Politics & Paranoia

[John Simkin]

From Britain's answer to Michael Moore, Lobster's formidable editor Robin Ramsay brings you the JFK assassination, covert action, destabilisation, strategic theory, economics, politics, para-politics, Colin Wallace, Fred Holroyd, whistle-blowers, New Zealand, Australia, nuclear weapons, Blair, Brown, espionage, MI5, MI6, CIA, 9/11, conspiracy theories and the rise of New Labour.

[John Simkin]

In the introduction to your book, Politics & Paranoia, you explain how you became involved in investigating conspiracy theories while reading the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission report in 1976/77 at the University of Hull library. You also acknowledge the importance of writers such as Carl Oglesby and Peter Dale Scott.

On page 12 you point out that you also read Richard Hofstadter’s article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” where he linked an interest in “conspiracy theories with paranoia and with the loony radical Right”. You go on to say: “Hofstader’s influential and widely discussed essay reinforced existing academic and intellectual prejudices which allotted to an interest in conspiracy theories or actual conspiracies the intellectual status of – say – spiritualism: of interest only to the stupid, the uneducated or the ill. For ‘serious’ people – academics, journalists, politicians – large areas of political inquiry have been contaminated ever since by an association with conspiracy theories.”

There is no doubt that the John Birch Society theory that President Eisenhower was part of the global communist conspiracy and the various right-wing theories about a Jewish conspiracy has definitely caused problems for those who want to investigate corruption by governments and national intelligence organizations. However, I suspect, the problem goes much deeper than that. One of the greatest battles with the ruling elites is over the meaning of language.

On 25th September 1951, the novelist and political activist, Upton Sinclair, wrote a letter to Norman Thomas, the head of the American Socialist Party: “The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie.” The same thing has happened in the UK under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair carried on the good work when he was in power. "Socialism" has become a word that no politician wants to use.

I noticed that when Norman Baker was interviewed by the BBC about his book on the death of David Kelly, he was repeatedly referred to as a “conspiracy theorist”. History is of course full of examples of how powerful groups have conspired to make sure that they can continue to rule. However, once the word “conspiracy theorist” is used, it takes a brave person to take seriously what the person is saying.

Can you think of any way that we can overcome this “language” problem?

[Greg Parker]

From Britain's answer to Michael Moore, Lobster's formidable editor Robin Ramsay brings you the JFK assassination, covert action, destabilisation, strategic theory, economics, politics, para-politics, Colin Wallace, Fred Holroyd, whistle-blowers, New Zealand, Australia, nuclear weapons, Blair, Brown, espionage, MI5, MI6, CIA, 9/11, conspiracy theories and the rise of New Labour.

John,

I can quite rightly understand New Zealand being on the Group W Bench. The Haka after all is the ultimate Psywar weapon.

But Australia???? What the hell did we do to get lumped in with 9/11, espionage and New Labour????

We've already apologized for Rupert.

And this is the best we can manage to scare off rival tribes!

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/49875/aussie_haka

Otherwise all we have is a few marsupials incapable of even peeing on tourists from a great height because they're too damned stoned.

http://www.crainium.net/jdjArchives/Koala_2.jpg

This slur is an outrage. I demand an explanation from Ramsey!

Edited June 25, 2008 by Greg Parker

[John Simkin]

From Britain's answer to Michael Moore, Lobster's formidable editor Robin Ramsay brings you the JFK assassination, covert action, destabilisation, strategic theory, economics, politics, para-politics, Colin Wallace, Fred Holroyd, whistle-blowers, New Zealand, Australia, nuclear weapons, Blair, Brown, espionage, MI5, MI6, CIA, 9/11, conspiracy theories and the rise of New Labour.

John,

I can quite rightly understand New Zealand being on the Group W Bench. The Haka after all is the ultimate Psywar weapon.

But Australia???? What the hell did we do to get lumped in with 9/11, espionage and New Labour????

We've already apologized for Rupert.

And this is the best we can manage to scare off rival tribes!

