Midnight at the White House: Craig Spence

Craig Spence was a flamboyant, influential figure among the social and political elite of Washington, DC in the 1980s. That might explain why he was able to give late-night tours of the White House to male sex workers. But what was he doing with that secret video camera behind the mirror in his living room?

Transcript

Friday, November, 10, 1989 Room 429 of Boston’s Ritz Carlton Hotel

5:30 AM

Dressed in a black tuxedo, white bow tie and suspenders, he had always been known as a dandy and today was no different. He placed his birth certificate and will where they could be seen by whoever found him. He moved the bed so that it blocked the door, which the police would eventually have to saw in half to gain entrance. He laid down with his walkman containing a cassette of Mozart’s “A Little Night Music” and a newspaper clipping. It was about efforts to protect CIA agents from testifying before government agencies. 

Then he called a friend in Virginia so he wouldn’t be alone.

He told the friend not to have any regrets and noted that he had taken a lot of pills. He began to sound incoherent, and the friend immediately hung up to call the front desk to try and save him. Unfortunately, he had checked in under an assumed name.

He left a note in black felt-tip marker on the mirror in his room.

It read:

“Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always said, you can't ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.”

And, ever the gentleman, he included a polite postscript that said "To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience."

You’re listening to Wicked Gay, a true-crime podcast about gay people doing awful things. 

Hi! I’m your host Jay Harvey and I have Patreon subscribers! Two of em’! I’m so proud. Thank you to Rob and to Cat. And let me say that I have no shame in noting that I’ve only got the two subscribers right now, because they are very dear to me. And if it’s only they who can enjoy Wicked Gay bonus episodes and content, it’s reason enough to keep cranking them out.

Enough about me! How are you? Enjoying your summer? As I record this, we’ve entered the sort of summertime sadness stretch, you know, when Pride and Bear Week in Provincetown are in the rearview mirror, and the days take on a sameness. A blazingly-hot sameness. Blazingly hot to a terrifying record-breaking degree, from what I’ve read. Thanks for not being a hoax, climate change. So hopefully tonight’s story can distract you from us slowly baking alive. 

The man we’re going to learn about tonight was a fascinating and possibly demonic sort of fellow who lived a life of lavish parties, stylish clothing, and hobnobbing with the social and political elite of Washington D.C. He was also up to his ears in male prostitutes, cocaine, and the electronic listening devices he allegedly had planted throughout his home for blackmail purposes. Craig Spence was a former television journalist turned Washington DC lobbyist and man about town, someone who was referred as “Washington’s Jay Gatsby.” But, in reality, he was all about the shadowy intrigue. Was he tricking his party guests and other acquaintances into compromising positions and then blackmailing them? Was he actually spending $20,000 a pop on male hookers and taking them on midnight tours of the White House (spoiler alert on those last two - yes and maybe)? Did he work for the CIA as he claimed throughout his life? Why did he take his life at age 49? And was one of the darkest accusations you can make about a man really true? Let’s find out.

This is Episode 42. Midnight at the White House: Craig Spence.

Sources for this episode include Wikipedia, YouTube, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, 

Craig Spence’s beginnings are pretty vague, no matter which source you consider. What is known is that the international man of mystery was born on Oct 25, 1940 and friends said they believe he had hailed from upstate New York. He received a degree in communications and broadcasting at Boston University in 1963. After graduation he worked as a news secretary for the speaker of the Massachusetts state house of Representatives, moved on to New York to work for WCBS and then moved to Southeast Asia to become a Vietnam War correspondent for ABC in 1969. During this time, he worked side by side with another correspondent who became one of his besties, a woman named Liz Trotta who would go on to become a Fox News type. When I say Fox News type, I mean that she once went on the network and suggested that Obama be assassinated. So she’s a cutie. She pops up later in the Spence story. Also around this time, Spence started claiming he worked for the CIA. Was it true? All signs would later point to…maybe? There’s no definitive proof though. If he was, he wasn’t a very good agent cuz’ he was telling people he was in the CIA.

