Paul Rigby

He has the best opportunity which there has ever been to do these things. But he can only do them if, in his foreign policy, he ceases to act on the principles of power-politics and the advice of the Central Intelligence Agency, and if, instead, he acts on the principles which have brought him such unparalleled success in home affairs.

Yours, &c.,

Philip Noel-Baker,

House of Commons, July 16.

Noel-Baker's view on who - or rather, what - was running US foreign policy in 1965 was hardly unique. Here's a similar point of view from the same year:

Ronald Segal, “FBI, KKK, CIA,” New Statesman, 3 September 1965, p.324:

Review of 3 books:

1) Fred Cook. The FBI Nobody Knows (Cape, 30s);

2) William Randel. The Ku Klux Klan (Hamish Hamilton, 30s);

3) Wise & Ross. The Invisible Government (Cape, 30s)

Writing of Wise & Ross’ book, Segal observes: “America, indeed, is dangerously near conducting international relations through a secret police all but completely independent of elected authority.”

Philip Noel-Baker, “Letter to the Editor: An Authority Diminished – President Johnson’s Policies,” The Times, Monday, 19 July 1965, p.11:

The United States White Paper of February 18 was intended to prove that the conflict in Vietnam was not a civil war, but Charter-breaking aggression by the “sovereign state” of North Vietnam against its “sovereign” neighbour, South Vietnam. No one in the West accepted the argument of this naïve document; its own figures showed that 80 per cent of the Vietcong were South Vietnamese; while its contention about “sovereignty” was in flagrant contradiction of the Geneva pledges (including United States pledges) of 1954. It only served to convince Hanoi that the United States desired the permanent partition of Vietnam on ideological grounds, as Stalin partitioned Germany in 1945.

Richard Starnes’s first extended analysis of the State Dept White Paper referred to by Noel-Baker in his Times letter:

Washington Daily News, 12 March 1965, p.31

A Flimsy Paper

As it has done in every war it has ever fought, the United States is busily constructing a superstructure of legality and rectitude around its true aims and motives in South Viet Nam.

The State Department’s White Paper on Viet Nam is a key element in this attempt. Its distortions and omissions suggest that the verdict of history will be to reject it as crude propaganda.

The White Paper, entitled “Aggression from the North,” purports to prove that the war in South Viet Nam is not a civil war but instead is a product of “flagrant aggression” by North Viet Nam and, by implication, Communist China. It is a curiously plaintive document; worthless as history, unconvincing as evidence, questionable in its basic morality.

As shaky as was the previous American stance (“we are in South Viet Nam at the invitation of a legally ordained government”), it was far more tenable than the White Paper’s attempt to justify the approaching full-scale war in Southeast Asia. The State Department fails to prove what it sets out to prove, and in failing it reveals a great deal.

Reliable estimates of the total number of Viet Cong guerillas operating in South Viet Nam do not exist. The anonymous authors of the State Department’s White Paper content themselves with the so-called “hard core” Viet Cong cadres “trained in the North.” After a virtuoso display of numbermanship, the authors conclude that:

“…Since 1959, nearly 20, 000 VC officers, soldiers and technicians are known to have entered South Viet Nam under orders from Hanoi. Additional information indicates that an estimated 17,000 more infiltrators were dispatched to the South by the regime in Hanoi during the past six years. It can reasonably be assumed that still other infiltration groups have entered the South for which there is no evidence yet available.”

There are a number of remarkable things about this specimen extract from the White Paper. It suggests there is proof that 20, 000 VC have trickled in from the North; “additional information” that 17, 000 more did likewise; and the apparently baseless assumption that there must be more for which there is no evidence or information can be found. The State Department, moreover, missed the irony that is to be had by re-constructing the paragraph as follows:

“Since 1956, nearly 30, 000 U.S. officers, soldiers and technicians are known to have entered South Viet Nam under orders from Washington. Additional information indicates that an unknown number of CIA infiltrators were dispatched during the same period.”

The patriotic response here, of course, is to assert that we are there as the bidden guests of a legal government, and the VC are not. But the blunt reality is that the South Vietnamese Liberation Front (the Viet Cong) has at least as much popular support and legitimacy as the revolving door Saigon governments installed by the United States.

The VC runs schools in the portions of South Viet Nam under its control, it lays taxes, runs social services of sorts, and obviously enjoys a measure of broadly based support that is not available to Saigon. It is not enough to say that this support is based on terror, for if terror maintained governments, Mme. Nhu and her talking puppets of fragrant memory would still be in power.

