Here's an impromtu reply about "the final phase" by Jeff Nyquist from some questions posed by a member of another forum that some of you may find interesting:
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http://www.eoffshore.com/tfp.htm
Historical examples of our current situation
from The Final Phase forum
I [JR Nyquist] have written a number of things on this forum to update readers on my current thinking. I will cut and paste as follows in case you missed it:
We mustn't think that the Golitsyn methodology is always right. Clearly, reality is much too complex to be satisfactorily comprehended by Golitsyn, by Golitsyn's critics in the mainstream, or by five other theories all thrown together.
People don't realize at all, that I come at the Golitsyn material from a skeptical point of view. I totally disbelieved the man at the outset, when I read his book in 1984. Then, in 1987 I was reading Jan Sejna's book and was suddenly struck by the similarities in the given descriptions of the Soviet long range strategy. This caused me to reread Golitsyn. I then went through the literature on strategic deception and disinformation carefuly. I read the history of Operation Trust under Lenin and Dzerzhinsky (an earlier "fake" collapse of communism known as the New Economic Policy or NEP) and I concluded that large-scale deceptions were workable. I then looked at U.S. defense intellectuals and began discussing Russian history with them. Their reactions were of interest. They simply dismissed the idea of Soviet strategic deception with prejudice, without a second thought. The Soviets never really deceive anyone, at least not any more. This was the red flag that got me going.
How are the defense intellectuals of a country -- liberal and conservative -- conditioned to dismiss a possible line of deception when that line has, historically, been successful in the past? This brought me to what is called "the sociology of knowledge." That is, how social conditioning prevents the acknowledgement of certain facts. There are natural tendencies to blindness due to cultural peculiarities. If these are reinforced by enemy disinformation, propaganda, influence operations, etc., then you have a kind of "perceptions management" taking place.
You read the whole history of the Stalin period and the mainstream press in the West didn't understand what was happening. Well, we now know that leading journalists tasked with covering the Soviet Union were Soviet agents -- like Walter Duranty. Meanwhile, inside the U.S. there were others, like I.F. Stone who covered for Moscow. Our perceptions of the Stalin Constitution, our alliance with "Uncle Joe" who "dissoved the Commintern" were shaped by an enemy playing the role of ally. When the Cold War began many were slow to accept reality. Anti-communism was "hysteria" and Joseph McCarthy was on a "witch hunt." And just as Uncle Joe's cover was blown by the Berlin crisis and the Korean War, Khrushchev emerged to take the wind out of the West's sails by admitting Stalin's evil and outlining a new, "kinder gentler" Soviet Union.
The Russian leaders are always reinventing themselves. The pattern is clear. You can see this from any brief snapshot of Soviet history, taken from any decade; the East-West game has a character all its own. Just as a dog or a cat has a unique character, the Russian communists have a unique character. And once you get to know this character you know what to expect. You don't miss the forest for the trees. You look at Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, etc. and after studying the many devils in the detail you realize that it is, indeed, a case of "New Lies for Old." They can call Golitsyn a clown because of the 6 percent he got wrong, but how does one account for the 94 percent he got right?
So you take a general understanding of Soviet history, of Russian character and method, and you put it together with Golitysn's methodology and you look at what is happening in the War on Terror. You read books, magazines and newspapers. Pretty soon you are disturbed to find a number of striking linkages between al Qaeda and Russians like Victor Bout. You find linkages between al Qaeda's No. 2 man and China, Bulgaria, the Russian FSB; so you scratch your head and look back at Golitsyn's methology; then you look into the Chechen thing and find scholars cautiously noting Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev's GRU background (and his work as a Soviet paratrooper), and Chechen President Dudayev's work as a Soviet bomber commander who carpet-bombed Afghan Muslims prior to "getting religion" and leading the Chechen's to liberty then dying mysteriously (even though his death has not been publicly established). Even the scholars rub their eyes and admit the whole thing has the character of a classic KGB provocation. It really is a puzzle and you cannot figure it out.
Then you stop cold upon reading Yossef Bodansky's claim that Osama bin Laden has Russian nukes purchased through Chechnya. You look back at Golitsyn once more. The old man has to be smiling now. How is one to explain so many bizarre linkages between the terrorists and the "former" communist bloc? It's just too many linkages, and its far too convenient that Russian nuclear warheads end up being used against the United States. (And THAT is precisely what all this information is readying us to accept).
Everything fits together. And then I have the personal recollection of standing alone with a Russian GRU defector who tells me, years before the Twin Towers came crashing down, that if I ever hear that Arab terrorists have attacked America with nuclear weapons that I shouldn't believe it. The attack would be from Russia.
None of this is proof, to be sure. But it is powerfully suggestive, and deserves much more attention than it has received to date. The most interesting item in all of this is the TOTAL lack of curiosity on the part of our leaders and intellectuals about this subject, about the terror-East Europen linkages and the fraudulent changes in Eastern Europe and Golitsyn's warnings and Sejna's warnings and Suvorov's warnings. It is not that our intellectuals and leaders don't know about the linkages I write of. They don't want to know. They don't want to consider. Their minds are shut, not to be confused by facts. And here is where I am left blinking in unbelief. The next question is: Did I miss something? At least this subject should be discussed. It should be argued. But there is no argument. There is only the poor "discredited" defector with his 94 percent predictive accuracy and the whole CIA/intelligence oligarchy standing around like grade schoolers with their fingers in their ears.