Spence was reportedly banned by the local government from reporting on the war that year. It was ok, though, because he reportedly also had a falling out with his bosses at ABC due to the liberal slant he felt they were giving the war. Craig was a hardline conservative.

ABC eventually moved Spence to Tokyo, where he did public relations consulting for the government-supported Japan External Trade Organization, and other Japanese corporations. He was also working as a stringer for Britain’s Daily Mail and radio stations while making contacts that would later help him in his next career as a D.C.  lobbyist. In fact, he would become a registered lobbyist for Japanese business interests in 1985. Spence spent almost a decade living and working in Japan, during a time known as “Japan’s economic miracle”, the country’s record period of economic growth after World War 2 right up until the end of the Cold War. During this period, Japan became the world's second-largest economy (after the United States). Spence hopped right on that gravy train. 

As the Washington Times would later report, he made tons of contacts in Japan and later among Chinese expatriates, and he would brag about being pals with Japanese luminaries like former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. One Chinese businessman, who once served as an unofficial representative of Communist China in Washington, told the paper that he didn’t know exactly what Spence’s work really was but that he often bragged about all the Japanese businessmen and political leaders he was buddies with. He described Spence as "strange," saying that he often bragged that he was working for the CIA and once said he was going to disappear for awhile "because he had an important CIA assignment." He also told the guy that the CIA might "doublecross him," however, and kill him instead "and then make it look like a suicide." 

This guy, who socialized with Spence in D.C.,  would also spin a yarn about Spence’s parties, including a birthday party that he threw for all-around demonic imp and Wicked Gay favorite Roy Cohn! Another time, he said Spence stormed into another party with a big, white hat and an entourage of security guards," the guy said. "It was all rather bizarre." 

In the late 1970s, Spence returned to the States, settling in Washington DC, where he did indeed become a party-hurling high society regular and a flamboyant one at that, wearing English-cut suits, smoked a pipe, had a driver and bodyguards, often sported a red-lined cape at parties and telling anyone that would listen that he worked for the CIA. Did the cape clash with the big white hat?

Now forgive my lack of knowledge when it comes to American spycraft, but aren’t you supposed to shut your mouth about that sort of thing if you’re involved in it? Isn’t that the first rule of Fight Club here? 

And Spence must have been really good at his job. Because after Spence arrived in Washington to stay in 1979, the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Policy Study Group he repped reportedly lent him $345,000 to buy the big imposing stone party house on Wyoming Avenue. Granted, it served as the group’s US headquarters but mostly it was so Spence could live and throw parties and I’m assuming, as we’ll learn later, host a lot of sex workers. 

He also reportedly told people that the real story behind the house was that he was blackmailing clients in Japan. A former U.S. Foreign Service official who worked for Mr. Spence in the mid-1980s said: "He pretty much blackmailed a Japanese client. The Japanese put up the money for Spence to buy a big house on Wyoming Avenue, I heard he later had a quarrel with this Japanese because he was really using this house to advance his own purposes, not for the Japanese. But he threatened to expose that they had transferred the money illegally, so it made the Japanese back down." Another friend confirmed this and said that Spence bragged that he had beaten "a very rich, old-line Japanese family."

While continuing to improve trade relations between Japan and the US, and making scads of money himself, Spence would throw these lavish parties at the big stone house, something that would lead to his downfall. He slowly became a social register planetoid that the rest of the DC fancy pants orbited around. He was such a big to-do that the New York Times did a feature on him in 1982 titled Have Names, Will Open The Right Doors. The paper treated him as the go-to guy when it came to Japan and Japanese culture. Spence demonstrated a deathly sort of humor, especially in a nationwide news story in the Times. Oh, forewarning - the term “Oriental” is used and not in a rug way. Oh, dear.

“Craig J. Spence finds much to admire in Oriental society. He likes to tell the story of a Japanese food service manager who, after some of his customers suffered food poisoning, committed suicide as a way of apologizing. ''Now that's what I call quality control,'' said Mr. Spence, who is something of a mystery man who dresses in Edwardian dandy style.Mr. spence, 41 years old, is also a former television correspondent who now wears many hats, including international business consultant, party host, registered foreign agent, and some thing called ''research journalist.''

