Paul Rigby

Swedish governments are typically minority governments or coalitions, where the balance of voting at the election went 51%-49% between the blocs. However, until 1991 Swedish governments sat for 3-year terms, so a government was always looking over its shoulder at the electorate. For most of the last 100 years, it was the Social Democrats who got to run things, but they were always careful to try to get the opposition parties to sign up to important pieces of legislation, such as social insurance laws and pension laws, so that they could be sure that there'd be some continuity in Swedish society. It worked very well … to the extent that the right-wing party had to change its name to 'The Moderates' just to have a chance of being elected. At the same time, there's been a series of oligarchies running Swedish industry, with very firm ties to the government in office (usually the Social Democrats). That's why Ericsson is such a big name in telecommunications - it was sweetheart deals with the Swedish governments in the 1930s and 1940s which enabled a little place like Sweden to create a world-leader in telecommunications. Or, at least, that's how they made their first thousand dollars! Swedish company law allows for a small shareholding to control a huge company, with what are called A and B shares. If you want to buy shares in, say, Ericsson, you can buy as many B shares as you like, but it's the A shares that give seats on the board, and they're not for sale! As regards your point b, I have a declaration of interest to make. I'm actually a member of the Social Democrats (sit on the ward committee of the Funkabo district of the Kalmar Social Democrats). At first sight it certainly looks the way you describe it … but the picture I see is very different. We're one ward in a city of only 60,000 people, but we've got more dues-paying members than New Labour in the city of Manchester in the UK! And by 'dues-paying members', I'm talking about people who get their paying-in slips personally in their hands from people who visit them in their homes - not block union members. In other words, yes, there are people who've held office in the Social Democrats who've provided this veneer, but the party as a whole is still a strong grass-roots party, where people expect to have their say and to have the policies they believe in carried out by their party in government. You might have heard of Employee Investment Funds which existed from the early 1980s until they were abolished by the 'Moderate' government just before they were kicked out of office in 1994. The right put the cash in those funds into a series of trusts which were given the task of investing in Swedish science and technology, and it's thanks to the money they'd collected (from a levy on company profits) that Sweden's so advanced when it comes to IT nowadays. If the Social Democrats were just the court jesters, then those funds would never have been created (the oligarchs hated having to invest money in funds for social investment). In fact, many leading Social Democrats were bitterly opposed to them. To sum up, Sweden's just another north-western European country which fights the same fights as everyone else. It's just that the right win less often here than they do in other countries, which is why Sweden's still one of the richest countries in the world … There are ups and downs (we're in one of the 'downs' at the moment), but what most people want is what most people everywhere want: prosperity based on fair treatment and social justice. Each time the right have gained power they've tried to break people of this desire … but so far they haven't succeeded. So I can fall right back in love with the place, then, eh? Still, I can't quite suppress the conservative sceptic in me: none of the high level assassinations seem to have been investigated with honesty and intelligence; and the spooks, as in Britain, form a US-serving fifth column. Much work to be done yet, I fear. Finally, thanks again for the responses. We are permitted to hear and see so little from outside the Anglosphere that it really is a breath of fresh air to be offered this kind of input. Thank you again! Paul

Very well put. But don't ignore the concerted attempt, particulary noticeable in literature of the 1960s, to make the SS appear the heroes of the moment. The biggest player on the block wants us to look anywhere but, and did from the outset. And then there's a less sinister tendency at work. As Hazlitt put it - I paraphrase - "A whole town runs to see a fire; but the spectator by no means exults to see it extinguished." Long lists of, for example, Cuban names is all together more glamorous and exciting than Kellerman, Greer etc. Paul

Great, I love it, another Guardian cock-up. If you can furnish me with a source, I'll demand a correction in the most intemperate tones I can muster. Interesting choice of subject for Clooney; and even more interesting to see how the script writers et al manage to reconcile Reagan's band of CIA helpers with an alleged CIA attempt to rescue US hostages (at the same time?). History being rewritten just in time for a new Democratic administration? Paul

