June 1, 1986, The Atlantic, A ministerial portfolio: the Ministry of Jute, the Ministry of Friendly Societies, and other offices along the corridors of power, by Paula Roberts,
February 16, 1987, The Washington Post, Tower Panel Probes Whether North Ran Array of Other Covert Programs; Central America Activities Reportedly Called `Project Democracy', by Dan Morgan,
September 22, 1987, The Washington Post, Change in the Soviet Union: Is It Just For Show?, by Peter Osnos,
November 29, 1987, Chicago Sun-Times, Mikhail's malevolent masquerade-Propaganda, by Patrick J. Buchanan,
January 23, 1988, The Washington Post, James Theberge, Ex-Envoy To Chile, Nicaragua, Dies,
January 23, 1988, The Washington Post, Obituary, Spencer Mathews King, Former Ambassador to Guyana 1969-1974,
November 14, 1988, The Boston Globe, Charges of Communism Cloud Debate, Conferees Say, by Ross Gelbspan and Charles A. Radin,
January 19, 1989, The Washington Post, Guyana Seeks Foreign Help to Develop Wealth; Quarter-Century of Socialism Leaves S. American Nation With Severe Financial Troubles, by Alan Tomlinson,
June 22, 1991, The Economist (US) Teetering. (elections in Guyana)
June 1, 1992, Caribbean Update, Everybody Had His Own Gringo: The CIA and the Contras. by Glenn Garvin, October 10, 1992, The Economist (US) The dentist has it: Guyana. (Cheddi Jagan Wins Guyana Presidency)
May 3, 1993, The New Leader, The fiery furnace. (Branch Davidians) by Daniel Schorr,
March 6, 1994, The Independent (London) Return of the Cold Warriors, by Peter Gillman,
June 10, 1994, The Washington Post, Two Strikes on Potential Envoy, by Al Kamen,
September 19, 1994, The Washington Post, Labor Aide's Past Clouds His Future, by Al Kamen,
October 30, 1994, New York Times / Albany Times Union, U.S. Wants Subversion in Guyana Kept Secret, by Tim Weiner,
October 31, 1994, Caribbean Today, New U.S. Ambassador for Guyana, by Ali Edwin,
November 6, 1994, NPR Weekend Edition, Daniel Schorr Questions Purpose of the CIA in the '90s,
December 14, 1994, The Independent (London) Voice of the Poor at Clinton's Free-Trade Gala, by Rupert Cornwell,
June 2, 1995, The Washington Post, Watt's Token Takes Control, by Al Kamen,
March 6, 1996, Albany Times Union, Pilots Shot Down by Cuba Result of U.S. Actions,
May 21, 1996, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Guyana-Population: Another Attempt to Put the Race Issue to Rest, by Bert Wilkinson,
October 25, 1996, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Grenada-Politics: Imprisoned Former Gov't Official Speaks Out, by Patrick Smikle,
February 25, 1997, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Caribbean - Religion: Region Shuns Unification Church, by Wesley Gibbings,
March 7, 1997, The Washington Post, President Cheddi Jagan Dies; Reformed Guyanese Economy,
March 13, 1997, Miami Times, Death of Guyana President Cheddi Jagan marked end of an era,
March 13, 1997, Bay State Banner, Manley, Jagan led Caribbean,
March 15, 1997, The Economist (US) Michael Manley.(former prime minister of Jamaica; also former Guyanan Pres Cheddi Jagan) (Obituary)
May 29, 1997, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Promised CIA Files Were Destroyed; Material on Iran, Other News,
September 19, 1997, The Washington Post, Neville A. Padmore Dies at 64; Rheumatologist and Teacher,
November 23, 1997, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Chicago native may lead Guyana, by Don Bohning,
December 13, 1997, The Economist (US) Hello again: Guyana. Janet Jagan, widow of former leader Cheddi Jagan, likely to be elected as president, even though she was once a communist,
December 16, 1997, The Herald News, Presidential Favorite: Janet Jagan,
December 21, 1997, The Washington Post, My Cousin The President, From Chicago To Guyana, by Judy Flander,
February 1, 1998, The Progressive, From Chicago to Guyana: Janet Rosenberg Jagan Takes over as President, by William Steif,
April 7, 1998, The Scotsman, Secrets on the brain, by Andrew Collier,
July 25, 1998, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Guyana: Rights Group Takes Issue with Gov't Over Bouterse, by Bert Wilkinson,
