It's kind of convoluted how I came to meet CReePsWife008, but it involved clicking on a Google ad alongside an article I was reading, which lead me to taking a brief survey in exchange for a free MacBook, which turned out to be a hoax that got me on a mailing list for Russian women who wanted to rendezvous with me--now!

When I finally opened one of CreePsWife008's emails, I discovered that they weren't lurid invitations from a bored housewife or broken-English pleas for a green-card wedding; rather, they were the confessions of a political operative.

CReeP's Wife, it turns out, is an acronym for the Committee to Re-Elect the President's Wife. And 008, was, as recently as three weeks ago, one of its lead operatives with a long and distinguished career in meddling.

008 got her start as the naked girl who ran through Senator Edmund Muskie's Florida hotel in 1972, professing her love for him in a successful effort to disrupt his pursuit of the Democratic nomination.

In 1984, she loaned Geraldine Ferraro the salt-tinged mascara stick that induced the vice presidential nominee's crying episode.

And in 1998, she was the Sharper Image customer who sold Linda Tripp on the idea of memorializing her after-hours conversations with work buddies.

But after a few too many caipirinhas in Brazil with a bipartisan fact-finding group that included current and former politicians, 008 found herself agreeing to head up a Democrat Ops Group where, it was promised that, though she'd be switching parties, she wouldn't have to switch tactics.

Her first assignment was dull, as ops work goes. She was in charge of the recruitment and media training of woman and non-white politicians who'd be backing the CReeP's Wife candidate.

Graduates of her seminars learned to talk over Pat Buchanan, got in as many as 15 words edgewise as Chris Matthews cut to commercial break, and knew five different empathy-inducing shrugs to employ when the opposition began berating them.

Each was also given a pack of "ready words" that they could use to reclaim the offensive, of which, "Jesse Jackson," "Cesar Chavez," and "Maureen Dowd" were standard issue (the latter to be used only on white, male interlocutors because it failed to elicit the desired mid-sentence, daydream delay in other targets).

What started making 008 nervous was not that some of her charges were proving ineffective against the aikido-like defense of the opposition, nor that their ineffectiveness was met by finger-wagging and tongue lashings by the higher-ups in a manner not seen since those early Nixon days.

She didn't even mind that she was being passed over to carry out the real juicy attacks.

But rather, it was becoming evident that she had signed onto a "Hotel California"-type operation: You could check out any time you liked, but you just can't ever leave.

Instead of the usual threats about campaigning against change-of-heart surrogates or leaving them out of the pork-barrel spending pie that would come with a general election victory, 008 discovered that the CReeP's Wife had devised a novel way of keeping everyone in the fold: lapel pins.

These pins, given to graduates of 008's media seminars, as well as supporters throughout the country, are a blend of high technology and message control: A transcranial magnetic stimulation chip is embedded in the surrogate's lapel pins.

Lp155572t This Bluetooth-activated chip essentially sends electrical currents to the parts of the brain responsible for memory and sound judgment. These currents impair a person's ability to construct rational counterarguments and to remember anything but the scripts given to them. It technically doesn't rob a person of his or her free will because a person still has choices--within the range defined by the CReeP's Wife.

In her emails to me, 008, a locket lady and not a lapel wearer, asserts she still has the capacity to think for herself, but points to recent press interviews with surrogates of the CReeP's Wife in the days preceding and following the Nevada and South Carolina primaries, as proof that these pins are being activated.

In the steady stream of surrogates who insist that you can't attribute any racial divide to the CReeP's Wife campaign or to BET founder Robert Johnson's statements, and who assert that there will not be any long-term impact on the Democratic Party because of the CReeP's Wife, 008 believes she is seeing a Scientology-like devotion to staying on-message that exceeds what her training could have provided.

That said, I remain suspicious of how much I am to believe CreePsWife008 emails. Is she using me to push the CReeP's Wife's agenda? Is she actually working for one of the other contenders? Or is she who she purports to be? Have I been chatting with Karl Rove?

All of this remains to be seen. I've arranged a late-night meeting with her in a nondescript parking garage for later this week. I'll keep you posted.