To which one might add the curious case of Alan Johnston, the disappeared BBC correspondent in Gaza. Now who could possibly want to drive all foreign correspondents out of that particular area? If the group responsible turns out to be Al Qaida-linked, we'll know for sure its a pseudo-gang operation; and a prelude to something nasty for the people of the area. Paul

One thing you have to bear in mind about Sweden is that significant portions of the population were pro-Nazi … right up until May 8th 1945 when they took the portraits of Hitler off the walls and became pro-American! The secret services had (and we suspect have) a lot of these unreconstructed Nazis in their ranks. One of the failures of the Social Democratic governments has been in confronting these people and flushing them out. During the war, the Swedish secret service was very pro-Nazi, turning the King of Norway back at the frontier, and handing lots of Jewish refugees back to the Gestapo. On the other hand, I've met several ex-soldiers who said that they had people in their units on the borders whose job it was to shoot the officers if the Germans invaded, because their captains and lieutenants would just go over to the German side. A lot of this goes back to pro-German feelings, which have been a significant influence on Swedish society since the mid-19th century. The fact that Bismarck turned first on Sweden's old enemy, Denmark, helped get this started. In many ways, traditional Swedish society was very Germanic - with the love of titles, social ranks, law and order, etc , etc. It was this deference which made the Social Democrats go along with things like the Institute for Racial Hygiene, which instigated the sterilization campaign on people seen as social deviants. The governments of the day just went along with whatever a Professor in white coat told them was 'scientifically proven'. Another strand is Social-Democratic anti-communism. The Social Democrats had several scares way back in the days around World War One, and had every reason to suspect after World War Two that the pro-Moscow Communists were a threat to them. This made them suckers for secret service campaigns against Communists, since the Social Democrats were competing for the same voters. The Communists still sit in Parliament in Sweden, and were an important support group for the last Social Democratic government (and probably for the next one too). It was this anti-communism which made Swedish governments so deferential to the Americans. Yes, I know all about the Vietnam War protests, but they've only just fished up the wreck of a Swedish spy plane which was spying on the Soviets for the Americans when it was shot down. Strange behaviour for a neutral power … Excellent post, David, for which many thanks. I begin to wonder a) if I've entirely misunderstood key features of Swedish society in general; and specifically, if the historic function of the Social Democrats has been to furnish an enduring, self-effacing elite with little more than a liberal veneer? Your thoughts very welcome. Paul

Let's hope you're right, Myra. But a note of caution: The Paley of Goodnight and Good Luck, fine film that it is, is not the Paley of history. CBS only gave the green light to Morrow after Tailgunner Joe made the scarcely believable error of publicly attacking the CIA in the summer of '53. By far the most influential attack on McCarthy came not from the inveterate liberal Morrow, but instead from the notorious red-baiter Frederick Woltman, who rounded on him in the pages of Scripps-Howard's papers in a series published in mid-July 1954. Now that would be an even more interesting tale, if truth be told. Paul

Thanks for the link. Thoroughly enjoyed the speeches, but left with a curious sense of nostalgia: These were the sort of American voices I grew up with and grew up admiring. Seems decades since I last heard them. Truth be told, it is. Paul

Very welcome contribution, David, for which thanks. Concerning the reputation of Swedish spookery for extreme right-wingery: why are the spooks so much more right-wing than the general population? Is it because they are recruited, as in England, from a particular class, caste and/or profession? And what of Bernt Carlsson's death? Any decent investigative reportage in Sweden on Lockerbie? Paul

Swedish readers - any good reportage those of us who don't speak or read Swedish should know about? Or did the Swedish media cave-in like their mainstream British and US equivalents unfailingly do at such times? Paul

Small piece in this morning’s Guardian, G2 section, Arts Diary page (27), compiled, apparently, by one Francesca Martin, on George Clooney’s next two films. Both feature the CIA. The second, Escape from Tehran, “will be based on the true story of the CIA creating a fake movie in order to…” Follow the link for enlightenment. Sounds to me like a puff piece for the Agency, but we’ll have to wait for confirmation (or otherwise). http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2075509,00.html Any one know anything about the Agency fake in question? Paul

