The neocon conspiracy embedded in the Giuliani campaign, of which I am a part, is most devious. One of our occult powers is our ability to assume the physical traits of one another. This makes it much easier to elude our pursuers. You may see the evidence for our powers in the accompanying sidebar, taken from this week’s Newsweek.

You will note, for example, that I have assumed the features of Daniel Pipes. This is made possible by the fact that Pipes and I have the same birthday, September 9, the number nine having magical properties in neocon spells. (See “sorcery, neoconservative” in the index to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby.)

Alas, the witch-hunters at Newsweek belatedly figured out our trick, and published this correction in their Internet edition:

Editor’s Note: In our print edition, several captions for the photographs accompanying this report were inadvertently transposed. Martin Kramer’s photograph is identified as Norman Podhoretz; Daniel Pipes’s photograph is identified as Kramer; Peter Berkowitz’s photograph is identified as Pipes; Nile Gardiner’s photograph is identified as Berkowitz’s and Podhoretz’s photograph is identified as Gardiner’s. NEWSWEEK regrets the errors.

(Believe me, they don’t regret them as much as my mother does. She’s livid.)

The article accompanying this sidebar, by Michael Hirsh, manages to expose many of our deepest and darkest secrets, which is remarkable since he only talked to a couple of us (not me), and scraped most of his “information” off the Internet. Clearly, we are going to have to scour the Kabbalah for some fresh spells, in our furtive contest with voodoo journalists.