Apart from these considerations, the White Paper falls short of proving massive North Vietnamese intervention. It cites 25 case histories of what it supposes to be typical VC infiltrators, but of these 16 are South Vietnamese in origin, and in any event 25 is thin evidence on which to base 19,550 “confirmed” infiltrators and some 17,000-plus “estimated” in addition.

As to weapons supplied by communist sources outside Viet Nam, the White Paper again is long on conclusions but woefully short on evidence. In its tables can be counted fewer than two dozen crew-served weapons captured up to Jan. 29, 1964. The truth is that the bulk of VC weapons, both crew-served and light, are obtained by capture from Army of South Viet Nam units armed by the U. S. It is generally conceded that 80 per cent of VC weapons are form this source.

Finally, the White Paper cites a report of the International Control Commission which condemned Hanoi for meddling in South Viet Nam. Unfortunately for the credibility of the White Paper, however, it did not cite a section of the same report which criticized the U.S and South Viet Nam for violating the 1954 Geneva Accord.

David J. Whittaker. Fighter for Peace: Philip Noel-Baker, 1889-1982 (York, England: William Sessions Ltd., 1989), pp.312-315:

Noel-Baker “circled the globe in 1962, visiting Canada, the USA, Moscow and…Peking, Hong Kong, and Tokyo…By the summer of 1965…a letter to The Times…lamented the way in which the American President seemed influenced by military advisers and the CIA*…”

*Philip Noel-Baker, “Letter to the Editor: An Authority Diminished – President Johnson’s Policies,” The Times, Monday, 19 July 1965, p.11. The CIA used a favoured creature of the period, Peter Bessell, to reply in The Times to Noel-Baker. Bessell’s letter appeared on 21 July 1965.

Here is the letter from PNB in question:

Philip Noel-Baker, “Letter to the Editor: An Authority Diminished – President Johnson’s Policies,” The Times, Monday, 19 July 1965, p.11:

Sir, - In President Johnson’s first major speech after he entered the White House he said to the United Nations General Assembly –

“We are more then ever committed to the rule of law – in our land and around the world. We believe more than ever in the rights of man, all men of every colour – in our land and around the world. And more than ever we support the United Nations…”

In 16 months in office President Johnson fulfilled the first part of his programme. By March 1965, he had secured the legislation needed to wipe out poverty and illiteracy in the United States.

He had subdued those who sought to destroy his policy by lawless violence; he had brought their arbitrary personal behaviour under the rule of United States law. He crowned his victory with an address to Congress on March 17 which will rank among the greatest speeches ever made.

On April 7 he made an oration at Johns Hopkins University of equal nobility. He offered unconditional discussions on Vietnam, and he said: -

“We dream of a world where disputes are settled by law and reason…The guns and the bombs, the rockets and warships, are all symbols of human failure.”

On April 8 it seemed that these ambitions might be fulfilled. The President had almost achieved a world “consensus” for a policy of peace, disarmament and reconciliation. No man’s prestige had ever stood so high. Hanoi gave, if not a positive, at least a negotiable, answer to his invitation to unconditional talks. For four whole days Peking hesitated to say “No.”

Three months later, this world “consensus” had been destroyed. The President’s authority is much diminished. To many people his pledge to the United Nations sounds hypocritical and false.

This is a disaster for the President and for the whole world. What happened?

It has happened because he took advice that peace could be obtained by the ruthless use of military power. This advice has proved completely wrong.*

1. The bombing which began on February 7 was intended to stop Hanoi’s help to the guerrillas and to weaken the Vietcong. But in June Mr. McNamara told us that since February 7 the Vietcong strength had increased by 35 per cent and that Hanoi’s help had correspondingly increased.

2. The United States White Paper of February 18 was intended to prove that the conflict in Vietnam was not a civil war, but Charter-breaking aggression by the “sovereign state” of North Vietnam against its “sovereign” neighbour, South Vietnam. No one in the West accepted the argument of this naïve document; its own figures showed that 80 per cent of the Vietcong were South Vietnamese; while its contention about “sovereignty” was in flagrant contradiction of the Geneva pledges (including United States pledges) of 1954. It only served to convince Hanoi that the United States desired the permanent partition of Vietnam on ideological grounds, as Stalin partitioned Germany in 1945.