“The newspaper reporter has brought us to that degree of impoverishment of the imagination which makes it possible for us to fight a war of annihilation.” “Paper burns and has set the world alight. Newspaper pages have acted as a kindling for the world conflagration…Would the war have been possible at all without the press – possible to begin or possible to continue?” Karl Kraus

Fascinating questions, Sid, and some of them equally applicable to the assassination of Olof Palme. I hope Anglo-American provinciality does kill this thread, as there would appear much to learn from informed responses. It also reminds me of the prominent Swedish victim of Lockerbie, Bernt Carlsson, a man whose timely death enabled the US et al to prevent Swapo obtaining a sufficient majority in the subsequent Namibian referendum, thus killing sweeping nationalisation proposals. Even Wikipedia offers something on this theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernt_Carlsson For another tribute to Carlsson, see this link: http://web.syr.edu/~vpaf103/v_carlsson.html A very good friend of mine lives in Sweden and I've been there twice: I love the country and the people. But I was struck by how resigned and/or naive much of the comment about the string of assassinations was. Very sad. Paul

Gil, Indulge the hypothesis: A shot from the front left of the car to the right rear would likely produce a left temple entrance and a right rear exit; it would blast brain matter to the rear; and, depending on both the handgun used and the precise location of the limousine, could well produce an ejected casing on the grassy south curb of Elm. Secret Service responsibility for the shooting would furnish the most powerful motive of all for the production of a false film record of the killing. Any evidence for all or any of these elements of the hypothesis? Paul PS Many thanks for the series of vids - enjoyed them.

From one secret police urinal to another: Seymour Hersh’s tribute to David Halberstam on BBC Radio 4’s arts programme, Last Word, broadcast yesterday afternoon, Friday, 27 April. Students of rank mis- and dis-information will perhaps be interested to know that it’s repeated this Sunday afternoon. To think, British license payers have to cough up over £10 a month – or suffer a fine and/or a spell in the nick – for the privilege of having such spook guff beamed at us. You have to admire the bare-faced cheek of it all. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/lastword.shtml David Halberstam Journalist and author who has died aged 73. BBC lie: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Halberstam was one of the first reporters to file from the front line of the Vietnam War. [Nonsense: he was about reporter 2500…] BBC lie: He was later one of the first to argue in print that the United States was fighting a losing battle. [As a matter of readily ascertainable fact, he initially championed a more ruthless prosecution of the war; and he did so in the service of the Central Intelligence Agency.] The rest of the tribute: He wrote for the New York Times, returning to his native city in the early sixties after stints covering the civil rights movement in Mississippi and Tennessee. His postings in Vietnam also resulted in two acclaimed books The Making Of A Quagmire and The Best And The Brightest . Both won prizes and influenced American public opinion the 1960s. John Wilson talks to another controversial prize winning reporter who made his name exposing the military quagmire of Vietnam – Seymour Hersh. David Halberstam was born April 10th 1934. He died April 23rd 2007. PS: Minor point - Halberstam helped facilitate an entirely unnecessary war that killed and maimed millions. What a hero.

Sid, You forgot "self-enriching" before "murderous gangsters." And I have the distinct impression Pergamon Press was an MI6 jolly. Paul

I am appalled at my own lack of discrimination. How on earth could I have mistaken Captain Bob's grovelling rubbish for Garter Sash's probing examination of our beloved Prime Minister? By way of atonement, I now expose my error for the travesty it was: “Dear Mr Prime Minister, you have been holding the highest political and state office in Britain for a decade, a fact for which we warmly congratulate you. What has — in your opinion — made you so popular with Britons?” Timothy Garter Sash. Blair: Builder of Modern Britain (Scarlett Press, 2007), p.147. “Nicolae Ceausescu bounds into the garden of the Palace of the People, looking as if he’s ready for another 18 years there…As for Rumania’s other pivotal alliance, what, I ask, has Rumania got out of its ‘special relationship’ with Moscow over the last decade? What was in it for us? The relationship itself, is his answer, and the influence it enables us to exert on other issues… ‘Time we had an independent foreign policy is the easiest applause-line in the world, but start distancing yourself from Moscow and see how your influence will be diminished.’” Robert Maxwell, “Like it loathe it, after 18 years Ceausescu knows exactly what he stands for,” The Daily Mirror, 15 December 1989, pp.1-32 A deeply ashamed Rigby

