“We had no idea that Gale Norton was the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. when we nominated her for the Interior post,” White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told reporters. “Having said that, we still believe that Gale, or Blofeld as we now call her, will do a splendid job.”
Norton breezed through her confirmation hearings despite the strenuous objection of environmental groups. Her cool responses to senators’ questions about oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness failed to raise suspicions that she might be one of the deadliest supervillains on the planet. “I guess hindsight is always 20-20,” says Sen. Joseph Lieberman, “but in retrospect, it kind of bothered me that she was stroking that white cat in her lap during the hearings.”
According to Dr. James O’Shaunessy of Edinburgh’s Institute for the Monitoring of Bond Villains, some of Norton’s answers during the hearings should have alerted the Senate to the fact that she was actually Blofeld. “When she said that the solution to California’s energy problems was aiming laser beams at Los Angeles and San Francisco and causing the state to sink to the bottom of the ocean, that should have been a tip-off right there, I dare say,” O’Shaunessy says.
President Bush offered no comment on the brewing Norton-Blofeld controversy, but press secretary Ari Fleischer indicated that Bush had been napping during the evil mastermind’s confirmation hearings.
The Interior secretary, who could not be reached for comment, was said to be reviewing plans for oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness and was expected to spend several days doing so in a secret lair.
Ernst Stavro Blofeld is not the first Bond villain to serve in a cabinet-level post, historians say. Other Bond nemeses to serve in the White House include Auric Goldfinger, who was secretary of the Treasury in the second Nixon administration, and Octopussy, who served briefly under President Clinton.