Another detail of interest was the observation that Craig’s greatest strength was “his ability to master the social and political chemistry of this city (that city being DC), to make and use important connections and to bring together policymakers, power brokers and opinion shapers at parties and seminars.” The Times noted that his increasingly famous parties at his what was described as “imposing” stone house in the Kalorama section of DC (it’s the Northwest part) boasted a guest list made up of a veritable Who’s Who of government and journalism, including New York Times political columnist William Safire, former attorney general and convicted Nixon flunkie John N. Mitchell, conservative activist and feminism arch-enemy Phyllis Schlafly. Apparently, Rock Hudson was over, too. 

In her memoirs, Liz Trotta (remember her - wanted Obama dead), claimed that other party guests of Spence’s include Ted Koppel, former CIA director William Casey, and CBS journalist Eric Sevareid. 

Speaking of Liz Trotta, she would also reveal that she once took advantage of a tour Craig Spence offered. A late-night tour of the White House. Now I don't mean a bathhouse or a club with the ironic name of the White House. I mean 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Lincoln Bedroom, rose garden, bowling alley, Trump’s Hostess wrappers strewn about White House. That one. The home of the leader of the free world, and I’m sure probably one of the most well-guarded domiciles in human history. Or so we thought. We’ll get to those tours in a second.

What else went on at these parties? As one friend and I should put that in quotes because this person doesn’t sound like the most loyal friend said, "He conned people into going to parties - big people, Cabinet members and personalities and so forth. Everybody likes to go to a free party around here. He'd have a photographer there, get his photo taken with a great man, and use that," Meaning use the photographs to further his reputation in town, and make more deals and make more money.

"He was quite secretive, but from what I could see these things had little or no substance," the friend said. "Usually a grain of truth, but he'd build a pile of lies on top of it. Usually, he'd start with a photograph of himself with some guy and build a lie around it that he was his top adviser. Nakasone, the former prime minister of Japan, was one.”

Also at these parties, and it wasn’t a crime, just local color - people who attended said that he had what he called "his personal honor guard made up of tall, handsome, stalwart young men. He liked to surround himself with decorations," I mean, better than shiplap and a GATHER sign, right?

Washington DC’s conservative daily newspaper is called The Washington Times, and it would publish what would be the beginning of Craig Spence’s fall from grace. 

On June 29, 1989, in a front-page story, the paper identified Craig as a major customer and patron of a male escort service run by a man named Henry Vinson. The service had been raided in February and was currently under investigation by the Secret Service, the DC police, and the US Attorney’s office for credit card fraud. Vinson was also suspected of using a funeral parlor to launder money. Inventive! He would later write a book, and it would feature quite a bit about Spence. None of it good, and some of it is kinda nightmare fuel. 

The Times wrote about Spence’s misdeeds under the headline "Served drugs, sex at parties bugged for blackmail." And flat out stated that Spence  “bugged the gatherings to compromise guests, provided cocaine, blackmailed some associates, and spent up to $20,000 a month on male prostitutes.” 

And it allegedly wasn’t just Spence spending money on hot ass. The paper claimed that key figures in both the Reagan and Bush administrations leased penis through Vinson, these clients allegedly including “several top government and business officials from Washington and abroad”. The clients were reportedly identified by the escorts as well as by hundreds of credit-card vouchers obtained by the paper. If you were a well-known person, wouldn't you pay cash for this service? Why leave a paper trail, I ask the quote “government officials, locally based U.S. military officers, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides, media representatives, and other professionals” that were alleged clients of Mr. Vinson’s enterprise?

One of the more WTF revelations was that Craig Spence had spent up to $20,000 a month on these hookers! A month -  he paid this multiple times. Now that must have been some ass. We’re talking Dick Grayson as Nightwing ass. America’s the UK’s Europe’s Mainland China’s ass. That’s expensive ass. 

The more startling info was that among several others, two of the male prostitutes from Vinson’s service had been on a midnight tour of the White House during Fourth of July weekend of 1988, allegedly arranged by Spence. 