I am appalled at my own lack of discrimination. How on earth could I have mistaken Captain Bob's grovelling rubbish for Garter Sash's probing examination of our beloved Prime Minister? By way of atonement, I now expose my error for the travesty it was: “Dear Mr Prime Minister, you have been holding the highest political and state office in Britain for a decade, a fact for which we warmly congratulate you. What has — in your opinion — made you so popular with Britons?” Timothy Garter Sash. Blair: Builder of Modern Britain (Scarlett Press, 2007), p.147. “Nicolae Ceausescu bounds into the garden of the Palace of the People, looking as if he’s ready for another 18 years there…As for Rumania’s other pivotal alliance, what, I ask, has Rumania got out of its ‘special relationship’ with Moscow over the last decade? What was in it for us? The relationship itself, is his answer, and the influence it enables us to exert on other issues… ‘Time we had an independent foreign policy is the easiest applause-line in the world, but start distancing yourself from Moscow and see how your influence will be diminished.’” Robert Maxwell, “Like it loathe it, after 18 years Ceausescu knows exactly what he stands for,” The Daily Mirror, 15 December 1989, pp.1-32 A deeply ashamed Rigby

Or how a fearless MI6 asset interrogated a war criminal http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/comm...rticle_continue

The Guardian has long been the CIA’s most important pipeline to the British left; and Godfrey Hodgson, first as The Observer’s correspondent in the US, then as the foreign editor of The Independent, a dutiful British hack regurgitator of US establishment pap. Put them together on the subject of the recently deceased David Halberstam and there could be only one outcome – lucid, confident, CIA-serving tosh. A reliable indicator of the accuracy of the Hodgsonian obit in yesterday morning’s edition of the paper (p.31) is to be found in the photograph and caption which accompanied. It is the front cover of a reissue of Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest” – foreword by noted truth-seeker Senator John McCain, no less – under which lies the following caption: “Halberstam, on the cover of his 1972 book about flawed US foreign policy, was scrupulously fair in his reporting.” In fact, the figure in the photograph is obviously, unmistakably, Robert Strange McNamara. Halberstam’s grotesquely inflated reputation rests on two aspects of his career: His work as a correspondent for the New York Times, Langley’s paper of anti-record, in Vietnam, 1962-64; and the subsequent books and journalism derived from that period. An honest examination of both compel a very different accounting and conclusion to those furnished by the sycophantic Hodgson. In the establishment parallel universe occupied by such as Hodgson, American journalism of the Cold War era existed in a CIA-/Mockingbird-free zone: There was no Agency recruitment in US universities; plum foreign assignments were offered purely on merit; and reporters didn’t spy, or act as mouthpieces, for CIA foreign (and domestic) policies. Thus Halberstam could not conceivably have been talent spotted by the Agency at Harvard, sheep-dipped in the south as a remarkably well-informed cub reporter of civil rights activism, then sent to Congo to cash in this credibility as a hard-right CIA mouthpiece. No, such an interpretation is paranoid nonsense and without foundation. Or is it? In the case of his Congo posting, the contemporaneous example of the Scripps-Howard group suggests otherwise. In mid-1960, S-H’s correspondent in the Congo, D’Lynn Waldron, was acting as a courier for the increasingly besieged Lumumba, ferrying his defiant, pitiful entreaties for assistance and understanding over the border for transmission to Washington. She was recalled. In her stead, Richard Starnes, not long resigned as the managing editor of the group’s one-time bellwether, the New York World-Telegram & Sun, was offered the post at meeting with the S-H executive, and former OSS-er, Oland