their readers must have thought that they were just being kind to someone who liked to write stream-of-consciousness verse about places with strange names during the period he was allowed into the common room.

Anyway, what is clear is that Greg has way too much time on his hands. He really should go to creative writing school, in hopes of perfecting his style so that he can put his fertile imagination to good use for pay, doing what he does best, writing fiction.

The other thing that is clear is that we are but Dr. Watson's when in your company. So Sherlock, answer me this. Just why did Greg decide to choose the Serbian side in all this? We still need a motive, unless we are looking at an insanity defense here.

This is an absolute scream. I only hope Simon Winchester is a member of FR so he can get a look at this...

As for Mr D I would be most interested in exactly what he and his Republican friends had on Eva Clayton -- as for some reason she recently decided being an incumbent Congresswoman would not be enough to keep her free of federal racketeering charges. Thus she will not run in 2002.

Eastern North Carolina deserves better than her...

She was wise to step down -- that's the Republican way of doing business in the North Carolina First Congressional District. I imagine Mr D and his friends have plenty more where that came from for some other Democrats "down east"...

Prime Minister Meta would be wise to do the same in Albania. The forces of freedom not as forgiving in the Olde Country...

Don't know much about Ghana -- but Mr D might want to check in with Addo-Fening the next time he's over that way...

The forces of freedom on the move. Europe trembles.

Interesting!

I too have been intrigued by the Fusion phenomenon.

You are correct in your association of Fusion's postings with the Beaufort County Now site. Stylistically they are the same. I thought it was odd that Fusion, who I too figured was at least partly Albanian and either in a comfortable location in Europe or maybe Washington, DC, would choose some backwater web hosting service to publish his screeds. If he was in DC, I assumed he was working for a PR firm for the Albanian government or some other related organization.

Curious that the letter to Stan and Ashley was posted in a public location. I would have thought such a discussion would have been conducted privately.

I'm now convinced that Fusion = Greg Dority. (And yes, that is a corrupted Irish surname)

That all said, I'm convinced that Fusion has some knowledge. He's been able to predict the KLA/UCK battles (and wins!) with good accuracy. Sure you could say he's over the top when he brings up "Allah's suitcase" and what-not but then you'd have to say John Ashcroft was over the top when he publicly said he feared the same thing.

Now I don't get the part were Torie claims that he's a Serb sympathizer. Far from it!!!!

The deeper question is if he's some Walter Mitty from North Carolina, why would he care about the Balkans? And why would he take the side of known drug runners and petty criminals?

I have not a care in the world about the Balkans. I only got interested when Beelzebubba declared Serbs and Slobo the enemy. Much of the NATO spin during the 78 days of bombing was deconstructed here on FReerepublic within minutes of coming out of General Clark's two sided mouth. In particular the mass graves, ethnic cleansing (I'd leave my house if my town was getting bombed too no matter who was doing the bombing) and concentration camps.

I've watched as Fusion started simply doing hit-and-run posting of laughable diatribes with his now infamous tag line. He infuriated everyone and never responded. After a while, he made some arguments that appeared more grounded and he would occasionally respond. Since I don't have any axe to grind with "Ethnic Albanians" I FReepmailed him and encouraged him to continue posting despite the egregious ad-hominem attacks.

In one post, he made a reference to the Hippo bank in Zenica, Bosnia (He makes reference to a "Mr. D" in this post by the way) and how it was used for money laundering weaponry to the Bosnian Muslims. I thought the bank name was funny and checked it out. It was the real deal. So did he read about this place somewhere or was he really dining on steak and smoking cigars in the "Hippo Room"? Well, I guess I like the illusion that he's hobnobbed with "super-secret-squirrel-spy friends" in the Balkans. But even if that is an illusion, fine, he's made many good posts here with good predictive ability.

I think he has earned some respect from even his greatest detractors, and there are many. His posts contain good logic and predictions that he stands by. I would go so far to say his posts are both informative as well as entertaining. I'm disappointed he hasn't been posting as much lately but then again, I haven't been keeping on top of the Balkans threads as much lately either.

He never came off as a good ol' boy to me but the North Carolina link is odd. In fact, his first few posts used such fractured English I presumed it was his second language.

Besides, I like the Correspondent, the Congressman, the Hawk and the other "handful of America's best" characters that pepper his posts. If he's a sham, he's good. I wish I could be so creative.

Keep on FReepin' on Fusion!

Forces of mediocrity on the move, no-one trembles.

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