Now, I don’t think that it’s any worse that hookers are getting forbidden tours of the white house late at night than if lay people were which it was also claimed they were. But much was made of the fact that rent boys were admiring Mamie Eisenhower’s china or whatever. Spence was allegedly facilitating these tours for his friends/clients/leased dick/and those he wanted to impress, through a White House guard named Reginald deGueldre.

Exactly how many tours took place is unknown, but it was supposedly multiple. One person who allegedly went on one of these tours told the Washington Times that his group walked through all the public areas of the White House and "even took pictures of ourselves in the barber's chair." I would have taken pics of myself in the bowling alley, but that’s just me.

Spence allegedly himself wasn’t there for the 4th of July tour, and law enforcement officials later claimed that no one on the tour was a prostitute. So I guess they actually weren’t hookers. Which is a shame because all walks of life should be allowed to visit tourist destinations. And there was enough talk about it being sex workers that I feel like it might be true. Where there’s smoke! 

Spence WAS on other tours of the White House according to authorities. And, in addition to Reggie the White House guard, He was also said to have been helped by a Secret Service agent who accepted a Rolex watch and a piece of White House china as payment. I hope it was a gravy boat. I would think Secret Service guys would get paid well considering they’re risking their lives for the most important person in the world, but I guess a Rolex was a Rolex back then?

As one tourist put it, "It was a show-the-flag time for Craig Spence," "He just wanted everyone to know just how damned powerful he was. And when we were strolling through the White House at 1 o'clock in the morning, we were believers."

And it was allegedly more than just Ronnie the White House guard and Rolex gravy boat guy dude helping Spence. One tour guest claimed it was cleared by a uniformed Secret Service guard whom he had seen attending Craig’s parties as a bodyguard. This guy noted that "for once in his life, Craig was doing something nice. We just thought, neat, we get a free midnight tour of the White House.” I mean I get it, not your typical cruise ship excursion.

And after the White House probed when this all came to light, they ended up furloughing three guards. It was publicly stated that the president and family's security wasn’t compromised, though and it was also noted that security guards were allowed to give private tours. That late at night? Also - the current president - Bush senior - had been briefed about the situation. I can’t do a Bush impression, but I love that he had to discuss male sex workers with somebody. 

In the meantime, Spence became a person of everyone’s interest in DC. And he must have been selling copies of the Washington Times, cuz that paper went all in on him and continued to publish some pretty heavy allegations. In the next story about him, friends and guests of Craig Spence’s told the Times that Spence’s home was wired up with extensive surveillance equipment, and he had been enticing his party guests into sexual encounters with sex workers and secretly videotaping them.

Drilling down here, one described him as “a dangerous friend to cultivate.” Another source mentioned an 8-foot-long, two-way mirror overlooking the house’s library which, he said, he was later told was used for "spying on guests." It supposedly had a video camera behind it.

One guy said Spence sent a limo for him one night which brought him to a gathering at which several young men tried to sex him. "I didn't bite; it's not my inclination," the man said. "But he used his homosexual network for all it was worth." This guy, who was also on one of the White House tours, said: "He was blackmailing people. He was taping people and blackmailing them." 

A male soldier told the Times that Spence had gotten him to get with a female sex worker, secretly photographed it, and then blackmailed this guy into “beating up a couple of guys.” Craig also tried to get the soldier into bed, who refused. As retaliation, Spence reportedly showed pictures of this unnamed soldier with the sex worker to the soldier’s wife, leading her to leave him.

Friends of Spence’s, including Liz Trotta, talked about what they saw as his ongoing physical and mental deterioration. A Georgetown University law professor who said he was a close friend of Spence's until his behavior “began deteriorating quite markedly." said he was at a gathering at the house and chatting with Liz Trotta one night. "We were sitting in a corner, talking about our mutual concern about Craig's physical condition. He came down later and said he had been listening to us and didn't appreciate it at all," More evidence that the entire house was bugged. 

Liz Trotta backed the professor up, noting it was "one in a series of incidents" in which she began to worry about Craig. "He was fragmenting right before our eyes," she said. "I was very concerned about him."

