Peddlars Of Crisis
Jerry W. Sanders (Pluto, London 1983)
With this book research into clandestinism and Cold War revisionism take another big step towards meeting. It is the story of the Committee on the Present Danger, the Cold War think-tank that prepared the way for the election of Reagan and provided the administration with Jeanne Kirkpatrick, William Casey and Eugene Rostow.
Sanders shows how the CPD emerged from a split between what he calls the militarists and the managerialists in the US elite in the late 1970s. During the Carter Administration the managerialists, represented by the Trilateral Commission, advocated Ease/West trade as part of an integrated world economy. However, as Sanders shows, the enterprise was vulnerable and unstable. It depended on the use of local surrogate forces such as the Shah of Iran to maintain US power in the Third World; and at home, its co-ordinating body, the Trilateral Commission, was resolutely elitist. (Hardly surprising, since to explain and argue for its policies in front of a wider audience would have meant admitting that the history of the Cold War was rather different from what the US public had always been told.)
The crunch came with the fall of the Shah. With its chief local surrogate gone, the Carter Administration launched a rearmament programme (which as Sanders shows was in full swing before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), and the new Cold War was on.
Meanwhile the militarist wing of the US establishment had been mobilising. The coalition of hard liners in the intelligence community and the pro-Cold War intellectuals had first come together in 1976 to form the Committee on the Present Danger, and, in particular, to plot the downfall of Paul Warnke, Carter’s arms negotiator. Soon the CPD coalition included the New Right, giving the militarists a mass populist basis. The ground was set for the 1980 election in which the Reagan campaign took over the old John Birch Society line and denounced the Trilateral Commission as a pro-Communist conspiracy. The rest is history (and may be the last we’ll ever get.)
But there’s more to the story Sanders has to tell. He traces names and tactics of the contemporary CPD to an earlier Committee on the Present Danger that was active in the late forties and early fifties. This was a prestige body of establishment intellectuals that helped to sell the Cold War and make its assumptions part of the political orthodoxy in post-war America. (Interestingly enough, the original CPD’s main opponents seem to have been the right-wing isolationists.)
The story Sanders has to tell is important, and told with great detail and documentation. The only point I feel is missing is the question of the wider affiliations of the current CPD. That the Trilateral Commission represents the world view of New York bankers is pretty obvious; but although we see the background of the CPD in the intelligence community and the intellectual world it is not clear from this book whether the CPD represents any comparable faction of Big Money.
Roger Sandell
Demonstration Elections: US-staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and El Salvador
Edward S. Herman, Frank Brodhead. South End Press, Boston 1984
There is an enormous amount of information available via the US press and the vast academic industry, much of it antithetical to the plans and myths of American imperialism. Although this doesn’t matter much – like most people everywhere, Americans generally take no notice of information about the wider world – it does mean that the tools are available to produce devastating critiques of American society, its politics and foreign policy. Demonstration Elections is one such critique.
Briefly, the authors demonstrate that the elections in question were a fraud, rigged to produce the result desired by the US government, to be fed, via a supine and culpable mass media, back to the American electorate. They show how it was done, by whom; they analyse the role of the mass media and the ‘observers’ sent to legitimise such ‘elections’.
With the present situation in Central America, it is their account of the 1982 election in El Salvador which has the greatest impact and is of the greatest relevance. Although interesting in themselves, the accounts of the earlier ‘demonstration elections’ in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic are merely a long historical introduction to the El Salvador version.
Little of this will come as a surprise to Lobster readers, who must take it for granted that American capital is unlikely to allow a little thing like the concept of democracy to get in the way of its profits. What may be a surprise to those unfamiliar with any of the authors’ previous work is the quality of their assault on the received version of this aspect of received reality. The ‘Time/Life’ world view is not just refuted, it is destroyed, obliterated. It is the technique, the thoroughness of their attack, which is so impressive.
