Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Was Elvis Presley a Spy?


Even though he was “conscripted” by the U.S. Army at the time his singing career just started taking off, has Elvis Presley ever did secret espionage work in behalf of the U.S. government? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Back during the time when America still has the draft, Elvis Presley – the newly crowned king of rock ‘n’ roll – was “conscripted” into the U.S. Army back in 1958, at a time when his singing career has just started taking off to a stratospheric rise that made him RCA’s biggest cash cow at the time. As RCA faced an 18-month hiatus by the then greatest cash cow in their stable, Elvis’ then manager – the old carny who called himself Colonel Tom Parker – managed to wrangle a two-month draft deferment before Elvis was shipped off to Freiburg in the then West Germany as a Jeep mechanic after completing basic training in Texas. Given the relative ease of his manager managed to get a two-month U.S. Army draft deferment, many wondered if Elvis Presley has powerful friends in the Pentagon, or even in Washington D.C.; but the very idea of Elvis doing secret espionage work in behalf of the U. S. government using his “lowly” position as a Jeep mechanic in a U.S. Army base in Freiburg just a short hop away from the Sudetenland and thus spy into the Iron Curtain at the time of rising tensions in the Cold War?
Though the very idea was “lampooned” in the 1984 comedy film Top Secret!, where Val Kilmer played an Elvis like pop sensation named Nick Rivers who inadvertently wound up doing espionage work in behalf of the U.S. government behind the Iron Curtain using his music stardom as cover. Given Hollywood’s intimate involvement in some of the U.S. government’s secret covert operations during the 20th Century – i.e. the 2012 movie Argo where a science fiction filming crew was used as a cover to rescue U.S. embassy personnel in Iran that were trapped during the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution with the help of the Canadian government. The “Argo” operation led by C.I.A.’s master-of-disguise Tony Mendez was only declassified back in 1998 in order for then U.S. President Bill Clinton to commend the main players involved in the top secret operation.     
Even though no light-hearted or serious movie has ever been made yet about Elvis Presley’s secret espionage mission in the Sudetenland, one could probably be made as soon as the U.S. government feels safe to declassify dossiers pertaining to the operation. Would the movie be titled “Elvis in the Sudetenland”?   

2 comments:

Venus said...

Citing your "movie" examples i.e. - the Val Kilmer's "Top Secret!" and Ben Affleck's Argo - there might be a kernel of truth that Elves Presley did espionage work in the Cold War era Sudetenland in behalf of the U.S. government.

Elisabeth said...

Remember Dean Reed - a.k.a. the "Red Elvis" as in the then East Germany's answer to Elvis Presley - America's king of rock 'n' roll?