July 31, 1998, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Caribbean: Castro's Visit Underscores Changing Times, by Bert Wilkinson,
February 6, 1999, The Scotsman, Keeping up with Jim Jones, by Angus Wolfe Murray, (Seductive Poison by Deborah Layton Aurum, GBP 14.99)
April 1, 1999, The American Spectator, Jonestown Revisited, by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.,
April 9, 2000, The Mail on Sunday (London, England) 'Messiahs' Who Put Their Faith in Fornication, by John Williams,
June 10, 2000, The Economist (US) Politics this week: Boundary dispute between Suriname and Guyana,
August 1, 2000, Internal Auditor, Around the Globe: Guyana, by Lal Balkaran,
October 1, 2000, Internal Auditor, Letter, Global Efforts Appreciated,
November 29, 2000, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Cuba: Gov't Suggests Int'l Tribunal for Posada Carriles,
June 22, 2001, World Literature Today, The Hungry Sailor. (Verse) by Peter Nazareth,
July 16, 2001, The Washington Post, Ambassador to Rome Not Picked in a Day, by Al Kamen,
September 2, 2001, Sunday Mirror (London) Trance in a Million; Irish Hypnotists's Eyes Firmly on Film About His Life,
October 8, 2001, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Caribbean: Unsolved Air Terror Attack Recalled, by Bert Wilkinson,
November 26, 2001, Insight on the News, Al-Qaeda across the Americas: Islamic Terrorist Groups, Including Al-Qaeda, Have Established Themselves throughout Latin America and, from There, Are Poised to Infiltrate the United States, by Martin Edwin Andersen,
February 23, 2002, The Washington Post, Political Crisis in Venezuela Worries White House; Declining Popularity of Country's President Threatens Stability of a Key U.S. Oil Supplier, by Peter Slevin,
April 18, 2002, The Scotsman, Paradise lost, by Sally Raikes,
May 28, 2002, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Suriname: Dutch Troops Worry Former Stringman, by Bert Wilkinson,
June 18, 2002; The Independent (London) Gunning for Saddam - but Is the CIA Capable of Triggering His Demise? ; SECRET WAR Bush Has Ordered His Intelligence Chiefs to Drive out the Iraqi Dictator, Reviving All the Old Questions about Covert US Actions, David Usborne,
November 19, 2002, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Carib: Crime-Ridden Guyana Hears Calls for Partition, by Bert Wilkinson,
November 23, 2002, AP Worldstream, Caribbean Community leaders to mark 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Cuba, by Bill Wilkinson,
December 17, 2002, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Caribbean: Suriname Exhumes 'Counter-Revolutionaries', by Bert Wilkinson and Marcela Valente,
March 9, 2003, Scotland on Sunday, The trademark of Caine, by Siobhan Synnot,
May 25, 2003, Sunday Gazette-Mail, GIs still in harm's way, by Calvin Woodward,
May 25, 2003, The Columbian (Vancouver, WA) Little-knowns get their due, by Calvin Woodward,
September 5, 2003, Deseret News (Salt Lake City) World datelines,
October 1, 2003, Journal of Third World Studies, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Community Revolution in Latin America, by Steven S. Volk,
October 18, 2003, The Birmingham Post, Dirty Bomb Suspect 'In Search of Materials',
November 9, 2003, The Roanoke Times, Anniversary Recalls Pitfalls of Blind Faith, Lowe: A Charismatic Leader Led Hundreds to Their Deaths, by Cody Lowe,
February 24, 2004, The Washington Post, Administration Announces Details of Global AIDS Plan, by Robin Wright,
March 10, 2004, Pittsburgh City Paper, Thunder in Guyana,
May 3, 2004, The Jerusalem Report, If I Forget Thee, O Guiana, by Hanan Sher,
June 15, 2004, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Rights: U.S. Sees Gains In Fight Against Human Trafficking, by Jim Lobe,
June 18, 2004, The Washington Times, Japan Tries to Erase Taint of Sex Slavery; Exploitation of Women Is Deeply Rooted,
June 18, 2004, The Washington Post, Paul M. Kattenburg; Diplomat, Southeast Asian Affairs Adviser,
June 19, 2004, The Irish Times, Tireless activist who spent 30 years in exile,
September 24, 2004, The Washington Times, Keep the Pressure on; Energetic Diplomacy Will Curb Today's Slavery,
