Paul Rigby

On 26 January 1993, the Guardian carried a surprisingly short report from the paper’s then Washington correspondent on a dramatic shooting spree right outside the entrance to CIA’s Langley HQ. The germane passages follow: So far, so clear: Witnesses were numerous, close, and presumably expert observers, many of them being career spooks. There was a rapid, large-scale pursuit. A young, white gunman did it.. Until, that is, the NYT of 27 January 1993: On 10 February, the Guardian, playing a straight bat, though not necessarily maintaining a straight face, informed readers that “Police yesterday launched a worldwide manhunt for a Pakistani gunman…named…as Mir Aimal Kansi, aged 28” (Agencies, “Pakistani sought for CIA killings,” The Guardian, 10 February 1993.) Four days later, the (London) Sunday Times offered an explanation for the initial eyewitness “confusion”: Some obliging soul – Martin Walker, perhaps - should really have sent David Franklin, the commander of the major crimes unit of the Fairfax County Police, a copy of the Guardian’s initial brief despatch on the shooting. In late January 1998, the Guardian noted the effective end of the affair – justice done, honour satisfied – in a laconic piece in its “News in brief” column: Talented coves, these Muslim terrorists. Not only are they blessed with the power of foresight - being able to anticipate massive US defence drills, and thus plan multiple, simultaneous attacks accordingly - but also the ability to change colour. Remarkable.

My favourite metamorphosis is the Langley gates shooting of January 1993. If I can find the clippings concerned, will bang them on the forum. Paul

I appear to have caught you on an "off" day, Len. Revisit my post. My point was that both the wife and I saw the footage of the Merc upside down on the Sunday morning's TV coverage. We didn't need confirmation of the fact - which I strongly suspect contributed to the delay in getting Diana to hospital, as it was clear the door of the upside down vehicle wouldn't open cleanly - and I really paid no heed to this element of the newspaper coverage on Sunday* because it was such an obvious and unremarkable thing to say (that the vehicle came to rest upside down). It was only retrospectively that it assumed significance as recreation after recreation omitted this blatant fact. Paul *The story made the later editions of all the Sunday heavyweights available in this part of northern England.

I once enquired of retired Customs & Excise nabob who within the British establishment had green-lighted the expose of HMG's love-affair with Iraq. Came the answer: "The F.O." Cynics have long pondered the precise point at which the Foreign Office ends and MI6 begins. No wonder Norton-Taylor was so well-informed - and foregrounded - during that black farce. Paul

My suspicion, too. The JFK testimony it reminded me of came from Norman Similas. Now, that is a reordering of our accepted understanding of what happened comparable to the Diana testimony in the Sunday Times quoted above. One other obvious trend within British newspapers over the first few weeks after the Diana assassination was a substantial reduction to the speed of the Merc. By about the end of the second week, I recall, it had been roughly halved, from circa 120mph to approx 60mph. Why this need to change these particular facets of the event, one can only guess. Paul

“Dodi is killed, Diana badly injured in Paris car crash,” Sunday Times, 31 August 1997, p.1: “Mike Walker, an American tourist from Ohio, saw Diana’s overturned Mercedes in the aftermath of the crash: ‘We were travelling in the opposite direction and saw the car lying flipped over at the bottom of the hill…’” I can't find the box with my copies of the papers from Sunday, 31 August, but I did have the above as a handwritten note in a box containing subsequent clippings. From memory, there are several more quotations - most from American eyewitnesses - to this effect in that day's coverage, but that all changes just one day later, in the UK "qualities" at least, on Monday, 1 September. I suspect a survey of US press coverage from the same two days would yield similar results. Paul

Well said. Anyone in any doubt that it was an assassination might usefully reflect on perhaps the most blatant lie peddled by the British mainstream media ever since. In every recreation I have seen, we are invited to believe that the Mercedes remained the right way up after the crash. It did not. As both my better half and I saw on television on the morning of the accident, and the next day's newspaper accounts from eyewitnesses confirmed, the car came to rest on its roof. There is plainly something very sensitive here concerning the speed of the Merc and its subsequent trajectory. The question is, what exactly are they hiding? I wish I knew. But I do know, beyond any doubt, that the media is lying; and doing so in an orchestrated fashion. Paul

Seconded: and faced by an equally fine piece - by Simon Jenkins - on the British foreign policy elite's moronic consensus with regard to Afghanistan. Care to do the honours, John?