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/49875/aussie_haka

Otherwise all we have is a few marsupials incapable of even peeing on tourists from a great height because they're too damned stoned.

http://www.crainium.net/jdjArchives/Koala_2.jpg

This slur is an outrage. I demand an explanation from Ramsey!

The book is a collection of speeches. It includes one in 1986 entitled: "What will America do if Labour wins? The lessons of Australia and New Zealand."

[Robin Ramsay]

In the introduction to your book, Politics & Paranoia, you explain how you became involved in investigating conspiracy theories while reading the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission report in 1976/77 at the University of Hull library. You also acknowledge the importance of writers such as Carl Oglesby and Peter Dale Scott.

On page 12 you point out that you also read Richard Hofstadter’s article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” where he linked an interest in “conspiracy theories with paranoia and with the loony radical Right”. You go on to say: “Hofstader’s influential and widely discussed essay reinforced existing academic and intellectual prejudices which allotted to an interest in conspiracy theories or actual conspiracies the intellectual status of – say – spiritualism: of interest only to the stupid, the uneducated or the ill. For ‘serious’ people – academics, journalists, politicians – large areas of political inquiry have been contaminated ever since by an association with conspiracy theories.”

There is no doubt that the John Birch Society theory that President Eisenhower was part of the global communist conspiracy and the various right-wing theories about a Jewish conspiracy has definitely caused problems for those who want to investigate corruption by governments and national intelligence organizations. However, I suspect, the problem goes much deeper than that. One of the greatest battles with the ruling elites is over the meaning of language.

On 25th September 1951, the novelist and political activist, Upton Sinclair, wrote a letter to Norman Thomas, the head of the American Socialist Party: “The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie.” The same thing has happened in the UK under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair carried on the good work when he was in power. "Socialism" has become a word that no politician wants to use.

I noticed that when Norman Baker was interviewed by the BBC about his book on the death of David Kelly, he was repeatedly referred to as a “conspiracy theorist”. History is of course full of examples of how powerful groups have conspired to make sure that they can continue to rule. However, once the word “conspiracy theorist” is used, it takes a brave person to take seriously what the person is saying.

Can you think of any way that we can overcome this “language” problem?

Interesting question, John. The 'language problem' arises because if one talks of conspiracy except in the context of a criminal conspiracy, willy-nilly one evokes conspiracy theories, which, in turn evokes David Icke, lizards, the X-Files et al. (Fifty years ago it evoked the John Birch Society, or the various fringe neo-nazi groups still clinging to the Jewish conspiracy theory.) Anthony Summers made the essential distinction years ago saying that he wasn't interested in conspiracy theories but was interested in theories about conspiracies. A goodly part of my book of public talks, Politics and Paranoia (Picnic Publishing, 2008), is various attempts to make and elaborate this distinction, to try and persuade various audiences that they should resist the automatic association between conspiracy and conspiracy theories.

This language problem is particularly acute when one is dealing with academics and the higher media. For virtually all of them the association of conspiracy with all manner of idiocies is automatic and armour-plated. This seems to serve as a defence mechanism for both groups who use it bat away information and views which conflict with what they were taught at university in the academic study of politics and history. Having experienced this reaction many times in the last quarter of a century, I have acquired a profound respect for the human brain's inability to change its belief systems in any major way, even among - perhaps especially among - those who are professionally employed to evaluate political and historical data. If I was in charge of the world pharmacological research effort I would set it to producing something which enables people to overcome that initial defence mechanism which irrationally sorts data into the 'This can't be true/this can be true' categories.