3. The speech of April 7 was swiftly followed by the United States occupation of San Domingo. This must have seemed to the Vietcong, Hanoi and Peking to prove that President Johnson’s pledges about the rule of law were insincere.

4. Not less important than these events have been the views expressed, in public and in private, by men who are known to be the President’s principal advisers in foreign affairs. A careful reading of the messages you receive from your Washington Correspondent leaves the impression that these advisers believe only in the efficacy of military power, and not at all in the efficacy of the principles and institutions of the United Nations.

President Johnson is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military forces in history. He still has immense potential political prestige. He has unrivalled political and parliamentary skill. He can become, not only the greatest President of the United States, but the greatest statesman in history, if he uses his authority to bring the world to peaceful co-existence, to disarm its national forces, and to demilitarize the thinking of its governments.

He has the best opportunity which there has ever been to do these things. But he can only do them if, in his foreign policy, he ceases to act on the principles of power-politics and the advice of the Central Intelligence Agency, and if, instead, he acts on the principles which have brought him such unparalleled success in home affairs.

Yours, &c.,

Philip Noel-Baker,

House of Commons, July 16.

Hard to imagine a letter of comparable literacy or courage emanating from a parliamentary drone of “New Labour.” Or Mockingbird Murdoch’s tabloid Times publishing it.

*Eerily familiar. Iraq, Afghanistan anyone?

Unwitting dupe, quite probably due to premature senescence.

One very neglected thread of JFK's search for a way out of Vietnam is that leading through London. Traces are rare - I've found them so, anyway - but they exist. Here's two:

Hilaire Du Berrier. Background To Betrayal: The Tragedy Of Vietnam (Mass.: Western Islands, 1965), p. 238: "Through the labor unions of Western Europe and a London group headed by a certain Labor member of Parliament *, Hanoi was kept informed of the Kennedy team's groping for a way out."

"Today's World Report: Truce Moves Reported In Viet Nam," New York World-Telegram & Sun, (Friday), 25 October 1963, p.6: "LONDON - The government of South Vietnam and Communist North Viet Nam are apparently making exploratory contacts that could lead to a truce, diplomatic sources said. There was no official confirmation…Diplomatic sources said the current moves were believed to be aiming at some sort of truce arrangement with possible wider ramifications."

*My best guess, and it is no more than a guess, would be Philip Noel-Baker. For more on his background, see the following links:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRnoelbaker.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Noel-B...aron_Noel-Baker

David J. Whittaker. Fighter for Peace: Philip Noel-Baker, 1889-1982 (York, England: William Sessions Ltd., 1989), pp.312-315:

Noel-Baker “circled the globe in 1962, visiting Canada, the USA, Moscow and…Peking, Hong Kong, and Tokyo…By the summer of 1965…a letter to The Times…lamented the way in which the American President seemed influenced by military advisers and the CIA*…”

*Philip Noel-Baker, “Letter to the Editor: An Authority Diminished – President Johnson’s Policies,” The Times, Monday, 19 July 1965, p.11. The CIA used a favoured creature of the period, Peter Bessell, to reply in The Times to Noel-Baker. Bessell’s letter appeared on 21 July 1965.

I think the sentences I bolded in Paul's latest reply deserve an answer. I'll call it the Rigby Theorem of Spook Self-Interest. I hope the author isn't upset by that.

I can live with it, Sid.

I paraphrase. Exactly what accountability controls apply to these people?

Are there any?

How would we ever know?

The most serious questions facing the Anglosphere today. And yet not a single politician of stature - at least, none that I'm aware - is asking any of them. It is a catastrophe; and will, if current trends are not reversed quickly and decisively, destroy our societies far more effectively than any external threats.

Paul

If you actually wish to investigate rather than recite your preferred fantasies ad nauseum you should start by examining the evidence.

Well, go on then, pick a relevant example and discuss "the evidence." And while you're at it, perhaps you'd deign to tell us who determines what is "evidence" and how it is presented.

In cases of terrorism, could it be the intelligence services? And you trust them to give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? Why? Is your seeming trust in the spooks based on personal experience, the product of extensive examination, or an article of faith?

Unfortunately it is painfully apparent that you have never experienced a "great" or even an effective history lesson.

Finally, when you quote someone's post in a reply it is very poor practice indeed to edit the text you are quoting to suit your own argument. I have therefore restored my quoted text to my actual words. The fact that you did this is disappointing but not terribly surprising.

Good grief! The pomposity is magnificent.

Here then is a picture of someone parking their car at Glasgow airport?

Maybe we can summon up enough speculative and critical thought to conclude that the similar devices found in London were also intended to have targets. Or maybe its just more fun to blame the spooks.

Your facile attempts at abuse make you look weak and foolish Mr Rigby..

I admire your steadfast refusal to consider the rich history of agent provocateur and false flag ops. Er, why? Why the disposition to see it from the establishment's point of view? The great lesson history teaches us is that we should start from the assumption that the terrorist activity has state sponsorship - until proven otherwise.

Relatedly, what the rubes think they are doing, and what their masters really intend, have a tendency to be poles apart. In the case of 9/11, for example, the FBI early went on record as believing that the hijackers in among the passengers thought they were taking part in an old fashioned skyjacking, not a suicide mission.

And of the men in the cockpit, was Mohammad Atta, for example, really a devout Muslim, with a head full of virgins? Or just not in nightclubs when knocking back the vodka?

A final thought: Given that every time a bomb explodes the spooks' budgets increase significantly, what countervailing incentives are there for them to do better? After all, whoever heard of a spook sacked or disciplined for failing to prevent a bombing?

You might prefer of course to engage in rational discussion.... here's hoping at least

Gosh, here's hoping I can ascend to such giddy heights of reason as...

You are not all ears you are all mouth and what pours forth from that orifice is neither instructive nor helpful.

You are a fool if you believe that the religious attacks on the UK, Australia and the USA have been inspired by anything other than misguided god heads hoping for a quick route to paradise and a large number of virgins.

And miss the fact that the London bombers were NOT suicide bombers. [Hint: they scarpered before anything exploded...]

Very impressive.

So who is the fool, and what exactly is it you teach?

Elementary logic? Rhetoric? Religio-racial stereotyping, perhaps?

You'll forgive my puzzlement, David, particularly as it was Andy Walker who intruded in the thread with a curious tirade about god heads with virgins on their mind - that's suicide bombers, I take it - when, as is perfectly clear, the London bombers were NOT suicide bombers. Correct me if I have any of that wrong?

Great piece on yesterday's Whatreallyhappened page (July 1):

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

Was London Bomb Plot Heralded On Web?

Hours before London explosives technicians dismantled a large car bomb in the heart of the British capital's tourist-rich theater district, a message appeared on one of the most widely used jihadist Internet forums, saying: "Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed."

CBS News found the posting, which went on for nearly 300 words, on the "al Hesbah" chat room.

Posted Jul 1, 2007 10:22 AM PST

Category: COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS

Only problem is that the "al Hasbah" chat room is REGISTERED WITH A DOMAIN REGISTRATION COMPANY IN SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, one that hides the identity of the original registrar. (Link here: http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=http%...%2F&tld=com )

Does anyone besides me find it strange that after tracking back various "terrorist" (nudge nudge wink wink) websites to places like Texas and Virginia, all of a sudden Domains by Proxy starts up to provide "terrorist" websites with anonymity, and despite the hue and cry against anyone who supports terror and the USAPATRIOT act, Domains By Proxy isn't investigated, harassed, raided, or for that matter even mentioned in the media as an obvious facilitator of the "terrorist" websites?

I confess - I find it strange.

Maybe Voltaire will be less confusing for you: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"

Given the amount of unadulterated establishment nonsense you believe, I think a preventative watch essential. For your own good, of course.

What a fatuous comment - whilst it is tempting to invite you to enlighten me as to what you mean, and to enquire where indeed you got the brass neck from to presume and then to project any of my "beliefs" as nonsense or otherwise , I fear it would lack interest for forum members coming here to discuss the recent terrorist attacks in London, David's theory of "tension" as I understand it, or my concerns about the dangers of the religious mindset.

I have taken this unpleasant dispute off board. You therefore have a private message from me.

David Guyatt

You'll forgive my puzzlement, David, particularly as it was Andy Walker who intruded in the thread with a curious tirade about god heads with virgins on their mind - that's suicide bombers, I take it - when, as is perfectly clear, the London bombers were NOT suicide bombers. Correct me if I have any of that wrong?

A second point, and one I've made before: If you're going to dish it out, as Andy unquestionably did to Sid in no uncertain terms, then be prepared to cop some back. A pretty fair rule of life, debate, and anything else, I would have thought.

Paul

Maybe Voltaire will be less confusing for you: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"

Given the amount of unadulterated establishment nonsense you believe, I think a preventative watch essential. For your own good, of course.

I do agree with you, having now viewed the video, that the 9-11 Conspiracy Files demolition is superb.

Well done to Shayler and the Bristol 9-11 Truth people!

Thirded - and this is where I came in...

"Thirded"? Are you counting yourself twice Paul?

Yawn I watched the first 30 minutes or so. Its the same crap as other “Truther” “documentaries” misconceptions, distortions, misinformation (no Arab names on the manifests) documents selectively quoted out of context, intellectual dishonesty etc etc. If any of its “champions” want to highlight any specific points it made, along with an indication of where they appeared in the video I’ll reply.

I particularly liked the fact a BBC documentary couldn't bring itself to include eyewitness accounts from, er, BBC reporters. Shifty types, you understand, not to be trusted.

What they didn't say at Kennebunkport

Douglas,

My regards to Oswald for this compelling piece of geopolitical fiction. Could I now persuade you - or perhaps you him - to turn instead to the more challenging task of furnishing non-Americans with an insight, of whatever value, into the fabulous mechanism that is Dubya's mind?

Paul

"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.... B Russell"

So, Andy, which Bertrand Russell did you have in mind? The one who repeatedly advocated - then repeatedly lied that he hadn't - the unleashing, post-WWII, of a preventative atomic holocaust on the Soviet Union? (See here for more: http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/russell.html )

Or the Bertrand Russell who forged the British "Who Killed Kennedy?" Committee, and wrote this piece: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/the_critics/R...ns_Russell.html ?

Or did you have in mind someone else entirely? Pray tell!

You were, after all, making some or other powerfully persuasive point about the superiority of non-religious reason, and the moral imbecility of conspiracism.

Anyhow, if anyone can think of an alternative approach that may be more efficacious, I'm all ears.

You are not all ears you are all mouth and what pours forth from that orifice is neither instructive nor helpful.

You are a fool if you believe that the religious attacks on the UK, Australia and the USA have been inspired by anything other than misguided god heads hoping for a quick route to paradise and a large number of virgins.

In answer to your question cited above the banning of the religious indoctrinination of children would be a start

So, Andy, when do you start closing down Protestant and Catholic schools? Or is it just one form of religious indoctrination you're opposed to? The form favoured by people, say, with darker coloured skins than you?

And not inspired by anything other "misguided god heads"? You mean Saudi Arabia, the CIA and ISI didn't pump all that money into religious schools in the 80s? We imagined this?

You're attack on Sid was truly appalling stuff, unworthy even of a Sun editorial.

Paul, have you come across anything in your research to indicate that Diem was secretly negotiating with Ho, and might that have played a part in Harriman coming around to the coup?

One very neglected thread of JFK's search for a way out of Vietnam is that leading through London. Traces are rare - I've found them so, anyway - but they exist. Here's two:

Hilaire Du Berrier. Background To Betrayal: The Tragedy Of Vietnam (Mass.: Western Islands, 1965), p. 238: "Through the labor unions of Western Europe and a London group headed by a certain Labor member of Parliament *, Hanoi was kept informed of the Kennedy team's groping for a way out."

"Today's World Report: Truce Moves Reported In Viet Nam," New York World-Telegram & Sun, (Friday), 25 October 1963, p.6: "LONDON - The government of South Vietnam and Communist North Viet Nam are apparently making exploratory contacts that could lead to a truce, diplomatic sources said. There was no official confirmation…Diplomatic sources said the current moves were believed to be aiming at some sort of truce arrangement with possible wider ramifications."

*My best guess, and it is no more than a guess, would be Philip Noel-Baker. For more on his background, see the following links:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRnoelbaker.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Noel-B...aron_Noel-Baker

Cliff Varnell wrote:

For what it's worth:

An old girl friend of mine is the daughter of a Diem secret police officer. She was 13 at the time of the coup. She's Buddhist, and insists that the Buddhist uprising against Diem in '63 was manufactured by the CIA.

Here's three excerpts that shed some light on well-founded suspicions:

TOM BOWER. The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935-1990 (London: William Heinemann, 1995) , p.226: “Historically, SIS’s expertise in south-east Asia was superior to the CIA’s. From Bangkok, SIS had financed pro-Western candidates in the Laos elections in 1954, effectively forestalling communist victory, and was attempting similar tactics with the Buddhists in Vietnam.”