Russell, and a CIA officer. Starnes declined. In his place went Henry Taylor, Jr., ex-ONI, who was to be killed in fighting shortly after his arrival in early September 1960. In short, then, the CIA had an intense and active involvement in which journalists went to the Congo in the period. And the CIA had a policy for the Congo, one which ran utterly counter to everything Kennedy had argued for, first as a presidential candidate; and subsequently, in turn, as President-elect, then President. In the Congo, Halberstam produced precisely the kind of journalism exterminatory US neo-colonialism required in its quest for uranium tri-oxide and the like. In the NYT’s in-house paper, Times Talk, we find such classic contributions as “It’s Chaos for a Correspondent in the Congo” (October-November 1961) and “Congo Boondocks: Land of Cannibals and Diamonds” (William Prochnau. Once Upon a Distant War: Reporting from Vietnam (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1996, p.509). Africans, the less than subtle subtext had it, just couldn’t be trusted to run a country, particularly one full of strategic, or merely desirable, minerals. On the same assignment, according to serial flatterer Prochnau, Halberstam “played mostly by the old rules. He checked in regularly with the CIA men, and, in the accepted fashion of the day, thought nothing of doing a little routine information trading” (Ibid., p.150). Did this closeness cease upon Halberstam’s move to Saigon? Hardly. On his second day there, Prochnau earlier disclosed, Halberstam went to lunch with “the CIA’s Saigon station chief, John Richardson” who gave him “an unexpectedly good lead” (Ibid., p.133). A little further on, we learn: “By now his CIA contacts from the Congo had begun to flock to the hot new action in Southeast Asia like bees to honey. Vietnam was a spook’s dream…” (Ibid., p.169). Interestingly, the Times of Vietnam, in its detailed expose of the abortive CIA-orchestrated coup planned for August 28/29, 1963, had this to say: “Beginning in January of this year, it is reported American secret agency “experts” who successfully engineered the coup d’etats in Turkey, Guatemala, Korea, and failed in Iran and Cuba, began arriving in Vietnam, taking up duties mostly in the U.S. Embassy, U.S.O.M., M.A.A.G., and various official and unofficial installations here” (“CIA Financing Planned Coup D’Etat: Planned for Aug. 28; Falls Flat, Stillborn,” Monday, 2 September 1963, pp.1). Had those Agency coup experts also served in the Congo, to thwart Kennedy’s backing for the UN? Whatever the truth of that conjecture, there can be little doubt that Halberstam’s closeness to, and affinity for, the Agency endured. His first book derived from his posting in Vietnam, Making of a Quagmire (NY: Random House, 1965), is littered with testimony to the relationship: pp.221-225: extended defence of CIA’s role in Saigon. p.222: “…many CIA agents in Saigon were my friends, and I considered them among the ablest Americans I had seen overseas or at home.” p.241: “That night I had drinks with two friends in the CIA. They were exceptionally bitter…” p.262: “Our basic information, coming from several sources close to the CIA…” p.263: “…more than a year later, another CIA friend claimed that…” In later years, Halberstam sought to distance himself from the charge of acting as a CIA mouthpiece in Vietnam, telling Prochnau that fellow reporter, UPI man Neil Sheehan “had better CIA sources. I had better military because I could travel more…” (Once Upon a Distant War, p.277). Any sense of reassurance was somewhat undercut by the earlier admission that his acknowledged lead source, Colonel John Paul Vann, was “a blunt, essentially conservative, at time almost reactionary man…much of our information came from men like Vann” (Making of a Quagmire, p.164). In any case, Vann was recalled from South Vietnam in early April 1963. Sheehan, like Halberstam, formed part of a journalistic clique that worked assiduously for the overthrow of a Diem government engaged in protracted peace negotiations