As to what we do about this - who knows? To my knowledge no-one has come up with a form or words which conveys conspiracy without evoking the dreaded conspiracy theorist label. I guess we just have to keep grinding away doing what our academic and media betters are supposed to be doing: trying to understand the nature of historical reality. But here is the same problem looked at from another angle. Are the higher media and academics actually engaged in trying to understand reality? All too often they are doing other things. Twenty years ago or so, when I first encountered members of the higher media, having assumed they were engaged, like me, in what we might naively call the pursuit of truth, I discovered that this simply wasn't true. They were engaged in: pursuing careers, getting a story before their rivals, fiddling expenses, paying their mortgages, planning their holidays, paying off scores - and mostly simply doing a job, which was to produce something their editors would approve of for publication or broadcast and which didn't cost too much. The 'pursuit of the truth' had nothing to do with it. As I say on one of the talks in my book, journalists are intensely suspicious of people they perceive as 'having an agenda' - especially when that agenda is 'the pursuit of the truth'. Since they are rarely engaged in this they are suspicious of people of who present themselves as so doing, presuming that, like them, they are engaged in other, secondary activities and are thus hypocrites or self-deluded in talking about 'the truth'. As far as I can tell this situation has only got a lot worse in the last twenty years (not that I have much contact with the higher media any more.)

[Guest David Guyatt]

In the introduction to your book, Politics & Paranoia, you explain how you became involved in investigating conspiracy theories while reading the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission report in 1976/77 at the University of Hull library. You also acknowledge the importance of writers such as Carl Oglesby and Peter Dale Scott.

On page 12 you point out that you also read Richard Hofstadter’s article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” where he linked an interest in “conspiracy theories with paranoia and with the loony radical Right”. You go on to say: “Hofstader’s influential and widely discussed essay reinforced existing academic and intellectual prejudices which allotted to an interest in conspiracy theories or actual conspiracies the intellectual status of – say – spiritualism: of interest only to the stupid, the uneducated or the ill. For ‘serious’ people – academics, journalists, politicians – large areas of political inquiry have been contaminated ever since by an association with conspiracy theories.”

There is no doubt that the John Birch Society theory that President Eisenhower was part of the global communist conspiracy and the various right-wing theories about a Jewish conspiracy has definitely caused problems for those who want to investigate corruption by governments and national intelligence organizations. However, I suspect, the problem goes much deeper than that. One of the greatest battles with the ruling elites is over the meaning of language.

On 25th September 1951, the novelist and political activist, Upton Sinclair, wrote a letter to Norman Thomas, the head of the American Socialist Party: “The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie.” The same thing has happened in the UK under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair carried on the good work when he was in power. "Socialism" has become a word that no politician wants to use.

I noticed that when Norman Baker was interviewed by the BBC about his book on the death of David Kelly, he was repeatedly referred to as a “conspiracy theorist”. History is of course full of examples of how powerful groups have conspired to make sure that they can continue to rule. However, once the word “conspiracy theorist” is used, it takes a brave person to take seriously what the person is saying.

Can you think of any way that we can overcome this “language” problem?

Interesting question, John. The 'language problem' arises because if one talks of conspiracy except in the context of a criminal conspiracy, willy-nilly one evokes conspiracy theories, which, in turn evokes David Icke, lizards, the X-Files et al. (Fifty years ago it evoked the John Birch Society, or the various fringe neo-nazi groups still clinging to the Jewish conspiracy theory.) Anthony Summers made the essential distinction years ago saying that he wasn't interested in conspiracy theories but was interested in theories about conspiracies. A goodly part of my book of public talks, Politics and Paranoia (Picnic Publishing, 2008), is various attempts to make and elaborate this distinction, to try and persuade various audiences that they should resist the automatic association between conspiracy and conspiracy theories.

This language problem is particularly acute when one is dealing with academics and the higher media. For virtually all of them the association of conspiracy with all manner of idiocies is automatic and armour-plated. This seems to serve as a defence mechanism for both groups who use it bat away information and views which conflict with what they were taught at university in the academic study of politics and history. Having experienced this reaction many times in the last quarter of a century, I have acquired a profound respect for the human brain's inability to change its belief systems in any major way, even among - perhaps especially among - those who are professionally employed to evaluate political and historical data. If I was in charge of the world pharmacological research effort I would set it to producing something which enables people to overcome that initial defence mechanism which irrationally sorts data into the 'This can't be true/this can be true' categories.

