Paul Johnson, former editor of the New Statesman turned ‘new right’ Thatcherite, turned his hack hand to KAL 007 in a review of Alexander Dallin’s Black Box KAL 007 and the Superpowers (University of California Press 1985) in the Times Literary Supplement (August 23 1985).
Johnson asks the question: “How could a Korean pilot skilful enough to land a damaged airliner on an unknown frozen lake, make what was described as “the worst navigational error in modern aviation history?” (Johnson is referring to a previous incident, of course.)
His answer? ‘We know that they (sic) could, because they did .”
Johnson wants to explain the ‘mistake’ by 007’s pilot by referring to a previous ‘mistake’. As well as begging two questions at once – the status of both ‘mistakes’ – Johnson’s logic is familiar to students of the dreadful Edward J. Epstein. In his Legend he says something to the effect that the best evidence that Oswald’s rifle could fire three shots in the time allotted is that he did, in fact, fire three shots.
Johnson’s most spectacular recent outburst is his “Flights of Dark Fantasy” in the Daily Telegraph 16 March 1985. In a bizarre attack on ‘conspiracy theorists’ Johnson equates Marx, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Hitler, Kennedy assassination buffs and Tam Dalyell MP. “Conspiracy theory is a modern superstition, a poor substitute for angels and devils.”
Like others of his ilk, Johnson seems to be blissfully unaware that their beliefs about the Soviet Union are frequently conspiracy theories in their purest form, and theories with a good deal less substance than is the case with most of the beliefs held by Tam Dalyell about the Belgrano, or the JFK buffs. But then this is axiomatic. If the conspiracy theories around these events – and this is to ignore the question of how much of them are conspiracy theories – were just the nonsense Johnson and his ilk keep telling us they are, they wouldn’t need to keep telling us, would they?
Johnson, who was a participant at the 1983 Jonathan Institute conference on Soviet-inspired terrorism (See his Wanted:World War on Terror, in the Times 10 August 1984), really has done a Sidney Carton number. No greater sacrifice can a man make than he lay down his brain for a cause.
Brian Crozier (see review of his novel in this issue) was also at that Jonathan Institute conference.
In Lobster 2 the Ramsay half of the team half-seriously speculated that the assassination of JFK might have been the result of a plan to fake an assassination attempt which got hi-jacked by, and provided the perfect cover for, a real assassination.
In Norman Mailer’s latest novel, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, he has a character say at one point:
‘That always happens with master plans …. The better the plan, the more you can count on something unforeseen getting in to bend the works. I’ll tell you the real story of how Jack Kennedy got killed someday. It was supposed to be a miss! What a set of accidents! The CIA didn’t know anus from appetite that day. ” (p123)
A Lobster reader writes that he repeatedly finds that photographs taken of military installations come back from the developers/printers blank – ie the frame before and the frame after the military installation perfect, but the middle blank.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this, and is there an explanation? A “film fogger” near sensitive installations?