The book includes a glossary of ‘Orwellian language’ used by US governments, a kind of trailer for a forthcoming book on this subject by Herman, to be titled Beyond Hypocrisy. Beyond hypocrisy, beyond cynicism, beyond parody, is where this book locates current (and past) policies of US governments towards its colonial subjects.
Demonstration Elections produced in me the same feeling of numbness that some of Herman’s earlier work (with co-author Noam Chomsky), The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, (in the UK published by Spokesman, Nottingham) generates. For what they are doing is minutely documenting the activities of evil men (and with notable exceptions like Ms Kirkpatrick, they are all men). These books have to be read, but reading them is an unpleasant experience. Fascinating, yes, but no fun.
RR
Demonstration Elections is currently available from South End Press, 302 Columbus Avenue, Boston MA 02116 USA. $8 paper, $20 hardback. As far as I know there are no plans to publish it in the UK yet.
The Belarus Secret
John Loftus (Penguin, London 1983)
Very impressive slim volume on the recruitment of the fascist members of the Byelorussian community by British and American intelligence shortly after WW2. Contains several lines of inquiry to be pursued, such as:
“I discovered how British POW camps in Italy and Yugoslavia became waystations for Nazi immigration. According to these sources, the real ‘Odessa’ network was composed of British staffers in MI6” (p164) Really?!
Loftus also claims that the ABN (Anti-Bolshevik Nations Committee) was financed by British Intelligence, as were other organisations such as the Francis Ckryuna Library in London, and the Byelorrussian Liberation Movement (p165)
On p167 he claims that the architects of Hitler’s intelligence efforts against the Soviets passed into British hands, men like Walter Schellenberg, the head of the super-elite SD. The interest here is that in 1946 Anthony Blunt went to Germany on a secret mission on behalf of the British Royal Family, one theory (Chapman Pincher’s) being that he was to collect evidence of links between the Duke of Windsor and the Nazis.
In The Crown and The Swastika (Robert Hale, London 1983) it is shown that the evidence was probably the papers of Schellenberg and the SD. Did Blunt not only collect the papers but also recruit Schellenberg? Did Blunt carry out other missions for the Royal Family? Circumstantial evidence suggests, for example, that it was Blunt who purchased Stephen Ward’s portrait of the Royal Family in 1963.
SD
Perhaps the most interesting of all the current new publications is Stuart Christie’s Stephano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist £4.50 from BCM Refract, London WC1N 3XX. We will be reviewing this at some length in a future Lobster.
British Intelligence and Covert Action by Jonathan Bloch and Patrick Fitzgerald.
Formerly published by Junction Books in London (which went bust recently), is now being published by Brandon, Co. Kerry, Ireland.
Good Times, Bad Times
Harold Evans (London 1983)
Two fragments of some interest in this. On p226:
“In the late 1960s it (ie The Times) encouraged Cecil King’s lunatic notion of a coup against Harold Wilson’s government in favour of a government of business leaders led by Lord Roben.”
This seems to be a new addition to the extant information on this ‘coup.’ (on which see, e.g. Sunday Times 29th March 1981 and 5th April 1981)
And on p7, the foreword, Evans tells us that the owner of the Times, Roy Thompson,
“had been told by Mormon friends that the Sunday Times could have the autobiography of the reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes … (who) was ready to come out of his years of seclusion and tell his own story. We were in Miami the next day. Hughes’ lawyer, Chester Davies, and Mormon aides shuttled between Thompson’s room and wherever they were keeping Hughes, whom we were never allowed to see.”
This, too, I think is new, and should be of considerable interest to the Hughes buffs in the US, many of whom don’t believe that Hughes was still alive at that point (1972). Second guessing the view of such buffs, they would probably retort that (a) Hughes was dead, and his death was being concealed by the ‘Mormon Mafia’ who had taken control of his empire; (b) that any such biography would be a complete phoney, assembled by those Mormons; and (c) the fact that it was offered to the Sunday Times merely tells us that by 1972 the rumours about the Mormon take-over of Hughes’ empire were so strong in the US that no comparable ‘serious’ US paper would have gone near a Hughes ‘biography’ at that point.
