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In a summer long past I worked as an intern in Washington, D.C. and would frequently walk past the White House on my lunch hour. There I encountered, as you may today, protestors of various persuasions, all of whom blamed a predictable cast of characters - the President, the CIA, the FBI - for the ills of the world.

After a while, it became part of the summer atmosphere of the District, like the humidity and the tourists. But then one day, out of the blur of figures that had become as familiar as wallpaper, a lone man with a display of photographs caught my eye. "PIGEONS HAVE COPIED OUR BRAINS!" the legend above his pictures read, and I stopped. To say that my life changed with that chance encounter would be an understatement.

I worked for the government, so I had plenty of time to examine his pictures and listen to his tale. It turned out that pigeons had been reproducing human brain waves for years - right under our noses - using nothing more sophisticated than ordinary photocopiers. And nobody was doing anything about it!

I heard the man out, examined his photos, most of which depicted apparently addle-brained humans - the finished product, as it were - and never saw him again.

I returned to Boston and found myself a legal beagle in a large law firm, spending hours in the library doing research. The closest I came to a real-life lawsuit was when one of our clients was named as a defendant in a nuisance suit by a crank. My job was to draft papers to get our client out of the case, but first I was told to call the fellow up and ask him politely if he would consider dropping Acme Amalgamated Fasteners, or whomever, from the suit.

"I can't," came the reply. "The voices - they won't let me alone."

"Who's tormenting you?" I asked politely.

"The CIA, the FBI, the Pope, the . . . "

"You're forgetting somebody," I said brusquely. Sometimes a forceful intervention can bring a madman back to reality. "Like - pigeons?"

"Pigeons?"

"Yep. I went to the White House and found out it's actually pigeons who control our brains."

"Really?" the plaintiff asked.

"Sure - you don't buy that crap about the CIA and the Pope, do you? That's exactly what they want you to think!"

"I never liked pigeons. You may be onto something."

"Sure I'm onto something. I got it from the pigeons themselves!"

"I never knew . . ."

"That's okay, glad I got to you before it was too late. Now about Acme Amalgamated Fasteners . . ."

I didn't persuade the man to drop the suit, but the dialogue came back to me today as I walked the streets of Boston and heard the same tired complaint. A disheveled man, talking to himself incoherently, yelled out "It's the CIA!"

Please - can we finally bury this base canard in the graveyard of lunatic ideas where it belongs? As between the CIA, the FBI, Pope Francis I and pigeons, which is more likely to control your brain? I submit the following:

1. If the CIA controlled your brain, you'd be thinking about dossiers. You don't know what a dossier is.

2. The CIA has centralized headquarters in Langley, Va. Pigeons operate independently, like franchisees, from a number of convenient locations around the country to better monitor your brain waves.

3. The Pope is too busy writing papal bulls to control your brain.

4. In 1950, King George VI made FBI director J. Edgar Hoover an honorary knight in the Order of the British Empire. They don't give those things out for trivial stuff like controlling your brain waves - you have to be a cross-dresser.

5. Finally, and most importantly, noted behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner taught pigeons how to play ping-pong. If pigeons have so much free time they can play ping-pong, they have time for really important stuff like controlling your brain!

So there you have it. Don't say I didn't warn you. And if you see a pigeon as you walk through the park today, do yourself a favor.

Throw him a piece of your hot dog roll. You never know what he might do with the stuff he's got on you.

- Con Chapman

Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works include The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, 10 published plays and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn (Joshua Tree Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor.