PAGE 7
My longest-lasting relationship with a political leader was with Andrew Peacock (foreign minister of Australia and Australian ambassador to the United States). I met him while I was playing in Australia (set up by a mutual friend from Princeton). He was charming, funny and a conservative. He used his voice like a snake oil salesman, which always made me laugh because, as I told him, I was also in the business of professional seduction through voice manipulation. He took my comment good-naturedly.

Andrew and I traveled all over the world together, as the pictures on my walls attest. He was fun as a traveling companion, and his being a foreign minister opened many doors in high places. He didn't know about Palme and threatened to have his secret service follow me if I was ever caught with anyone else. Once after leaving Palme in Stockholm, I went directly to Paris to meet Andrew. The paparazzi were all over me when I landed. Andrew thought it was because of him, but it was actually about both Palme and him. The paparazzi must have thought I was Mata Hari or something. Andrew and I eluded them by ducking into strange doorways, darting down unknown alleys and once climbing up the side of a building to get away. Andrew's image would have been blown had the pictures of our mad dash reached the newspapers, because he had cultivated the image of being blue-blood elegant through and through. He was single, so I told the press I was going to give him a foreign affair he'd never forget.

We traveled in Canada, France, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, England, the United States and Mexico. Whenever I discussed my spiritual and metaphysical ideas with him, he listened, nodded and more or less said, "It could be. Who knows?" On a UFO stakeout in Mexico near Mt. Popocatepetl, at one moment we thought we saw a craft and Andrew nearly "climbed the sky" to see if it was real.

As foreign minister he controlled all the information coming out of Alice Springs (supposedly the underground UFO research facility in Australia). Because he was sworn to secrecy, he never told me outright that UFOs were extraterrestrial in origin and were present. But he said and did nothing to disabuse me of such a belief. When I told him about Roald Sagdaev having confirmed that UFOs and the presence of ETs were real, he just smiled. When I told him I had gone to see Jimmy Carter to discuss UFOs, he just smiled again. Andrew was a trained diplomat of the first order and was his own best intelligence gatherer. He was learning more about the subject of UFOs from me than I was learning from him.

We have been friends for over 30 years, and we value each other very much. He is happily married now for the third time, and I remain friends with his children and his first wife too.


More on Shirley MacLaine:
Copyright © 2011 by Shirley MacLaine. From the forthcoming book I'M OVER ALL THAT by Shirley MacLaine to be published by Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y. Printed by permission.

NEXT STORY

Next Story