Anjum Niaz in New York went to the Vidal roadshow and thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Upper West Side, overlooking the Central Park, on a spring evening, fans of Gore Vidal stand in front of an imposing building, waiting for the doors to open. The most charming thing about the crowd? It's an eclectic mix of men and women, almost all beyond their prime, yet with glimmer in the eye and sparkle in their step, they quickly fill up the hall, waiting like chattering school kids sitting on wooden benches around 18th century chandeliers igniting warmth and cheer.

Too excited to sit still, I race outside to ask the organizers if I can grab a 'nanosecond' with the great man just for a snap.

"Mr Vidal is not feeling well, he'll leave immediately after his talk," is the response I receive. The next best thing then, I console myself, is buying his latest book Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta lying invitingly on a table nearby, when suddenly a lone figure shows up, striking in appearance, sardonic in demeanour - somewhat tense and noirish. He throws a bored glance around, clenches his jowl and with his stick ambles towards an ancient elevator. Here's my moment to close in on him. I smile and he returns a wry smile, I shove the book for his signature and take his picture just in time for the lift door to close shut.

"Bravo, Bravo," the hall echoes with thunderous claps as he appears on the stage, wearing an ink black polo neck (his hallmark), making his wavy mane of grey all the more dashing and his visage more brooding. Why is Gore Vidal, 77, adored by some and hated by others? He's been critiquing America in his novels, hundreds of essays and pamphlets for 56 years. Yes 56! He has people frowning and nodding and smiling and smirking - with admiration, with exasperation, with scandalized dissent. He's a scourge of received opinion and political correctness. Newsweek sums it best: "Vidal is a kind of contemporary Byron: patrician, major writer, glamour-boy, flouter of norms... role player in public events."

"Weep at what's happening - the old Republic is a shadow of itself, it's become the US of Amnesia...the despot (Bush) is firmly in the saddle because of the corrupt Supreme Court who allowed a terrible manipulation to take place (by voting in his favour), and we the people were deprived of our electoral right... America is no longer the ruler of her own soul and spirit" is the opening salvo fired by Vidal.

"I don't like to give my opinions as facts and that's why I didn't become a journalist," says Vidal archly when asked about 9/11. Instead, the nerd connects the dots daily by strident scanning of newspapers... "my eyes have gone."

Pakistan gets a mention by Vidal, but for all the wrong reasons!

Citing a Guardian report on how Bush had planned attacking Afghanistan three months before 9/11, he tells us importantly that in July 2001 a group of interested parties met in a Berlin hotel to listen to a former State Department official, Lee Coldren, who said that Bush was disgusted with the Taliban and was considering military action. "The chilling quality of this private warning was that it came - according to one of those present, the Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik - accompanied by specific details of how Bush would succeed."

This raises the possibility that Osama bin Laden "was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats."

Gore Vidal says that the Cheney-Bush junta had been warned about the 9/11 attack: "Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin, Mubarik, from Mossad... even warnings as early as 1996 when a Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he was learning to fly an aircraft in order to crash a plane into CIA HQ."

Quoting Niaz Naik's interview to BBC, Gore Vidal tells us that it was Naik's view that Washington would not drop its war plans with Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban. America for long has wanted a pipeline built from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan - "from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea to Karachi on the Indian Ocean coast."

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor "stole" her predecessor Sandy Berger's plan to attack the "unlovely Osama" during Clinton era. But now she "denies" doing it, while Sandy "insists" she cribbed his plan.

Americans have been scared into cravenly believing that they have "many, many, many enemies" and are unable to sleep with "so much danger around". Madeline Albright, Clinton's secretary of state, "wanted Gen. Powell to pick up fights with everyone - 'what's the point of having all this military and not using it?' but the general refused, saying "his army were not toy soldiers."

Pouring scorn on American media, Vidal frowns, "We have a pretty lousy press," and then takes a stab at newspapers that have ignored his comments on war with Afghanistan and Iraq. "The New York Times won't cover what I have to say - they like to bury the truth and prefer silence."

"Bravo! Bravo!" the contempt against NYT sends the crowd into raptures.

Months ago, he watched on TV how the police helicopters disrupted a crowd of tens of thousands at a rally against war in Los Angeles, "they flew so low and made such a racket" but "The Los Angles Times (LAT) didn't report a word of it!" Recently, he talked to a crowd of 100,000 at LA and guess what? "the LAT reported that only 30,000 had attended! Luckily, a photographer from LAT took shots of the crowds to belie his paper's claims."

Aaron Brown, the anchor at CNN "was brought to a full stop" by Gore Vidal when the latter was asked an inane question: "I don't do 19th century Fox", was Vidal's retort, meaning that Fox TV is two centuries behind! "Today facts get turned into fiction," therefore Vidal dislikes appearing on TV, "I seem to be talking to the set!"

With lapidary dismissal of Fox News -- the Bush administration's mouthpiece- - Vidal has a one liner: "Fox deserves to go - it's too euphoric, it has no shelf life and cannot force its voice down our throats."

On Chris Matthews, the screaming, screeching host of MSNBC Hardball, Vidal tells us that he met him during one of Matthews' book signing events because "every TV star ends up writing a book!"

"You don't remember me?" asked Matthews, "You think I am an ass****, you should have heard me in the 60's when you came to Holy Cross". Vidal chortled and said, "you were always ahead of the curve in fiction."

Christopher Hitchens columnist and another literary snob- had "appointed himself my heir - he was a bright lad then,but now there's a sea of change in him and I disown him as my heir," pronounces the great master of Hitchens because he's ingratiated himself with Bush and supported the war. "Money is on the Right side - if you need money and attention, like our think tanks do, as the flotsam and jetsam of the intellectual world has done."

He's certain that George Bush will not win another term: "The economy is going to crash - you can't go on with 6% unemployment, it's unheard of - when we had a genuine surplus of trillions of dollars. In the name of conquest, you roll up your sleeves and give freedom and liberty to the world and Patriot Act II at home where a native-born American deprived of citizenship would be deported, just as today, a foreign-born person can be deported. Deported to any country or region regardless of whether the country or region has a government!"

The exposition of this writer-luminary and committed agent provocateur simply brings the house down.

Anjum Niaz is a US correspondent for Dawn newspaper and an occasional contributor to The Daily Star literature page. She lives in New Jersey.