As to what we do about this - who knows? To my knowledge no-one has come up with a form or words which conveys conspiracy without evoking the dreaded conspiracy theorist label. I guess we just have to keep grinding away doing what our academic and media betters are supposed to be doing: trying to understand the nature of historical reality. But here is the same problem looked at from another angle. Are the higher media and academics actually engaged in trying to understand reality? All too often they are doing other things. Twenty years ago or so, when I first encountered members of the higher media, having assumed they were engaged, like me, in what we might naively call the pursuit of truth, I discovered that this simply wasn't true. They were engaged in: pursuing careers, getting a story before their rivals, fiddling expenses, paying their mortgages, planning their holidays, paying off scores - and mostly simply doing a job, which was to produce something their editors would approve of for publication or broadcast and which didn't cost too much. The 'pursuit of the truth' had nothing to do with it. As I say on one of the talks in my book, journalists are intensely suspicious of people they perceive as 'having an agenda' - especially when that agenda is 'the pursuit of the truth'. Since they are rarely engaged in this they are suspicious of people of who present themselves as so doing, presuming that, like them, they are engaged in other, secondary activities and are thus hypocrites or self-deluded in talking about 'the truth'. As far as I can tell this situation has only got a lot worse in the last twenty years (not that I have much contact with the higher media any more.)

So what's wrong with David Icke and his royal lizards, eh, Robin?

John's question and your response underline ingrained attitudes than may very well be far deeper than simply "acceptable thinking", I would guess. We could, for example, add in to this mix the fear factor of society, that one may be ostracized and/or punished for thinking differently to the herd. Loss of status can lead to loss of job with all the social and living consequences that follow on from that. Thus people often intuitively shy away from uncomfortable realizations -- and this deep-rooted tendency can be readily manipulated if you have the tools of mass persuasion at your disposal.

There is also a paradox involved when it comes to collective perceptions. One the one hand growing numbers of people assume their government is lying to them outrageously on all manner of subjects ranging from (say) the true facts behind the decision to invade Iraq (and Afghanistan), through to the suspicious death of JFK or Dr. David Kelly (suspension of belief). On the other hand people want to believe their politicians are honourable men and women and line up to vote them into office in the hope they will perform as promised, even when the record suggests they wont (suspension of disbelief).

Furthermore, we humans suffer from a good degree of dichotomous thinking when it comes to the conspiracy subject. I have argued previously that conspiracies are as common-place as drinking tea and occur all the time - and that we all are familiar with them ourselves (albeit heavily cloaked with denials). This can include anything from scheming in the boardroom for gain and/or advancement, through to winning at the tables of Las Vegas. It's all in a days play.

Those who are especially capable in this art are, of course, the class of professional liars who inhabit the corridors of power and the mansions of the mafiosi.

What a conundrum it all is.

David

Btw, a hearty welcome.

Edited June 26, 2008 by David Guyatt

[Greg Parker]

The book is a collection of speeches. It includes one in 1986 entitled: "What will America do if Labour wins? The lessons of Australia and New Zealand."

John, if the author of this speech knew the subject matter at all, he or she would have known all America had to do when Labor regained power here in 1983 was sit back and watch the ultimate fruition of its training programs for foreign union and labor leaders run by the ~ahem~ State Dept. The Silver Bodgie (Bob Hawke) himself was a recipient. What flowed from it was the floating of the dollar, the privatizing of key infrastructure and quantum shifts in industrial relations.

Astute question, btw on the language issue... and equally astute - if dishearteningly honest and accurate - answers from David and Robin.

[John Simkin]

To my knowledge no-one has come up with a form or words which conveys conspiracy without evoking the dreaded conspiracy theorist label. I guess we just have to keep grinding away doing what our academic and media betters are supposed to be doing: trying to understand the nature of historical reality.

When it was claimed that the Iraq War was really about oil Tony Blair dismissed the idea with the comment that he did not believe in "conspiracy theories". Yet next week four of the western world's largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq's largest oilfields: BP, Exxon-Mobil, Shell and Total. The four companies have reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed allowing a wholesale western takeover.