The Guardian’s Richard Norton-Taylor, the paper’s veteran expert on matters spook, has long enjoyed a reputation as one of MI6’s most fervent admirers. In Saturday’s edition of the paper, he again demonstrated why the reputation is so richly deserved. “The calamity of disregard,” 4 August 2007, p.32, represents a significant attempt to rewrite the historical record of that bloated bureaucracy’s catastrophic contribution to the Iraq charnel-house: All mention of John Scarlett is banished, and we are instead treated to a portrait of the organisation’s Richard Dearlove, the service’s nominal head (the real masters, of course, are in Washington) as a dissident seer fearlessly resisting the drift to illegal invasion. Read Norton-Taylor’s Stalinoid drivel here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2141409,00.html For a pithy, accurate, and pointed rebuttal, see today’s letters page contribution in the same paper from Dr. Brian Jones, a senior defense intelligence analyst who really did offer meaningful resistance to the lies concocted by, among others, MI6’s Scarlett, lies utilised so eagerly and efficiently by the wretched Dearlove: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2142964,00.html

So what was the CIA’s “Third Force” in Vietnam? The short answer, and the core component, was – the “National Liberation Front.” But wasn’t the NLF teeming with southern Viet Cong? To the contrary: It was full of zealous anti-communists. As contemporary press reports reveal, no sooner were Diem and Nhu dead than General Minh made a bee-line for the “NLF” to end hostilities: Hanoi well understood the CIA-origins of the NLF. In response to the “clandestine” radio broadcast in March 1960 announcing its formation - in the form of a proclamation by “Former Resistance Fighters” - Hanoi radio immediately denounced it as a trap. (1) Hanoi also acted militarily in concert with Diem against the NLF: In May 1962, Hoa Hao battalion 104 “was caught in a simultaneous drive by the ARVN and Viet Minh battalion 510.”(2) (1) Senator Ernest Gruening & Herbert W. Beaser. Vietnam Folly (Washington, D.C.: The National Press, Inc., 1968), p. 186. (2) Bernard Fall. The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963), p. 355.

Sounds just like British archives... And so RFK did, sir, but the last place on earth he would have wanted WKH was in Italy as the Kennedy-inspired apertura a sinistra was in finely balanced motion. Was Harvey sent there to help co-ordinate its sabotage? I struggle to see what other value he had in Rome: his particular expertise was not in the field of paramilitary/Gladio actions, as far as I understand his career, but political sabotage. (Thinking aloud, however, was Harvey mixed up in the German gladio ops exposed in 52-53? Can't remember...) You mean the Andreotti? Delighted to get an Italian viewpoint: please stick around! Paul

Was Mrs. Cross by any chance connected, however distantly/covertly to the circle of businessman etc. who backed Roosevelt? For a goodly list of the latter, see Jeffery. M. Dorwart, "The Roosevelt-Astor Espionage Ring," New York History, July 1981, (62), pp.307-322.

The credibility of Butler’s allegations would have been considerably bolstered had they appeared in a different context. In fact, the plot described by Butler was not the first time FDR had been threatened with political destruction. The shooting of Chicago mayor Anton Cermak – and Mrs. Joseph Gill - in Miami in February 1933 – begged the question was Roosevelt the real target? According to the London Times’ correspondent, basing his despatch in part on Roosevelt’s description of the attempt given while en route back to New York, very much so. The extract to follow first appeared in The Times on 17 February 1933; it was reprinted by the paper, in its series “On this day,” on 17 February 1998, p.23: Who was this Mrs. Cross; and what press coverage did she receive, particularly in Miami, after her intervention? Just as interestingly, information contained in the despatch suggests FDR would have been a more visible target if he had acceded to a request from newsreel photographers to repeat his speech for their benefit; and that he was “fixed” in place at the time of the shooting by “a man who came forward with a long telegram,” the contents of which the unnamed official (?) insisted upon elucidating. Who was this “official”?

In today’s Grauniad, yet more BBC news footage manipulation-by-editing from the 1980s recalled. This is proving to be a fruitful little series. What a pity the paper couldn’t assign a reporter to bring all these disparate items together. Or re-evaluate its slavish editorial support for this discredited organisation. http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2137476,00.html The two letters (Sense of injustice over strike reports, July 28) reminded me of a similar incident in the 80s. The TUC held a peaceful rally close to the Commons. Between us and a line of mounted police at the bottom of Whitehall were TV cameras. Suddenly floodlights came on and the mounted police charged towards us, stopping within 20 yards of the main crowd, then retreated. On that evening's TV news we saw the charge with the comment "police charge unruly trade unionists threatening parliament". Nothing could have been further from the truth. David Buckle Abingdon, Oxfordshire While Mr. Turner takes a trip down memory lane, armed only with a good book, and a burning sense of well-founded injustice, a view from inside the spook leviathan that is the BBC. If you’re a dedicated spook-spotter, have a long, hard look at who does – and who has done - the editing within the organisation’s various news fronts: Of course, there never was a golden age of impartiality at the BBC, as its actions during the 1926 miners’ strike demonstrated so graphically. When push came to shove, the Beeb served (serves) power, not the truth.