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June 1, 1986, The Atlantic, A ministerial portfolio: the Ministry of Jute, the Ministry of Friendly Societies, and other offices along the corridors of power, by Paula Roberts, 700+ words
February 16, 1987, The Washington Post, Tower Panel Probes Whether North Ran Array of Other Covert Programs; Central America Activities Reportedly Called `Project Democracy', by Dan Morgan, 700+
September 22, 1987, The Washington Post, Change in the Soviet Union: Is It Just For Show?, by Peter Osnos, 700+ words "Murder in Jonestown: Crime of the CIA," arguing that the tragedy in Guyana was the work of U.S. intelligence. Prominently...Post at the time, I was acting undercover for the CIA and was instrumental in the massacre.
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November 29, 1987, Chicago Sun-Times, Mikhail's malevolent masquerade-Propaganda, by Patrick J. Buchanan,
PROPAGANDA - Under glasnost, the propaganda of hatred against the United States continues. Soviet newspapers continue to promote the Big Lie that AIDS was invented at Fort Detrick, Md., as a weapon in biological warfare. A Soviet journal reports that Jessica Savitch, the TV newswoman killed in a 1983 auto accident, was "murdered" by "CIA agents" and "Zionists" for narrating a documentary portraying unhappy Soviet emigres in the United States. Izvestia, the Soviet daily, charges the United States with murdering the 918 members of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple who committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978 - to prevent their emigrating to the Soviet Union. Western broadcasts are still being jammed.
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January 23, 1988, The Washington Post, James Theberge, Ex-Envoy To Chile, Nicaragua, Dies, 700+
James Daniel Theberge, 57, former U.S. ambassador to Chile and Nicaragua, a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency and an author and professor, died Jan. 20 after a heart attack at Montego Bay, Jamaica. He was on vacation there when he was stricken.
Mr. Theberge served as ambassador to Chile from 1982 to 1985, and as ambassador to Nicaragua from 1975 to 1977, both sensitive periods in U.S. relations with those two nations.
Since 1985, he had been an international management and investment counselor in Washington as president of CORE International, an international management consulting firm.
He was an adviser to Vice President Bush on drug trafficking and a member of the CIA's central review panel.
From 1970 to 1975, Mr. Theberge was director of Latin American and Iberian studies at Georgetown University.
A resident of Washington, he was born in Oceanside, N.Y., and graduated from Columbia University. He did graduate work at Oxford University in England and at Heidelberg University in West Germany during the 1950s, and later was a Littauer Fellow at Harvard.
His first position with the State Department was that of economic adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina from 1961 to 1964.
Later he was special adviser to the secretary of the Treasury and senior economist for the Inter-American Development Bank.
He also taught at St. Anthony's and St. Peter's colleges in England and at universities in Argentina, Brazil and California.
In 1974 and 1975, Mr. Theberge was director of the Latin American project of the Rockefeller Commission on Critical Choices for the Americas.
He had written several books and articles, including "Reflections of a Diplomat," published in 1985, "Soviet Presence in Latin America," "Latin America: Struggle for Progress," and "Spain in the '70s."
Mr. Theberge was chairman of the National Council on Latin America and senior counselor of the Atlantic Council of the United States.
He was a member of the Cosmos, Metropolitan and Chevy Chase clubs, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Caribbean Studies Association and the English Speaking Union.
Survivors include his wife, Giselle Fages Theberge, and three sons, James Christopher, John Paul, and Alexander Leonard, all of Washington.
