Elite Jottings
Fascinating letter in the Daily Telegraph (see 4 January and 9 January 1985) on the career of Dom Mintoff, recently retired as Prime Minister of Malta. Mintoff was a Rhodes Scholar (1939-41) and the 4 January letter informs us that “in the flush of the George Cross award (to Malta) he wanted integration (three MPs at Westminster) with Britain.”
Integration of Britain with America was one of the Round Table group’s pre WW2 ambitions. One of the US end of the Round Table network, Clarence Streit (Rhodes Scholar 1920/21) wrote a couple of books advocating this. (See Union Now With Britain, Jonathan Cape, London 1941). Streit’s biography in the Register of Rhodes Scholars notes that he was President of the International Movement for Atlantic Union as late as 1961, publishing Freedom’s Frontier – Atlantic Union Now in that year. (Some ideas die hard!)
While in Quigley country …. somewhere in one of his books on all this he remarks that the Round Table network had a stranglehold on the (writing of the) history of the British Empire/Commonwealth through having its members or allies in all the important jobs in the academic/publishing/journalism world.
An interesting example of something akin to this appeared in the Observer (10 February 1985). In the review section page 26 is taken up with two book reviews. One is a review of a biography of Lloyd George by John Grigg. Lloyd George had a whole slew of Round Tablers (led by Lord Milner) in his cabinet just after WWI, and the grandfather of Grigg, Edward Grigg, was part of the early Round Table’s inner circle. The reviewer of this book is David Watt (aka D.C. Watt), a leading light in today’s Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), itself an early Round Table ‘front’ organisation. (And the Observer, of course, was owned for a time by Lord Astor, one of the Round Table’s inner circle.)
The second review is of an autobiography of Lionel Brett. Brett’s grandfather, Lord Esher, was also a member of the Round Table’s inner circle. The reviewer quotes Esher saying, in refusing the Viceroy of India job, that he saw no point in “throwing away the substance of power for the shadow”. Part of that ‘substance’ was his membership of the Round Table’s inner circle.
Financial Times (7 December 1984) reported on another of those elite groups, The Group of Thirty. Set up (with Rockefeller Foundation money) in 1978, its new chairman is Lord Richardson, former Governor of the Bank of England.
Anyone got anything else on this group?
Destabilisation
The destabilisation of Greece and the Seychelles continues. (See Lobster 7)
Two brief reports from the Seychelles. President Rene reported calling a press conference “to dispel what he said were attempts to portray his country as under Soviet influence.” The report notes that the Seychelles “is full of rumours of enforced socialism and mounting Soviet influence.” (Times 1 December 1984)
An example of this rumour-mongering appeared in the Observer (9 December 1984). “Russia’s hold on this one-time tropical paradise is tight…etc” (quoted from a French report.)
It might all be true, of course.
In Greece the now familiar pattern is visible, even in the British press.
- Daily Telegraph (19 December 1984) “The Greek government is causing uneasiness within the Western Alliance following the announcement that it is changing the country’s defence orientation away from confrontation with the Warsaw Pact to face a threat from Turkey.”
- Guardian (8 January 1985) “Richard Burt, US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs” warned in an interview.. that Greek-American relations “Can’t be a one-way friendship.”
- The Cyprus connection, predicted as a probable trigger for a US-backed coup in Lobster 7, duly appears. Daily Telegraph (4 February 1985) reported a “previously unknown organisation” claiming the credit (sic) for a bomb blast in a US air force base in Greece which injured 78 people. The organisation, calling itself the National Front, said the attack was because the Americans “were responsible for the continued situation in Cyprus.” “Previously unknown organisation” is usually a euphemism for ‘an intelligence operation’.
- Daily Telegraph (16 February 1985). US preparing contingency plans to remove its bases from Greece in 1988 when present leasing arrangements expire. Oh sure. Anybody remember when the US last quietly packed its bags and left?
- Daily Telegraph (24 February 1985) A piece headlined “Athens – new terrorist capital of West”. Apparently there are 17 unsolved political assassinations in Greece in the past decade.(17! How many in Northern Ireland?)
The article claims Greece has become the centre of Arab terrorism. This is such blatantly intelligence-inspired bullshit …. - Report in Times (23 February 1985) on mysterious, allegedly left-wing ’17 November’ group which claims to have killed a Greek publisher. ‘November 17’ is said to have left a note at the scene of the murder “arguing that the publisher had been helping the CIA to create a climate of uncertainty in Greece.”