with Hanoi; and its replacement by a military junta that would prosecute the war with more vigour. That the clique worked hand in glove with the Agency was never more clearly demonstrated than in the aftermath of the publication of Richard Starnes’ ‘Arrogant’ CIA Disobeys Orders in Vietnam on 2 October 1963. Two members of the clique, Halberstam and AP’s Malcolm Browne, were at the forefront of the CIA’s defenders in the pages of the NYT. Halberstam’s contribution to whitewashing the Agency’s open revolt ran as follows: The piece is fascinating not least for the extent to which it confirmed the justice of the charge made in Frank Coniff’s New York Journal American column of 26 August 1963 that Halberstam had “resurrected from oblivion good old ‘reliable sources,’ and idiomatic usage that was, alack, fast disappearing from the reporter’s arsenal. We stopped counting in Saturday’s Times after 11 hits by good old ‘reliable sources’ or his less sturdy brother, plain old ‘sources.’ Mr. Halberstam has done us all a favor by restoring new vigor to a rapidly fading journalistic cliché” (“New York J. A. Takes Issue With New York Times,” Times of Vietnam, 3 September 1963, p.1). In his 4 October defence of the Agency, Halberstam ran the gamut of euphemisms for the CIA: “all quarters here”; “some sources”; “Many persons in Saigon”; “other members of the mission”; and “Informants here.” First in his 4 October 1963 riposte to Starnes, then in his 1965 book, Making of a Quagmire, Halberstam was unwilling to concede that Richardson, at the time of his recall by Kennedy, was a firm advocate of Diem’s overthrow. That concession was to be slipped in to his 1972 magnum opus, The Best and the Brightest (NY: Random House, 1972 edition): “Even the CIA chief, John Richardson, who until recently had been so close to Nhu, was a surprising advocate of a coup, and a prophet that the coup would come and come quickly” (p.264). It was this book that provoked Warren Hinckle, editor of Ramparts, to one of the great book reviews of the 1970s: “What critical reporting there was about Vietnam dealt with questions of the efficiency or practicality of the means of American policy but did not question its ends. It is a measure of the level of press criticism of America’s great Vietnam misadventure that David Halberstam was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for calling Madame Nhu a bitch. Halberstam, long the war’s most celebrated critic, chastised the corrupt Nhu family and poked the wind machines of the General’s public relations machinery while still accepting the basic ideological tenets of American policy. In an Esquire interview in 1964 Halberstam worried that ‘this pretty little country will be lost.’ In his earlier book, The Making of a Quagmire, said Halberstam the war critic: ‘The lesson to be learned from Vietnam is that we must get in earlier, be shrewder and force the other side to practice the self-deception.’ I would not nitpick Halberstam were it not for his recent and nauseating criticisms of those liberal Establishment types who made America’s Vietnam policy – that they were the victims of some weepy, ill-defined hubris that kept them from seeing the fatal flaw in the whole undertaking – that the formulates in his trendy best seller, The Best and the Brightest, which must rank as one of the great bullxxxx books of all time. Halberstam adroitly skips over the fact that the American press establishment had its own best and brightest in Vietnam (not the least of them Halberstam) during those years of folly – a decade of electronic, plugged-in and satellited reporting that exhibited the same arrogance or, if we must, hubris of the ideology of the men whom Halberstam now so artfully brushes with the vanishing cream of tragedy.” Warren Hinckle. If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade: An Essential Memoir of a Lunatic Decade (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), pp.162-163. Real history is in Hinckle. For the CIA fairy tale, see The Guardian and the equally appalling Hodgson.

