The Library of Congress offers priority borrowing privileges to members of Congress. That's what I thought today when I went to my research shelf and found an old-fashioned handwritten note by one of the research librarians telling me that "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate has been removed temporarily from your shelf. It has been requested by a congressman."

The Search for the Manchurian Candidate is a sensationalized account of the Central Intelligence Agency's Cold-War era MK-Ultra program. Under that aegis, researchers sought various mind-control tools that would, they hoped, make the Reds talk a blue streak. Among the compounds investigated was 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, MDMA, "Adam," or its best-known guise, "ecstasy." A friend who used to work for the CIA cautioned me that John D. Marks' work in general is a bit inflammatory.

One can only imagine why a congressman in this day and age is interested in mind-control experiments. Does this legislator hope to produce (or become) a "Manchurian Candidate"? Who is it? A newly elected Representative, outgoing elephant or unopposed incumbent? Was it Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D, Texas), the incoming chairman of the Intelligence committee who earlier this week flubbed a journalist's pop quiz on al Qaeda and Hezbollah? Is the CIA at it again? The answer is a state secret.