[John Simkin]

Are the higher media and academics actually engaged in trying to understand reality? All too often they are doing other things. Twenty years ago or so, when I first encountered members of the higher media, having assumed they were engaged, like me, in what we might naively call the pursuit of truth, I discovered that this simply wasn't true. They were engaged in: pursuing careers, getting a story before their rivals, fiddling expenses, paying their mortgages, planning their holidays, paying off scores - and mostly simply doing a job, which was to produce something their editors would approve of for publication or broadcast and which didn't cost too much. The 'pursuit of the truth' had nothing to do with it. As I say on one of the talks in my book, journalists are intensely suspicious of people they perceive as 'having an agenda' - especially when that agenda is 'the pursuit of the truth'.

I used to work for the Guardian and managed to build up a lot of contacts with the newspaper. I have provided individual investigative journalists with a lot of information that have appeared in released documents about CIA conspiracies that date back to the 1950s. However, the stories were never written, or at least, they never made the newspaper.

I also thought I had arranged for David Talbot’s “Brothers” to be serialized. At the time they appeared interested in the project, including an interview with David, because of his importance in the growth of New Media. However, when they discovered it was a “conspiracy” book, they dropped the idea. They used the silly excuse that it was not right to be seen to be promoting the work of a fellow journalist. They had forgotten that this was the original reason why they were interested in the book and interview.

Yet, the Guardian is fairly interested in investigating current conspiracies. However, once it becomes an historical event, they lose interest in the story. It is in fact worse than that, they become involved in the cover-up once new information surfaces.

Any ideas on why this is?

[Robin Ramsay]

I used to work for the Guardian and managed to build up a lot of contacts with the newspaper. I have provided individual investigative journalists with a lot of information that have appeared in released documents about CIA conspiracies that date back to the 1950s. However, the stories were never written, or at least, they never made the newspaper.

I also thought I had arranged for David Talbot’s “Brothers” to be serialized. At the time they appeared interested in the project, including an interview with David, because of his importance in the growth of New Media. However, when they discovered it was a “conspiracy” book, they dropped the idea. They used the silly excuse that it was not right to be seen to be promoting the work of a fellow journalist. They had forgotten that this was the original reason why they were interested in the book and interview.

Yet, the Guardian is fairly interested in investigating current conspiracies. However, once it becomes an historical event, they lose interest in the story. It is in fact worse than that, they become involved in the cover-up once new information surfaces.

Any ideas on why this is?

As for the behaviour of the Guardian, I would say: (1) which bit of the various semi-independent fiefdoms are we talking about? and then (2) which particular story? It is, of course, possible that the Guardian has been steered by the CIA for the last 50 years (much of the liberal-left has been). Certainly the recent editors have all been knee-jerk pro NATO, pro American. But that isn't likely. To me the Guardian looks like pretty typical 'right-on' herd behaviour. If the peer group of the various journos decrees that - say - multiculturalism is a Good Thing then other voices don't get in and counter-factual evidence is ignored. Equally, Bad Things - eg nationalism - don't get a look in. But this is where the fiefdom thing arises because the Guardian economics editor, Larry Elliot, though he wouldn't use the term, is de facto an economic nationalist. But this is guesswork on my part. I've only been in the Guardian office twice and no current Guardian journalists subscribes to the magazine.

[John Simkin]

On page 26 of the book you quote Ralph J. Gleason as saying: “No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is really doing is worse than you could possible imagine.”

That is of course true, however, it is difficult for the government to promote the idea that anyone who comes out with outrageous stories are indeed paranoid. The problem for researchers is that some of the people who come forward with these stories are indeed mentally disturbed.

On the evidence available, it is difficult to judge whether they are telling the truth. This is especially true of those who claim that they have been the victims of “mind-control” experiments. In your book, you write about the case of Harlan Girard. As I understand it, the CIA declassified documents he possesses does not support the idea that he is a victim of microwave technology. You met Harlan, were you convinced by his story? Or was he indeed paranoid?