The World Anti-Communist League
The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) has had a lot of attention recently. Less attention has been paid to the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League (APACL), the parent body of the WACL. The APACL puts out a magazine Asian Outlook (now into Vol 19). Consisting almost entirely of speeches from APACL worthies and turgid anti-communist rhetoric, Asian Outlook bears a remarkable resemblance to the stodgier output of its ideological enemies, and must be a strong contender for the title of ‘Most Boring Journal in the World’.
Still, from the August 1984 edition we learn that Peter Dally, Chairman of the British Anti-Communist Council (BACC – see Lobster 7) is also Vice Chair of something called the European Council for World Freedom, aka the WACL Council for Europe; that Jill Knight MP is Secretary General of the BACC; and that two British MPs attended the APACL Captive Nations Week shin-dig in Taiwan – Henry Billingham and Stephan Terlezki.
Anybody who wants to subscribe (or try to cadge a free copy) the address is Asian Outlook, Box 22992, Taipei. Taiwan. Subs. are $10 per year.
Memoirs from Lord Rothschild
An exquisite example of how the British State operates is to be found in the droll but thin volume of memoirs from Lord Rothschild (he of Think Tank fame), Random Variables (Collins, London 1984)
This on page 75:
P.M.”would you give me an example of the type of problem you want the Unit (ie the Think Tank) to tackle”
Mr Heath.”Concorde.”
At that moment I thought, perhaps wrongly, that I detected some anguished vibrations emanating from Sir Burke Trend and Sir William Armstrong, as they then were, who were hovering in the background.. an hour before they had told me that it was precisely things like Concorde that the Government Think Tank would not be expected to study.
General Vernon Walters
Perhaps the single most interesting thing I’ve seen recently was in the New Statesman (8 February 1985) profile of General Vernon Walters, the probable replacement for the dreadful Jeanne Kirkpatrick as US ambassador at the UN. It included this:
“In the early 1960s, as military attache in Rome, he (Walters) was closely involved with the Italian intelligence service and with blocking the Kennedy Administration’s ‘opening’ towards the Italian left.”
I could be wrong but my ‘nose’ tells me this will turn out to be a major lead. Not that the Kennedy ‘apertura’ was a secret. As soon as I checked some of the basic texts on the Kennedy administration (Schlesinger’s One Thousand Days, for example), there it is. Although there are no details, it was included in the standard histories. I haven’t had time yet to do a proper trawl through the libraries on this, but in one or two of the standard academic studies of domestic Italian post-war politics the ‘apertura’ merits merely a line or two. But with hindsight, and the recent events in Italy in mind, this is surely an area which will repay further study.
This reminds me again of how important it is to re-read everything. I haven’t looked at Schlesinger’s book for at least 5 years, and five years ago the ‘apertura’ to the left wouldn’t have meant anything to me.
In the light of ex BOSS agent Gordon Winter’s remark that BOSS had the Kennedy assassination marked down to ‘a General named Walters’ (see Lobster 7), this latest fragment about Walters is of the greatest possible significance. Walters’s own memoirs Silent Missions (1978 I think) which I skimmed last year, contain two striking omissions. One is any reference at all to John Kennedy. The other is any information at all on where Walters was during 1963.
USS Liberty incident
Nice to find the big battalions on your side once in a while. December’s Atlantic contains two pages of outraged and gob-smacked letters from authors of books on Israel responding to the outrageous article on the USS Liberty incident. (See Lobster 7).
Three books are mentioned which deal with the episode:
- Stephen Green’s Taking Sides
- James Ennes’ Assault on the Liberty
- Donald Neff’s Warriors for Jerusalem.
Of these three only Green’s book seems to have been published in the UK. And the list ought to contain Anthony Pearson’s Conspiracy of Silence (Quartet 1978) Pearson hasn’t exactly been visible since then. Anybody know where he is and doing what?
Active British Servicemen
“British servicemen (are) active in nearly 50 countries world-wide.”
Thus, Hugh Hanning, Director of Studies for the British Atlantic Committee, writing in the Daily Telegraph (5 January 1985) in the course of an article arguing for an aggressive, expansionist British military posture (‘an extrovert defence policy’). This is apparently known as ‘horizon stretching’ in Whitehall. Sandhurst and the SAS go world-wide!
The Belgrano business
Bob Woodward (of Woodstein fame) quoted in the Observer (24 Feb. 1985) on the Belgrano business:
“It’s pretty obvious that the information the Government claim is secret is the position of the American spy satellites.”
This may be a pretty educated guess. As Jim Hougan reveals in his Secret Agenda (reviewed in this issue), Woodward had a very important job with US Naval Intelligence before becoming a journalist.