I'm psychologist enough to know groupthink when I see it. I can recognize pathological denial within the blessed circle because I'm standing outside the circle. I'm not caught in the spell. I don't have a dog in this fight. And so I know when I'm seeing something significant, something BIG, something that gives the whole game away (and not the Russian game, but the American game -- the self-deception game).
The rot in our society that I have previously described is not simply moral rot, or bureaucratic rot. It is also intellectual rot. To deny a decline in intellectual integrity in our day amounts to snoring.
I happen to have Laurie Mylroie's new book in front of me, "Bush Vs. the Beltway." She writes something that I've heard from Washington insiders before. A Middle East expert told Mylroie, "Everyone must do what he must do for his career." According to Mylroie this signifies the fact that "behavior that was very self-serving became acceptable, irrespective of its possible implications for the country's security."
Consider the logic of the careerist. If he is not paid well to occupy a post as advisor or analyst, then he is NOTHING. His intellectual work amounts to NOTHING. This logic ends by standing everything on its head because the "loser," by definition, is someone who doesn't have a good job with the CIA or DIA or some Ivy league university. I suppose these same individuals would have looked down on Einstein while he was a patent clerk.
There is only one thing to say about such people and their attitude: Any intellectual who puts career ahead of truth, who judges propositions on the scales of money and status, is not a serious person but a clown whose ideas are of no account. They might draw a six figure salary and attend the most fashionable parties. But a well-paid, stylish clown is still a clown. Without morale courage, without intellectual integrity, the only constructive possibility for such a life is manual labor under someone else's direction, or proof-reading someone else's manuscript. Any other course is a train wreck with floppy shoes and spiked orange hair.
The same can be said for journalists in the media, for academics and researchers. If they imagine there is a blessed circle of light and truth that one enters upon being employed by prestigious media organizations, then they have confused their own personal advancement with wisdom. With regard to this error, the resulting blindness is near-total when it comes to distinguishing the important from the trivial, the significant from the popular. And here we find the richest soil, the most wonderful insights, because a society's blind spots harbor the Great Secret of where that society is headed -- just as the blind spots of an individual help us to understand the fate of that individual.
The mainstream pundits of our day cannot explain why Russia should continue to violate arms control agreements, align with China, send secret support to Saddam, give nuclear technology to Iran, criticize U.S. policy, encourage U.S. allies to an independent course, etc.
The political algebra here is simple. It is basic. It is easy to read if one is familiar with history. I've been waiting for somebody to explain what is wrong with my algebra. So far, the explanation has not been forthcoming.
Perhaps what reinforces me more than anything is the testimony of Poles, Russians, Czechs, Romanians and Hungarians on the very real conditions that obtain in the "former" communist countries.
To be sure, our every paranoid imagining is not gospel. But there is something to this "final phase" business.
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Question for JR
I located the article in question since you gave me the time frame. This does make it easier for me. Please understand, I have archives at Newsmax, WorldNetDaily, Financial Sense, Sierra Times and my own Web site. I have written about 400 internet articles and it takes me a half hour just to go through the WorldNetDaily archive.
You may not understand what a person goes through when they write and carry on extensive correspondence. I receive 1000 emails every 3 to 4 days. I write 10 to 30 email replies a day. I post long replies like this one on the forum weekly, I've written 19 columns, a feature article for a Brazilian publication, approximately 900 email replies (some of them lengthy) and three essays for the seminar since I wrote "Waiting for the Big One." Add to this the mental burden of reading hundreds of emails, a dozen books and hundreds of articles since last September and you will understand how things might run together in my mind.
For those with lighter mental loads, remembering is doubtless easier -- I don't think its an illness or any dishonesty or evasion on my part. So please excuse my slowness. Also, I am sometimes short on patience when baffling questions are asked and I cannot immediately remember what is referred to.
I reread my article "Waiting for the Big One" and note, with care, that I did not say bin Laden has nukes, but that Yossef Bodansky alleges that bin Laden has nukes, and bin Laden also says this. My own skepticism follows from the following: a Russian defector said to me on Nov. 23, 1998, when we were standing outside a television station in Washington, D.C. "If you ever hear that Arab terrorists have attacked an American city with nuclear weapons, don't believe it."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because it will be my people, Spetsnaz, Russia."
It may be that bin Laden has nukes. It may be that my Russian friend has understood, much better than anyone in the West, what the Russian General Staff means by "diversionary operations."
In the middle of THIS month Russia will be conducting a nuclear war exercise that simulates a mass nuclear strike against America. One might ask why Moscow would do this, especially as America is waiting for the "other" al Qaeda shoe to drop.
Are the basic concepts of military strategy so arcane, so unthinkable, that Americans are incapable of lifting their heads from the shelves of their overstocked stores long enough to notice something dangerous in the combination before us?
I will conclude my answer to you with a quote from Russian GRU defector Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun).
"[Widespread terrorist and sabotage operations in advance of World War III] are known officially in the GRU as the 'preparatory period,' and unofficially as the 'overture.' The overture is a series of large and small operations the purpose of which is, before actual military operations begin, to weaken the enemy's morale, create an atmosphere of suspicion, fear and uncertainty, and divert the attention of the enemy's armies and police forces to a huge number of different targets, each of which may be the object of the next attack.
"The overture is carried out by agents of the secret services of the Soviet satellite countries and by mercenaries recruited by intermediaries. The principal method employed at this stage is 'gray terror,' that is, a kind of terror which is not conducted in the name of the Soviet Union. The Soviet secret services do not at this stage leave their visiting cards, or leave other people's cards. The terror is carried out in the name of already existing extremist groups not connected in any way with the Soviet Union, or in the name of fictitious organizations."