[Robin Ramsay]

On page 26 of the book you quote Ralph J. Gleason as saying: “No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is really doing is worse than you could possible imagine.”

That is of course true, however, it is difficult for the government to promote the idea that anyone who comes out with outrageous stories are indeed paranoid. The problem for researchers is that some of the people who come forward with these stories are indeed mentally disturbed.

On the evidence available, it is difficult to judge whether they are telling the truth. This is especially true of those who claim that they have been the victims of “mind-control” experiments. In your book, you write about the case of Harlan Girard. As I understand it, the CIA declassified documents he possesses does not support the idea that he is a victim of microwave technology. You met Harlan, were you convinced by his story? Or was he indeed paranoid?

I met Harlan in 1989. He came to visit me after ringing me up. (I describe the encounter in more detail in the book.) His story seemed bizarre but having read about MKUltra et al, not THAT bizarre. I didn't decide then whether or not I believed him or whether or no he was personally paranoid/deluded because he left me enough printed material for me to see that what he was describing was possible. If he wasn't a victim of this technology, given the the American state's track record of doing tests on unwitting suspects, some other people would be victims. In other words, what was important was the subject matter not Harlan's claims and their status. Subsequently I have accumulated a lot of material on this subject but have never managed to synthesise it - partly because of my lack of scientific knowledge.

Harlan's claims raise a panoply of intellectual difficulties. Is he (and the other 'wavies') being 'beamed'? If he is being 'beamed', who is doing it? He says it is CIA but he has no way of knowing. Even if he is being 'beamed' and is told by those doing the 'beaming' that they are CIA, he has no means of knowing if they are telling the truth of not; and they would have every reason to lie.

That nothing has appeared via FOIA requests to support his story is neither surprising nor significant. Nothing WOULD appear, would it? Almost 20 years after I first met Harlan and began collecting material in this field all I can say for sure is what I have said already many times in different forums: since the technology to do what he claims is being developed (and probably has long been developed) it is impossible to simply dismiss him and others like him as paranoid and deluded.

[William Kelly]

On page 26 of the book you quote Ralph J. Gleason as saying: "No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is really doing is worse than you could possible imagine."

That is of course true, however, it is difficult for the government to promote the idea that anyone who comes out with outrageous stories are indeed paranoid. The problem for researchers is that some of the people who come forward with these stories are indeed mentally disturbed.

On the evidence available, it is difficult to judge whether they are telling the truth. This is especially true of those who claim that they have been the victims of "mind-control" experiments. In your book, you write about the case of Harlan Girard. As I understand it, the CIA declassified documents he possesses does not support the idea that he is a victim of microwave technology. You met Harlan, were you convinced by his story? Or was he indeed paranoid?

I met Harlan in 1989. He came to visit me after ringing me up. (I describe the encounter in more detail in the book.) His story seemed bizarre but having read about MKUltra et al, not THAT bizarre. I didn't decide then whether or not I believed him or whether or no he was personally paranoid/deluded because he left me enough printed material for me to see that what he was describing was possible. If he wasn't a victim of this technology, given the the American state's track record of doing tests on unwitting suspects, some other people would be victims. In other words, what was important was the subject matter not Harlan's claims and their status. Subsequently I have accumulated a lot of material on this subject but have never managed to synthesise it - partly because of my lack of scientific knowledge.

Harlan's claims raise a panoply of intellectual difficulties. Is he (and the other 'wavies') being 'beamed'? If he is being 'beamed', who is doing it? He says it is CIA but he has no way of knowing. Even if he is being 'beamed' and is told by those doing the 'beaming' that they are CIA, he has no means of knowing if they are telling the truth of not; and they would have every reason to lie.

That nothing has appeared via FOIA requests to support his story is neither surprising nor significant. Nothing WOULD appear, would it? Almost 20 years after I first met Harlan and began collecting material in this field all I can say for sure is what I have said already many times in different forums: since the technology to do what he claims is being developed (and probably has long been developed) it is impossible to simply dismiss him and others like him as paranoid and deluded.