James Daniel Theberge, 57, former U.S. ambassador to Chile and Nicaragua, a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency and an author and professor, died Jan. 20 after a heart attack at Montego Bay, Jamaica. He was on vacation there when he was stricken.
Mr. Theberge served as ambassador to Chile from 1982 to 1985, and as ambassador to Nicaragua from 1975 to 1977, both sensitive periods in U.S. relations with those two nations.
Since 1985, he had been an international management and investment counselor in Washington as president of CORE International, an international management consulting firm.
He was an adviser to Vice President Bush on drug trafficking and a member of the CIA's central review panel.
From 1970 to 1975, Mr. Theberge was director of Latin American and Iberian studies at Georgetown University.
A resident of Washington, he was born in Oceanside, N.Y., and graduated from Columbia University. He did graduate work at Oxford University in England and at Heidelberg University in West Germany during the 1950s, and later was a Littauer Fellow at Harvard.
His first position with the State Department was that of economic adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina from 1961 to 1964.
Later he was special adviser to the secretary of the Treasury and senior economist for the Inter-American Development Bank.
He also taught at St. Anthony's and St. Peter's colleges in England and at universities in Argentina, Brazil and California.
In 1974 and 1975, Mr. Theberge was director of the Latin American project of the Rockefeller Commission on Critical Choices for the Americas.
He had written several books and articles, including "Reflections of a Diplomat," published in 1985, "Soviet Presence in Latin America," "Latin America: Struggle for Progress," and "Spain in the '70s."
Mr. Theberge was chairman of the National Council on Latin America and senior counselor of the Atlantic Council of the United States.
He was a member of the Cosmos, Metropolitan and Chevy Chase clubs, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Caribbean Studies Association and the English Speaking Union.
Survivors include his wife, Giselle Fages Theberge, and three sons, James Christopher, John Paul, and Alexander Leonard, all of Washington.
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January 23, 1988, The Washington Post, Obituary, Spencer Mathews King, Former Ambassador to Guyana 1969-1974,
70, a retired career Foreign Service officer with the State Department and former ambassador to Guyana, was found dead Jan. 20 in his automobile in a Washington parking lot.
A spokesman for the Washington Medical Examiner's Office said that Mr. King died after a heart attack.
Mr. King was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He graduated from Yale University and studied economics at the University of Chicago. During World War II, he served in the Army in the Pacific and received the Silver Star.
He joined the State Department in 1946 and served for two years in Bolivia, then transferred to the Washington area in 1948. From 1951 to 1954, he was chief of the economic and political sections at the U.S. Embassy in Prague.
Mr. King had several assignments in Washington during the late 1950s. During the early 1960s, he was assigned to Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. He was deputy inspector general of the Foreign Service Inspection Corps before being named ambassador to Guyana in 1969. He retired in 1974.
He was a member of the Foreign Service Association, Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired, the University Club, the Yale Club and Manor Country Club.
Survivors include his wife, Josephine King of Washington, and two stepsons, Sheldon Smith of La Crosse, Wis., and Richard L. Smith of Sandy Spring.
January 23, 1988, The Washington Post, Obituary, Spencer Mathews King, Former Ambassador to Guyana 1969-1974,
70, a retired career Foreign Service officer with the State Department and former ambassador to Guyana, was found dead Jan. 20 in his automobile in a Washington parking lot.
A spokesman for the Washington Medical Examiner's Office said that Mr. King died after a heart attack.
Mr. King was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He graduated from Yale University and studied economics at the University of Chicago. During World War II, he served in the Army in the Pacific and received the Silver Star.
He joined the State Department in 1946 and served for two years in Bolivia, then transferred to the Washington area in 1948. From 1951 to 1954, he was chief of the economic and political sections at the U.S. Embassy in Prague.
Mr. King had several assignments in Washington during the late 1950s. During the early 1960s, he was assigned to Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. He was deputy inspector general of the Foreign Service Inspection Corps before being named ambassador to Guyana in 1969. He retired in 1974.
He was a member of the Foreign Service Association, Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired, the University Club, the Yale Club and Manor Country Club.
Survivors include his wife, Josephine King of Washington, and two stepsons, Sheldon Smith of La Crosse, Wis., and Richard L. Smith of Sandy Spring.
