DEEP BLACK: the secrets of space espionage
William E. Burrows, Bantam Press, 1988
P. N. Rogers
The National Reconnaissance Office is the only ‘black’ US intelligence agency remaining. Formed in 1960, the US only conceded officially that they had reconnaissance satellites twelve years later, and to this day maintain that these are the responsibility of the USAF and the CIA.
In 1971 the publication of Klass’ Secret Sentries in Space definitively exposed the US ‘black’ space programme. Burrows’ book not only picks up where Klass left off but also goes much further, exploring the involvement of the NRO and acknowledging that he has had direct contact with ‘insiders’. Unlike Klass, Burrows is uninhibited about discussing the negative aspects of satellite systems – their role in the US war-fighting infrastructure; their use in distorting defence estimates; the abuse of their data by the Reagan administration hawks to justify Cold War expenditure and rhetoric to the American public; and the severe difficulties the programme has run into after the detonation of Challenger and unmanned launch platforms in 1984.
Although Deep Black is a bold and comprehensive expose, Burrows’ background and reliance on non-attributable intelligence sources does compromise this work enough to mean that it is not definitive. Burrows is prepared to take the DIA’s Soviet Military Power at face value – something no liberal defence analyst is prepared to do – and also regards the process of actual analysis of overhead intelligence as a purely objective process, which the experience of the ‘missile gap’ in the late 1950s contradicts.
These objections made, if you can afford £14.95, the book is worth getting as it contains information available nowhere else and satisfactorily demonstrates that when the CIA gets on with its real job – the evaluation of strategic intelligence for national intelligence estimates – it does it with considerably less bias and more professionalism than the majority of other United States Intelligence Community members.
Journals
Counterpoint
A long intricate trail from the CIA leads to the village of Ickham, near Canterbury, from whence issues a magazine called Counterpoint, devoted to the exposure and analysis of Soviet disinformation.
The trail began with the defection of Stanislas Levchenko, a Major in the KGB. He went over to the Americans in 1979, spent a year working with the Readers’ Digest’s John Barron, during which he briefed Barron for his KGB: The Hidden Hand Today. (International Herald Tribune 8 June 1983).
Levchenko told tales of Soviet disinformation and so-called ‘active measures’. His revelations lead to a briefing document in July 1981 on ‘Soviet Active Measures’, a sanitised version of which was widely distributed to the media and various authors close to the Agency. Since then we have had the Schutz/Godson Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy (1984), Chapman Pincher’s The Secret Offensive (1985 – Pincher’s old cuttings file spiced up with the CIA briefing) and Richard Deacon’s The Truth Twisters (1986).
Counterpoint was begun in 1985 and Levchenko is stated as one of its ‘editors’. (The other is a KGB defector from the 1950s, Peter Deriabin, who helped produced the CIA’s The Penkovsky Papers) Counterpoint’s publisher, Walter Speigel, claims to have 1200 subscribers paying £25/$35 (US) for the magazine, and denies being subsidised by, or working for any intelligence agency.
Counterpoint is nicely produced, and rather good – or would be if you are interested in Soviet disinformation chiefly within the Third World. (And its got to be a spook operation.)
Available from Ickham Publications Ltd., Westonhanger, Ickham, Canterbury CT3 1QN.
Executive Intelligence Review
We recently received a copy of EIR, the main journal of the LaRouche empire in the US. This is the first Rouchie material I have seen for some years. I still don’t understand most of what they’re talking about, it’s still crazy but a little less crazy (or better concealed craziness) than it used to be.
How to describe the content of EIR? One example: the first essay, on the US economy, debt, and the Presidential campaign, proceeds apparently reasonably for about 150 words then this appears:
“word has gone out that in fact some agreement has been cooked up between the electoral campaign authorities at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve who presently control US monetary and financial policy, and the Japanese.”
Then, 20 lines later, the doubts (not to say sheer incomprehension) produced by the sentence above are confirmed by the last section of this sentence:
“Such an approach, it is thought, would secondly increase the financial pressures now being exerted on the European Monetary System’s deutschmark-pegged cross rate system, to the effect of blowing that system apart on behalf of [and here it comes] standing US commitments to increase the influence of the Soviet Union with the European economies.”
Elsewhere there are calls for a US colony on Mars by 2027 (Isaac Asimov meets Keynes); LaRouche, referred to as ‘Presidential candidate and physical economist ‘ (what, a flesh-presser?) wants a return to the Gold standard; and Jesse Jackson’s ‘Rainbow Coalition’ is described as a
“motley assortment of gays, lesbians, nuclear freezeniks, Qaddafi and Hitler admirers, ecology freaks, prototerrorists and other perverts …. a mass movement, modelled on the SA, the left wing of the Nazi movement, and their modern-day heirs, the Soviet controlled Greens of West Germany”
I could go on but mocking this delusional system of belief is too easy to be much fun. The LaRouche nonsense is only interesting to those who collect conspiracy theories. Since the John Birch Society’s reworking of Nesta Webster, there have been very few authentically modern conspiracy theories. LaRouche has produced one. Is it more or less rational to believe that the real controller of the universe is the British Royal Family than, say, the KGB?