Why did Luce's empire briefly, tactically, embrace conspiracism in late 1966? The answer is China. The "strike north" group - the echo of Japanese interwar militarism is intentional - within the Pentagon/CIA sought to use Vietnam to embroil Peking. The opposition - Luce, among others - sought to apply pressure to prevent the spread of the war. Perhaps the key figure in deciphering this elite riddle is Harrison Salisbury. No sooner is he granted a visa to Hanoi than the incipient establishment calls for a reinvestigation of Dallas subside. What we see is nothing less than an attempt, mediated via the doctored film, to conscript public opinion behind the Luce/Salisbury position by adding a frontal shot to the establishment's rear shot. But the frontal shot had to be ultimately harmless to the establishment's position - hence the grassy knoll. Paul

Fair point, Charlie, the problem lies with the selectivity of that scrutiny. Consider, for example, JFK's alleged infidelities. We're treated to endless rehashes of this topic, yet I'd be willing to bet a tidy sum that Allen Dulles betrayed his wife's trust on many more occasions than JFK. Yet what do we hear on that subject? Nothing. This is particularly odd given Dulles' legendary penchant for extra-marital sex. So why the silence on this issue? Is it only Presidents, not senior spooks, who are susceptible to blackmail? And if unfaithfulness to one's wife is held to be a capital offence, how many senior Agency people should have been put up against the wall and shot? Or members of this forum? Paul

Or merely provide a semblance of an alibi for their failure to protect. As for the rumour of an SS death, surely we're are merely looking at tactical sykewar - a planned fabrication designed for deployment on the "battlefield" to cover/explain the removal of the presidential corpse from Dallas? No great mystery. Paul

John, At least one American did try to initiate some public discussion of Dulles' membership of the Presidential Commission in 1963; and of the CIA's role in the sojourns of the patsy. To follow, the proof. As I have noted elsewhere, the reporter responsible was to be rewarded with unpersonhood in the U.S. assassination discourse, as your own comments attest. It's also worth noting that Communist observers saw at once both the significance of Dulles' participation, and the true role in the assassination of the CIA. Anglo-American ignorance of this literature tells its own, rich story. Let me conclude with a compliment: How refreshing to see a contributor look critically at the early critics of the official pabulum. Good. It's long overdue. Paul

Another Grauniad piece, another piece in the jigsaw. This morning’s edition carries a joint report from Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogota and Rory Carroll, the paper’s Latin American correspondent, by the title “Key US ally ‘helped Colombian traffickers’” (p.26). It opens with a revolutionary proposition - the head of the Colombian army, General Mario Montoya, “has collaborated with right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.” Now there’s a shock. The second paragraph contains equally surprising news: Said Montoya “allegedly worked closely with illegal militias during a military crackdown against leftwing guerrillas in 2002 which left dozens of people dead or missing.” Again, so far, so predictable. Now for the interesting bit. The organisation scuppering US loyalist Montoya is none other than…the CIA: “News of the CIA report, which was leaked to the Los Angeles Times, was expected to add to pressure on the Bush administration to reduce its annual £350m in aid to Colombia, most of which goes to the military. It will also engulf President Alvaro Uribe in more political turmoil over his government’s ties to the paramilitaries.” The appalling general, the report discloses later, “has worked closely with the Pentagon,” and not, you will be relieved to hear, those nice, civilised people over at Langley. Chavez, or his successor, wait in the wings, petro funds in hand – and no bad thing, of course, for the long-suffering people of Colombia; or the United States’ long term plans for the continent. Paul

Nathaniel, Is this the right way to look at the issue? Was it a case of trusting Lansdale, or merely seeking to keep him on a tight leash, close at hand? I reframe the question because Kennedy was one of relatively few US politicians who maintained a long-standing and informed interest in Vietnam; and thus he could not have been unaware of Lansdale’s role as Allen Dulles’ principal agent in the scuppering of Eisenshower’s attempt to dump Diem in 1955. I strongly suspect it was the Agency, not Kennedy, which wanted Lansdale back in Saigon: Who better to overthrow Diem than the man who had done most to install him? For details on the affair, see this terrific piece: David L. Anderson, “J. Lawton Collins, John Foster Dulles, and the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘Point of No Return’ in Vietnam,” Diplomatic History, Spring 1988, (12), pp. 127-147. See p. 141 for Lansdale as Allen Dulles “personal representative out there”; and pp. 140-141 for Lansdale’s central role in Diem’s victory. For a well-informed (ie. CIA-originating) contemporary account of Collins’ hostility to Diem, see C.L. Sulzberger, NYT, 18 April 1955, p. 22. For Eisenhower’s determination to avoid another Korea, see Ernest K. Lindley, “Washington Tides: Objectives in the Far East ,” Newsweek, 23 February 1953, p. 10: “Many military men have favored the application of…additional force…the Administration wants to move in precisely the opposite direction, disengagement…” From Eisnehower's perspective, establishing another Syngman Rhee, this time in Vietnam, was merely storing up trouble for the future. How right he was. A couple of final, related questions: To whom are we indebted for our information on the SG(A)? Are the sources reliable? Paul