I find it rather curious that Evans apparently took the episode as seriously as he claims to: these rumours and doubts were even mentioned in the Sunday Times‘ Insight Team’s book on the Clifford Irving ‘hoax’ biography of Hughes.
Other than these two fragments there is little of interest here. The book is chiefly a long, detailed account of how a group of nice middle-of-the-road English gentlemen were run ragged by Murdoch. Evans comes across as extremely naive – or is playing an extremely complex game. He gives no indication of even being aware that Gerald Long, the ex-Reuter’s man who was Murdoch’s charge-hand at the Times group, had (and probably still has) connections with British intelligence.
Intermittently funny in an unintentional way, Good Times Bad Times is a revealing portrait of the intellectual bankruptcy of the liberal end of the British ruling class.
RR
Contact
A.F.N.Clarke (Pan, London 1984)
Direct, earthy account by ex-Parachute Regiment Captain of his experiences in Northern Ireland from June 1971 to August 1978. This may be the first of many personal accounts: it took nearly ten years for the books from Vietnam to start rolling.
Interesting to us because it mentions Robert Nairac, August 1973: “But in the street and Bob is like a foxhound, digging into everything, questioning everything, wanting to cram five months knowledge into one short two hour patrol.” (p79)
Everyone knows Nairac was a trained assassin but following the revelations of ex-intelligence operative Captain Holroyd in the New Statesman (The Dirty War, 4,11,18 June 1984), a Mark Cunningham, a friend of Nairac’s family, tried to whitewash Nairac’s name in a letter to the New Statesman (26th June).
Cunningham’s address was Ampleforth College, York, identified by Stuart Christie as a breeding ground for the SAS officer class. (The Golden Road to Samarkand, Anarchist Review No 6, 1982)
At the same time as Holroyd’s exposes there was the strange affair of the apparent discovery of Nairac’s skeleton, reported by the British media, which paid little attention to the later news that it was in fact identified as Eugene Simmons, thought to have been an IRA informer, who disappeared on New Year’s Day 1981. (Sunday News 20th May 1984)
SD
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
Stuart Tendler and David May (Granada, London 1984)
Frank Zappa always said the CIA were behind the psychedelic revolution. Maybe not, but there are some interesting characters and international crooks like Robert Vesco behind the financing of LSD production.
Tendler and May’s book is a fairly straightforward account of the early days of the Brotherhood, a period of idealistic adventure, the later involvement of millionaire Billy Hitchcock, and apparent American intelligence asset ‘Ronald Stark’. There is also a link to Britain’s own ‘Operation Julie’.
Interesting as it is, a fuller account will probably appear in The CIA And The Acid Generation by Martin and Lee, due out later this year, and which contains much FOI material….
Mentions … Porton Down experiments on LSD in 1966. I know someone who took part in these as a volunteer whilst in the RAF. The experiments were supervised by American personnel. He was given quite large quantities without being told at the time what it was and still suffers flashbacks …
The CIA Project Artichoke at Atsugi, Japan, begun in 1952, where Lee Harvey Oswald was stationed (See Did Lee Harvey Oswald Drop Acid? in Rolling Stone 13th March 1983)
Howard Marks was arrested after dealing with the remnants of the Brotherhood in California/ Mexico. ‘Stark’, possibly CIA, was also interested in Marks’ ‘target’, Irishman James McCann.
SD
Books to watch out for
- Time For Trial, Rhona Prime (wife of Geoffrey Prime)
- GCHQ: The Negative Asset, Jock Kane, (if it manages to get past the Government’s injunction. Much of the material in it has already been published in the New Statesman.)
- High Times, David Leigh (adventures of MI6 dope smuggler Howard Marks).
Just out in paperback
- God’s Banker, Rupert Cornwell (Counterpoint 1984) updated with an additional chapter.