He does sound like he was starting to lose it. Multiple people, including an air force sergeant, stated that Craig was flat out telling everyone that his house was bugged and that he loved to swoop into a room and repeat back an entire conversation he’d just listened to to his startled guests. Ok, who are the people still going to these parties? Were the hired dudes THAT good?

Another alleged feature of Spence’s wild parties was the disco dust. This could also account for his erratic behavior. Apparently, he was smuggling and using cocaine. He was described as “generous” with the powder at his parties. "I know he was a coke freak. A lot of people saw it [the cocaine use]. His behavior spoke for itself." said one business associate. This story makes it seem like everyone Spence knew was a turncoat traitor to his cause, doesn't it?  

Craig apparently bragged that U.S. military personnel, for whom he had built a gymnasium in El Salvador (he’d received a plaque and everything), had smuggled cocaine back to him when they returned to the United States. "I heard he was selling drugs, or smuggling drugs into the country from El Salvador," one source said.

By the way, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials told the Times that they had no evidence of this military coke deal.

After the expose, Craig began to spiral, his lobbying business was collapsing because Japan doesn’t like scandals, and he began telling friends that he had AIDS and was thinking of taking his own life. He would tell other friends that neither was true. Well, we know one of them was. 

And instead of cutting down on the sex workers, he ramped it up. Craig reportedly began abusing crack cocaine, too. Which we all know is a hellish drug to get hooked on. A friend later claimed he began making "constant references to death" and told her that "he was checking out."

And then he vanished when he learned the feds were after him with a subpoena to testify in August about Henry Vinson’s hooker ring. The Secret Service later said the subpoena was served to him on August 7 in New York, and they not only wanted to discuss his dealings with the escort service but also his connection to one of their own agents, the guy who claimed Craig had given him a Rolex to get a tour or tours of the White House after-hours. Spence’s lawyer later claimed the FBI took the subpoena back, 

Prior to the subpoena, on July 31, 1989, Spence was back in the papers after he was arrested at Manhattan’s Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd Street for criminal possession of cocaine and an illegal 32-caliber pistol. He was eventually released on his own recognizance. Hi privilege! White people, am I right? After his death, Spence’s attorney told the press that his hearing on those charges had been scheduled for November and Spence had planned to appear. The legal eagle claimed Spence "was never in possession" of the gun and the drugs and that there was no case against him.

Speaking of crack, it’s not known if Spence had been on the pipe when he consented to an eight-hour interview with the Washington Times at his bestie Liz Trotta’s apartment in Manhattan to give his side of the story. I’ve been led to believe you should issue a short statement in these things and keep it pumping, queen. Meaning ya move on cuz the news cycle is quick. 

In the interview, Spence said he had spent a night on a bench in Central Park after running out of money while in New York. He confirmed that White House guard guy Ronnie wasn’t alone in aiding and abetting the White House tours and that he did act as a guide on some of them. In fact, Craig told the Times reporters that the tours were arranged by “top-level persons” and then named a name - Donald Gregg, national security adviser to George H. W. Bush. 

Gregg himself dismissed the allegation as "absolute bull", according to the reporters. "It disturbs me that he can reach a slimy hand out of the sewer to grab me by the ankle like this," he told the reporters. "The allegations are totally false.

Then Spence brought his affiliation with the CIA, either real or imagined, back into it. He said that the surveillance equipment at his house had been set up by "friendly" intelligence agents.

Remember -  Craig claiming to be in the CIA went as far back as his Vietnam correspondent days. There was also speculation that the CIA was bankrolling him for some reason. Gotta afford those fancy capes, girl.

He also claimed that the drugs, illegal firearms, call boy addiction, bugged house, and blackmail brags and accusations were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to what he was really involved in. He said "All this stuff you've uncovered, to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I've done. But I'm not going to tell you those things, and somehow the world will carry on." True but that’s still SUPER ANNOYING to say that and not give some deets. He had also told this to Liz Trotta, or so she claimed, saying that the authorities wouldn't be able to solve the “big thing”. I might have a clue as to what he was talking about, but I’m going to save that for the end.