EIR is wonderful stuff in the same way that the Illuminatus Trilogy was. Only EIR appear to mean it. The other explanation, that the whole thing is a gigantic psy op for someone, always comes a cropper when you ask, ‘For whom?’
EIR: $10.00 per issue from PO Box 17390, Washington DC 20041-0390.
Survival in the 20th Century
I mentioned this in Lobster 15, a strange Japanese (or apparently Japanese) right-wing conspiracy theory journal. Its drift is becoming clearer as more issues appear. It has begun running some of the lines currently emanating from the Japanese militaristic right-wing, basically that, like the Nazis, the Japanese have been much misunderstood, their war-time behaviour grossly exaggerated by … whoever. The March (1988) issue, for example, includes this on the origins of the war in the pacific:
“The historical fact is, however, that it was the Communists who originated the plan (ie the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, name of the pre-war Japanese empire) to draw the US and Japan into war by dragging Japan into the Southeast Asian scene and causing a conflict of interest between Japan and the US.”
If this is nonsense, it is potentially dangerous nonsense, as are the attempts to revise the history of Japan’s atrocities in the 1930s and 1940s.
Perhaps of more interest to UK readers is the inclusion of material from two of this country’s right-wing newsletters, Kenneth de Courcy’s Special Office Brief (in April’s issue), and the one he used to produce, Intelligence Digest (in March’s). De Courcy really deserves a biography before he dies. He’s been an interesting figure on the British right since the 1930s, churning out his newsletters for 50 years. (Neither newsletter lives up to its advance billing and are definitely not worth getting, being largely a way of milking Americans of their surplus dollars.)
De Courcy is mentioned a couple of times in the recent King of Fools by John Parker (Futura paperback, London 1988), the first attempt at a revisionist account of the life and political activities of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor before and after the war. De Courcy was a confidant of theirs. Parker’s book is not very good – no documentation – but it is a useful sketch, an outline of what a decent version of the subject would be. And it is, as they say, ‘a rattling good read’ through all the scandals and intrigue the Windsors were involved in.
The book seems to have attracted zero public attention in either the hard or soft cover versions. This is partly explained, no doubt, by the book’s lack of documentation, but also, I suspect, because this country’s editors don’t really want to deal with a version of the Windsors which includes them dickering with British and German fascists, involved with Meyer Lansky in Bermuda. Parker paints a picture of the British royal family tinged with homosexuality, drug addiction and general decadence, and attributes to a hitherto secret MI6 report, allegations that the Duchess had been an enthusiastic participant in threesomes in some high class brothels in China.
Another version of this territory is said to be on the way from Charles Higham. His Trading With The Enemy (London 1983), curiously not listed as among Parker’s sources, covers some of the territory of King of Fools, notably the attempts to organise a peace in 1939/40.
Parker makes it clear, without actually saying so, that Lord Mountbatten was bisexual. This is a recurring theme in the underground history of the British royal family and is often assumed to be nothing more than a smear generated by Mountbatten’s enemies within the British ruling class. Private Eye readers may have noticed the lead story in issue 681 (January 22 1988) about Anthony Blunt, Kincora and a ramified homosexual network among the Anglo-Irish upper class. A part of the intricate allegations of which the Eye piece was just a printable part, is precisely that Mountbatten was a homosexual and involved on the fringes of this network.
Behind The Wire
This is a new magazine about … how to put this accurately?..Northern Irish politics and the British state from a Republican perspective? In other words, not too dissimilar to, say, Labour and Ireland but with a much greater emphasis on news.
It appears 6 times a year and though the subscription is given as f30 (French francs?) it might be sensible to write and ask for sub. rates if living outside the EEC countries. Editor/producer is Michael Quilligan, Ierland Informatie Centrum, Commelinstraat, 22/sous, 1093 TS, Amsterdam, Holland.
Issue No 1 (March 1988) included some information on the new head of MI5, Peter Walker, which I don’t think has appeared elsewhere in the British media:
“(he) served in Ireland in the early ’80s as second-in-command to Britain’s spy chief, David Ramsen. He posed as a ‘political officer’ and was a frequent visitor to Dublin, where he became a familiar face at the Horseshoe Bar, in the Shelbourne Hotel, on Stephen’s Green.”
Issue 2 (May 1988), 24 A4 pages, covers the Ken Livingstone maiden speech (reprinted in Lobster 14), the Gibraltar, Andersontown and Milltown cemetery incidents, the Birmingham 6 and so on.
Quilligan was one of the people linked to the Provos in the FCO ‘Background Briefing’ issued to the media. (See Guardian 11 May 1988). This ‘Background Briefing’ differs not a jot from the kinds of ‘briefings’ put out by IRD in the 1970s and is proof that while IRD may have officially closed, its functions continue in other guises.
Canadian Association For Security And Intelligence Studies Newsletter
Issue 10 arrived, chock full of news and details of books recent and forthcoming in the intelligence field. It includes a couple of very sharp book reviews from James Rusbridger who, from his base in Cornwall, is developing a nice line in myth-puncturing comment on the intelligence field.