Francesca, This is splendid - can you explain to me what the Depatron service was; and how it connects to Harvey? A further couple of questions: when did Harvey arrive in Rome and what did he do while there? Paul

Charles, Let me offer three useful criteria by which to judge JFK's position on the American spectrum. Until the time of Truman, it was common for New Deal Democrats to describe the big business right and the family corporate dynasties as "Tories." For American High Tories, as for their British predecessors, power unutilised was (and remains) power surrendered. The neo-cons are today intermittently very frank about this: Occasionally, we must go out and blat a weaker power to encourage the others. Kennedy's persistent refusal from the very earliest days of his administration - pre-Bay of Pigs - to deploy US military power to the full marked him irrevocably as "not one of us." He was, in short, a multilateralist, not a nationalist. Second, Kennedy was entirely relaxed about foreign governments using the state to intervene economically to improve the lot of their people. He said as much in the course of his visit to Mexico (in 62?). He again evidenced powerful sympathy for the economic predicament of developing nations by throwing his weight behind the Volta Dam project, the hope being, of course, that a country such as Ghana would cease merely to export its raw materials. Third and finally, he threw his full weight behind the attempt to prevent the Congo being balkanised by US and European mining interests, a policy in which he was predictably resisted by the CIA, as part of a determined effort to woo neutralists to the US cause, not exterminate or overthrow them. His contempt for the CIA policy of murdering those it did not like was unwavering: He even sent a trusted emissary, at considerable risk to his good friend's life, to Saigon in a vain attempt to save Diem. Paul

The fear of the CIA (and the Pentagon) which gripped the highest circles of the Kennedy administration -described by Galbraith, as we have seen, in a diary published several years later - found contemporaneous expression. One of the most obviously well-informed manifestations appeared in mid-1962 in the course of a Theodore White puff-piece for Dean Rusk and the State Department. The “tense July-August weeks” referred to in the final extract below unsurprisingly coincided with Kennedy’s first, and most concerted, effort to rein in the Langley empire:

Development of the term “third force”: from proud self-description to figure of fear and loathing: 1.RICHARD & GLADYS HARKNESS, "The Mysterious Doings of CIA," Saturday Evening Post, (227), 6 November 1954, p.66: "Besides its spy network, and the open CIA function of research, the agency operates a superclandestine third force…"; 2.HARRY HOWE RANSOM. Central Intelligence and National Security (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp.203-204: "The CIA: A Third Force? Quite possibly the ascendancy of CIA to prominence and power in national policy making represents the growth of a third force within the Executive Branch in the production of foreign-military policy," pp.203-204. 3.RICHARD STARNES, "'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Vietnam," The Washington Daily News, (Wednesday), 2 October 1963, pp.1-3: "Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither," p.3. 4.ARTHUR COOK. Story Unused: A Correspondent in the Far East, 1963-1967 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), p.65: "[T]hey were CIA agents, America's third force and a law unto themselves…" 5.SEYMOUR HERSH. The Price Of Power: Kissinger In The Nixon White House (London: Faber & Faber, 1983), p.425: "The job of assassinating Diem and Nhu fell to Minh's personal bodyguard, who shot both men as they were supposedly being driven to safety…Minh's most significant support came from those elements in Vietnamese politics known as the "legal opposition," of the "Third Force," which included the influential Buddhist groups. The coalition was highly patriotic and far more interested in obtaining the endorsement of the American Embassy than in negotiating a compromise with the North Vietnamese."

James Jesus Angleton and SIG.

They're already off into Sudan - keeping the oil out of Chinese hands, and in their own - but the next big piece in the jigsaw of the next big confrontation would appear to be Pakistan. A nuclear armed "Caliphate"? How mouth-watering that must appear to the geopoliticians and their chums in the MIC!

Yet more Anglo-American state terrorism lies ahead, only this time to the soothing accompaniment of the Boston Symphony Orchestra: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffa...2139810,00.html

Next time you need a second-hand car, Tom, do call at my emporium. All only one owner, elderly spinsters to a man. For those unfamiliar with Bennett's amazing act of observation, do have a look at David Lifton's Best Evidence. It really is very good at explaining this and one other SS intervention in support of the official investigation's shifting fabrications. Paul

Terrible story, I'll keep it brief: He was called to testify, but couldn't find the way. He was directionally challenged, poor soul, as he demonstrated when recalling the route of the presidential motorcade off Main: : “…we made a left-hand turn and then a quick right” *. Awesome. I leave it to denizens of the fair city of Dallas to explain where on earth that sequence led. Cuba, perhaps? *Warren Commission Exhibit 2112

Fire away, sir...

"Liberal interventionists rarely love democracy; they pursue to efface it." (With apologies to the writers of Les Enfants du Paradis...)