Thank you Robin Ramsey for adding your sane and reasonable voice to the forum.

I am looking forward to reading your book.

The Girard incident reminds me of two similar cases that I have studied, with different results.

After a Dallas assassination conference in the early 1990s, on a train to Chicago, I met a guy who was at the conference and heard my talk on the JFK Act, before it was passed. He did a NPR radio show and asked me to tape an interview. We went to the back of the train and he asked me questions and we talked for about a half hour.

A few months later I got a letter in the mail from a women from Texas. She said she heard my interview on the radio and needed to talk to me. She was a rancher who used to work for the US Dept. of Agriculture, but lost her job and had taken her former bosses to court. She didn't mention the murder of Marshall or Jack Pueterbough, but I thought of them.

She said she could tell by the sound of my voice ton the radio hat I was a sincere person and she had to tell her story to someone who would listen.

She lived on her family farm alone, and was being attacked by her former boss and his assistant. Her boss, whose name she gave me, was former Navy and CIA, was involved in the Bay of Pigs and MKULTRA. He was now bombarding her with microwaves and other waves, and coming into her house at night and drugging and raping her, while she slept.

She sent me copies of her court case against them, that was then ongoing, and had verification that the guy was once in the Navy.

I talked with her on the phone, and if they were trying to make her look like she was crazy, they were successful. But she too sounded sincere and I promised I would look into it further.

I sent off a letter to the Navy asking if this guy had ever worked for them and to my surprise I got a response from an officer in ONI who said they actually checked and yes, the guy was in the US Navy, but he didn't work in any of the areas that he would have been affiliated with any research projects of that sort.

There was no letterhead or ONI logo, just the clean blank white sheet of paper, and the guy's typewritten notation, with ONI written by his name.

I have since reviewed two other ONI letters and they are the same, no longo or letterhead, which I found peculiar for any branch of the government.

But I never learned what became of the paranoid and apparently persecuted women from Texas. She sounded like she was the last man at the Alamo and the enemy was at the gates.

The other case I verified, to my satisfaction, as being true.

BK

Edited July 9, 2008 by William Kelly

[John Simkin]

What do you think of the theory that Blair was recruited by MI5 to spy on CND during his youth. This would help to explain Blair’s foreign policy since being elected to power?

After the defeat of James Callaghan in 1979 Labour remained out of power until 1997. Of course, by this time, the Labour Party had a leader who was completely under the control of MI5/CIA.

[Robin Ramsay]

What do you think of the theory that Blair was recruited by MI5 to spy on CND during his youth. This would help to explain Blair’s foreign policy since being elected to power?

After the defeat of James Callaghan in 1979 Labour remained out of power until 1997. Of course, by this time, the Labour Party had a leader who was completely under the control of MI5/CIA.

As for the story about Blair being recruited to spy on CND - I have never understood what 'spying on CND' would entail. It was a public body, its offices were open to all. You could just walk in. What was there to spy on? Blair joined CND because, as a careerist he did whatever would make him acceptable to the powers-that-be. At the time the anti-nuclear thing in the Labour Party had the support of a majority of the party. Blair, as far as I can tell, never believed anything much and, according to one of his former law colleagues, would have joined the Tory Party had he not perceived that it took a long time to reach the top of that party. He correctly perceived that in Labour a good-looking young barrister would go far and quickly. He just wanted to be a big-I-am, something he has achieved in spades. I seem to recall that the Blair-MI5 story came from David Shayler. It might be true that Blair talked to one of the MI5 officers who sniffed round the Labour Party. I imagine that at the time, with the left-right conflict at full bore, lots of right-wing Labour MPs talked to MI5 officers, or to people who talked to MI5 officers (such as journalists).

Blair's foreign policy doesn't need explaining. He did what Uncle Sam wanted (with God's support, apparently) and he persuaded himself that he was doing good. So-called 'liberal interventionism', which Blair tried to practice, is merely the latest in a long line of cover stories, rationalisations for American imperialism (with Uncle Sam's little chum, the UK, tagging along). What else needs explaining?