CASIS is by far the best source of information on books/journals in this field I am aware of and is highly recommended.
Subs $10: contact Stuart Farson, Room 8001, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, 130 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1Al
Covert Action Information Bulletin No.29
($7, including airmail from PO Box 50272, Washington D.C. 20004) is largely devoted to recent events in the Pacific, the coup in Fiji being the chief focus. However, the single most interesting piece is an essay by Fred Landis showing the links between the CIA and the Readers’ Digest. Landis deals exclusively with the American end of this but the thought occurs that the British edition has presumably been used to run specifically British disinformation over the years. Somebody reading this has access to old copies. A quick look through the issues between 1971 and 1976 would surely be of interest. Will someone do this and let us know the results?
CAIB’s coverage of the Fiji events includes a number of barely documented suggestions that there were US troops involved in it – Marines behind the ski masks, that sort of thing. Owen Wilkes, publisher of the excellent Wellington Pacific Review, is also included in this issue of CAIB, but in WPR No 9, he lets rip at CAIB for running this now discredited allegation. Of course, CAIB would like to discover that US troops were involved, and it is hard to assess material from another part of the world. Even so…. CAIB is generally excellent, if a bit mean-spirited. In all the years of our existence they’ve never mentioned us.
Robin Ramsay
Geheim – secrets and more secrets
Since the first issue, which set Bonn muttering about introducing a Reagan-style law restricting intelligence publication, Geheim has followed the best traditions of investigative journalism, and issue 3/1987 brings us some real gems. Besides continuing the invaluable listing of American intelligence bases in West Germany (part 3 of the list raises the total named to 250), this issue names 30 CIA agents stationed in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Syria and Cuba, investigates the history of German involvement in Afghanistan and BND strategy for the area, and reports on the surveillance of the Berlin Alternative List.
Two articles reprinted from CAIB and National Reporter cover the CIA and heroin and American war plans for Europe, while in the first parts of two longer articles, Rolf Gossner analyses the disappearing distinction between police and Verfassungsschutz (Germany’s MI5), and Michael Opperskalski traces the background to Irangate. He shows America’s failure to spot the storm to the subsequent reinforcement of the CIA contingent following a twin-track policy of supporting anti-Khomeini exile groups outside Iran while building up agent networks within the first post-revolutionary government of Medhi Basargan. They succeeded in winning over Bani Sadr (President of Iran), Amir Entesam (Deputy Prime Minister) and Admiral Ahmad Madani (Defence Minister), with the aim – among others – of saving the CIA listening posts on the Soviet/Iranian border at Capkan and Behshahr.
The capture of the American Embassy in November 1979 wrecked these plans however, and it was only after a year that the CIA managed to re-establish contacts with an old friend, former SAVAK official Major General Fardust, still following his old vocation, but now in Khomeini’s SAVAMA. The CIA curried favour with Fardust by providing information to SAVAMA on left-wing opposition in Iran, chiefly on the Fedayin and the Tudeh Party.
It was from this cooperation that the triangle between the CIA, MOSSAD and Speaker Rafsanjani developed: the arms deals began and Irangate came into its own. Opperskalski’s article goes into depth, naming names on all sides, promising much for his forthcoming book on the subject with Kunhanandan Nair, CIA: Murder Club.
But the real gem in this issue of Geheim is the publication of lengthy extracts from two internal Verfassungsschutz (MI5) documents, detailing which categories of people are to be put on file, and how those files are structured – the ‘crown jewels’ indeed.
Geheim Lutticherstr 14, 5000 Koln 1, West Germany.
Celsius
Celsius is a new arrival on the state research scene, a French-language magazine published 11 times a year and compiled by both French and Belgian journalists, unlike its predecessor Article 31 which was mainly French with a Belgian insert.
Celsius is not a state research/parapolitics publication as such, aiming rather to cover right-wing extremism, but the contents of No 4 (January 1988) show several subjects of potential interest to Lobster readers. Besides articles on the recent congress of the Italian fascist party, MSI, attacks on Third World groups, American media coverage of Nicaragua, and the German ‘Colonia Dignidad’ in Chile, Celsius 4 devotes space to Accuracy in Media, the American model for Julian Lewis’ Media Monitoring Unit, to the IGFM, the German-based right-wing “human rights group” set up to counter Amnesty’s impartial approach, and to political surveillance in Belgium, a subject scarcely documented before.
The five-page article on this surveillance, translated from the Dutch language paper Halt and extended by Celsius, shows that even the Flemish Oxfam shops group was put under surveillance, having been labelled as Marxist, pacifist and extreme left-wing!
Although Celsius can sometimes raise more questions than it answers (e.g. two more recent cases of political surveillance are mentioned only in passing when it would have taken little space or time to lift details of these from newspapers and include them), it is a welcome arrival in Belgium where the parapolitical intrigues have no rivals for their complexity and where the extreme right-wing cannot comfortably be forgotten …..
Celsius BP 210, Brussels 5, Belgium. Subscriptions are 1300 FB for 11 issues.
David Teacher