Two weeks before Craig Spence put on his tux to unalive himself, he had a production company come to his home, seriously, a production company, why didn’t he just use the mirror cam? They were there to shoot a 7-minute-long final video message to his friends. In the video, he explained that he was doing it "in case I ever disappear." But it also doubled as a sort of suicide note.

So, in the video, he’s in a leather chair in his dining room and reportedly looking healthy despite the AIDS rumors and alleged crack cocaine use, and he was reportedly upbeat, avoided talking about his impending plans, and joking that his Maltese Winston had been maligned in the newspaper stories about him as a terrier. He alluded to his public shaming, saying "The pressures on us over the past several years have been, let us say, significant, Keeping a cheerful spirit in the midst of these pressures isn't easy, but Winston's holding up, and I'm working at it." 

He went on to bag on The Washington Times, referring to it as "a local cult-owned newspaper." And he was accurate. Fun fact -  the Times was created by and is still owned by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, you know - the Moonies. He mostly went in on the government, saying it distorted "the Craig Spence puzzle." He said, "The government, through its various agencies and ambitious officials, sometimes looks right at the key pieces and cannot or will not see the picture, Worse, it sometimes pockets a piece or two to ensure that the puzzle is never put together." 

He also defended his patriotism, which he felt was maligned by the blackmail accusations. He also showed off the plaque given to him by the Marines after he contributed money for a military gymnasium in El Salvador. 

He closed by saying "Some of you may know when it comes to the intelligence community, there is no such thing as coincidence. Now, I'm not sure I've seen the whole picture yet myself. I'll close by telling you I'm sure that in the end the truth will come out and this too will pass. Now, I may be naive about my optimism, but I'm an American, proud of my country, and confident of the fairness of its people. So take heart, good friends, and share that pride and that confidence with me. Good night and God bless."

He arranged for almost a dozen copies of these numbered videotapes to be sent out, including one to The Washington Post. He also sent a friend six cardboard boxes containing old television broadcasts and American-Asian policy study papers that he felt made up his life's work. He also left his dog with his personal aide.

And then a week later, he went to Boston, where he spent his time visiting old friends and tipping the people who waited on him with 100 bills. Then that Friday, he took his own life by overdosing on pills. I gave you some of the deets in the opening, the tuxedo, the newspaper clipping, the note on the mirror. Oddly enough, seven small packets of Xanax were found by the cops in a false ceiling in the bathroom. If those were Craig’s, I must ask - that was the drug you hid and not cocaine that had gotten you arrested? I had mentioned that he had called a friend after taking the pills, cuz no one wants to die alone. The friend hung up and dialed the front desk, however, it turned out that Craig checked in under an assumed name - C.F. Kane - probably referencing Charles Foster Kane, the main character in what is considered one of the greatest motion pictures ever made - Citizen Kane. 

Spence's attorney called the death "a tragic end to what . . . had been until recently a very productive and interesting life." and noted that "I liked him very much. He was a good man . . . .” 

Eh? Maybe. That’s the Craig Spence story. Most of it. 

There’s one part that I didn’t go into cuz’ it’s the word of just one guy. And it’s super dark. The guy who owned the escort service that Craig pretty much bankrolled it sounded like (and paid with his credit card!). Henry Vinson. Vinson wrote a book about his experiences as a madam…what’s the male version? A whoremaster? That was a word once, right? 

And in the book, he claims that Spence admitted to him that the big secret he’d been alluding to in the press and to people he knew was that he was running a secret human trafficking ring with the humans in question being children and teens. Ugh. The story is kind of a nightmare, and it’s tied in with another criminal case that is just rife with conspiracy theories so it’s another tale in itself. So I’m putting it behind the Patreon wall so as not to offend people’s sensibilities. Look for it next month if you’re a subscriber. And if you’re not, become one! Patreon.com/wickedgay.

That’s all the Wicked Gay for tonight. Thank you to Gino and the Goons for Wicked Gay’s theme song. Paul Chapman for the artwork. JB and AIVA for the music. And the other Mr. Harvey for trying his damnedest to make me sound good. Feel free to drop me a line at Wickedgaypod@gmail.com and follow Wicked Gay on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram under wickedgaypod. I hope you’re having a lovely summer. Stay cool!