- The Puzzle Palace James Bamford.
Essential material on NSA/GCHQ. Boring though … - The Calvi Affair, Larry Gurwin (Pan 1984) Slightly updated.
New catalogue now available from Aries Research, now called Tom Davis Books, PO Box 1107, Aptos, California CA95001 1107 USA.
Goodies to look out for:
- Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard M. Nixon, Robert Sam Anson
- Rogue Agent: The Remarkable Career of Edwin P. Wilson, James Goulden
- Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA, Jim Hougan
- Tom Davis also stocks back issues of Jonathan Marshall’s Parapolitics.The best mail order catalogue bar none on areas of interest to Lobsters, and free on request.
Publications
Rights (Journal of the NCCL)
Summer 1984 issue. 45p plus post from NCCL, 27 Tabard St, SE14 4LA
Excellent issue: includes Gay’s The Word police raid; NCCL and the NF; strip searches in Armagh; legal analysis of police action against miners; and an interesting piece on the little known Ministry of Defence police.
Covert Action Information Bulletin
No 21 – CIA, The Press and Central America.
Vintage stuff from CAIB. Includes an update on Nicaragua; a long analysis of NYT’s handling of El Salvador and Nicaragua by Edward Herman (whose book is reviewed in this issue); and a very acute analysis, Covert Propaganda in Time and Newsweek, by Howard Friel. But perhaps most useful of all is a long piece by CAIB co-founder Louis Woolf on the right-wing organisation, Accuracy in Media (AIM), detailing membership, methods, funding, and some of its murky links to Teamsters, CIA, World Anti-Communist League, Moonies etc.
As far as we are aware CAIB is no longer distributed in this country, and is available only from CAIB PO Box 50272 Washington DC 20004. $5.50 per copy (which includes air mail post). Not cheap, but CAIB contains material you find nowhere else.
Intelligence – The International Journal of Intelligence.
Produced by L’Association Pour Le Droit a L’Information (ADI), 16 Rue des Ecoles, 75005, Paris, France.
We’ve seen Nos 1 and 2 so far. No 1 includes How The CIA Overthrew Australia’s Government by Dennis Freney, Part 1; clippings from around the world, book reviews etc. No 2 has Freney Part 2; a longish piece on the ‘Bulgarian connection’; a reprint of one of the Guardian series on MI5; plus parapolitical material from Brazil and Venezuela, clippings etc. It is not unlike The Lobster – in intention, anyway, if somewhat more ambitious in scope.
Intelligence also has a service which sends reprints from around the world, details of which comes with the journal.
Subscription is $20 per annum. We have no information on cost of single issues. Enquiries to address above.
Policing London
Greater London Council’s Police Committee Support Unit
No 12 May/June
Excellent issue. Includes sceptical analysis of ‘fall’ in Met crime figures; the denial of freedom of movement to the miners; a survey of recent developments in ID cards and machine-readable passports; a case history of a neighbourhood watch scheme; and a profile of the Met Special Branch. Available from GLC Police C’ttee Support Unit (DG3 PCS 3602) County Hall SE1 7PB. £1 per issue
Articles
- Strike-breaking, Mutiny and Civil Disorder
Long (12pp) account of the British state’s response to varieties of ‘civil disorder’ from 1918 to current miners’ strike. Concludes with an account of the Civil Contingencies Unit and emergency planning network. No author or references. - Black Flag Quarterly No 6 1984.
From Box ABC, 121 Railton Road, London SE 24. 75p plus postage. - The Growth of South Africa’s Defence Industry and It’s Israeli Connection
Peter L. Bunce
Contents explained by the title. - RUSI June 1984
(Journal of Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies) - The High Tech Military and Civilian Alliance
Adrian Milne - The Listener May 10th
Based on BBC Horizon programme. Sketchy account of Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, and the military’s dominance of research in this country.
Miscellany
Information wanted on Peter Dally, Chairman of British Anti-Communist Committee