MALCOLM W. BROWNE. The New Face of War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1968 edition), p. 269: “A very few of the Vietnamese monks are extremely well-educated by any standard. Some have studied in Japan, India and even the United States. The venerable Thich Quang Lien, one of the younger monks, holds a degree from Yale University.”

BERNARD FALL. Anatomy of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis of 1960-61 (NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc, 1969), p. 241, n. 23: “Many Bonzes were sent for advanced Buddhist training to India and Burma; some of them at United States expense and others at the expense of an American private foundation. When they returned to Laos, some of them were found to have acquired a solid foundation of Marxism in addition to that of Buddhist texts, while others used their newly acquired English-language capability to go into more lucrative businesses than that of serving their religion.”

If there's much more erosion of civil liberties, fair judicial process and honesty in media reportage, our spooks may be able to use entirely virtual patsies. Just actors... who disappear deep inside the memory hole when their 15 minutes of fame is over.

It would be a humane reform. No need to bother with bodgy trials, long, expensive incarcerations and outraged families campaigning for justice.

A modest proposal of the most agreeable kind. Not merely would it save a vast amount of money, but it would offer repertory training to a new generation of thespian talent. I have to observe that much spook acting - I think immediately of Ruth Paine emoting over JFK, that sort of horribly overdone spectacle, with all the emphases in the wrong place - has been radically unsatisfactory.

Thoughts anyone?

An exploding butt plug, perhaps?

By the way, did either of the two look, well, Caucasian to you?

Everton? I presume you mean the suburb of Liverpool - the city that hosts England's most successful soccer team?

Langley on the Mersey. Pure darkness.

The US has been following carefully constructed foreign policy with respect to Russia, avoiding blatant human rights abuses (e.g. Chechnya) seemingly in the hope that democracy would take hold and an elected government could right the ship, at least until the proposed installation of the missile defense shield.

Who did arm and train the child-killers of Beslan: and why so little investigation into the matter, certainly in Britain? Could it be the finance and training came from...Washington? Perish the thought.

Comment:The Chechens' American friends

The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own

John Laughland

Wednesday September 8, 2004

The Guardian

An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.

On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.

These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.

By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.

The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.

Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.

Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.

Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?

• John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group www.oscewatch.org

My belief remains, however, that Israeli/organized Jewish interests are top of the food chain in the aggregation of western spookdom that has taken place since World War Two. The most crucial decisions taken by this beast are made outside the Pentagon - or Langley. The US military-industrial-spook complex is like a very large pair of biceps, complete with bone, sinews and claws. The brain is elsewhere.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this, Sid, as there's not much either of us could offer to change minds. But I take your point regarding the thuggy Pentagon and Langley - the exterminatory tactics might be theirs, but the strategy?

Agreeing to differ is fine, Paul. I imagine we're both open to further evidence either way.

All I'll add for now is that if the "Anglophile elite" within the western spookdom hasn't been taken over by Zionists, they do a bloody good job of faking it.

History, Sid, will settle this one definitively. For what it's worth, I believe the Anglo-American crackerjacks will shed Zionism with all the emotional concern of a snake disgarding an old skin when the time comes; and the Israeli elite knows this better than anyone. But we'll see. One must always permit the possibility of error.

Paul

Sid, in descending order of importance:

What's a 'bluenose'?

An Evertonian.

On the webpage you cited as a reference, additional links are provided for further information.

Having just read the homepage of http://www.911cultwatch.org.uk/, my first impressions are that the authors - not Shayler and Machin - are probable disinformationalists (or perhaps honestly misguided souls). Likewise http://paulstott.typepad.com/911cultwatch/.

I hope I'm not talking about friends of yours

Nope, never met the coves in my life, and I'm inclined to agree: But O'Hara on Shayler is very good.

I do agree with you, having now viewed the video, that the 9-11 Conspiracy Files demolition is superb.

Well done to Shayler and the Bristol 9-11 Truth people!

Thirded - and this is where I came in...

In such circumstances, their best strategy is to increase the frequency of attacks so no-one can keep track in all the confusion.

That, I fear, may be what's happening.

Agreed. The second series of attacks in London - the ones following 7/7 - represented a blatant attempt to distract from, and retrospectively fudge, a considerable number of anomalies in the original.

Paul