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November 14, 1988, The Boston Globe, Charges of Communism Cloud Debate, Conferees Say, by Ross Gelbspan and Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff; 700+ words...such as Cheddi Jagan, former prime minister of Guyana, and John Stockwell, a former CIA employee, recounted a history of secret and illegal...under the leadership of Bush, himself a former CIA director, the United States can expect an increase...
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January 19, 1989, The Washington Post, Guyana Seeks Foreign Help to Develop Wealth; Quarter-Century of Socialism Leaves S. American Nation With Severe Financial Troubles, by Alan Tomlinson, 700+ words
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June 22, 1991, The Economist (US) Teetering. (elections in Guyana) 700+ words ...fair elections, they will be Guyana's first since the country...foreigners are no longer seen as CIA subversives. In eastern Europe...elections meant new faces. Not in Guyana. President Desmond Hoyte...minister from 1957 to 1964.Guyana's politics have been cursed...
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June 1, 1992, Caribbean Update, Everybody Had His Own Gringo: The CIA and the Contras. by Glenn Garvin, The author, who covered the war in Nicaragua for the Washington Times, says the CIA did not send its best and brightest to Nicaragua ("The gringos butted in too much and had a lot of arrestingly stupid ideas." A "fast-moving, sometimes hilarious, occasionally shocking narrative," says Publisher's Weekly. Concludes with documentation on how bands of former Contras are retrieving weapons, preparing to take to the fields again, to protest government's inadequate response to their needs. Published by Brassey's (ISBN 0-08-040562-2). April 1992. $23.95.
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October 30, 1994, New York Times / Albany Times Union, U.S. Wants Subversion in Guyana Kept Secret, by Tim Weiner, 634 words
WASHINGTON It was a small clandestine operation in a little South American country three decades ago. President Kennedy ordered the CIA to subvert the country's leader. The leader fell, and the CIA's men quietly left town.
U.S. law says it is time to unseal the secret documents that detail Kennedy's plot against him. But State Department and CIA officials refuse to release them, saying it is not worth the embarrassment.
In June the Clinton administration prepared to send a new ambassador to the little country apparently unaware that the prospective nominee had helped to undermine the restored leader.
The story begins in 1953, when British Guiana, an English-speaking colony peopled by the descendants of slaves and laborers from Africa and India, elected its first native-born prime minister: Dr. Cheddi Jagan, a son of the colonial plantations, an American-educated dentist and an admirer of the works of Karl Marx.
Four months later, Churchill suspended British Guiana's constitution and ordered its government dissolved. Jagan was too leftist for Churchill's taste, though the people of British Guiana liked him.
Jagan and his wife, the former Janet Rosenberg of Chicago, were freed from jail after the British restored constitutional government, and he was re-elected in 1957 and 1961.
In 1961, President Kennedy met in secret with his top national security officers. A pragmatic plan took shape. Still-classified documents depict in unusual detail a direct order from the president to unseat Jagan, say government officials familiar with the secret papers.
In short order, things started going badly for British Guiana including riots and union problems. The key was the unions, whose rebellion crippled the government and the economy. And the unions were taking advice and money from an interesting assortment of American organizations.
Among them, say the Jagans and historians familiar with the events, was the American Institute for Free Labor Development, headed by a labor official named William C. Doherty Jr.
The agitation grew throughout 1962 and 1963. The British, at the behest of the Kennedy administration, delayed their colony's scheduled independence and changed its electoral system in October 1963. Now the electorate had to vote for parties instead of people, and a still popular but politically weakened Jagan fell from power. Once he fell, the British granted independence to the new republic of Guyana.
In 1992, in the country's first free elections in three decades, Jagan was elected president. In June of this year, unaware of the still-classified Kennedy-Jagan documents, the Clinton administration prepared to nominate a new ambassador to Guyana: William C. Doherty Jr., executive director of the American Institute for Free Labor Development.
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October 31, 1994, Caribbean Today, New U.S. Ambassador for Guyana, by Ali Edwin, 700+ words ...1994 New U.S. Ambassador for Guyana.A recent move by Washington...Leader appointed as Ambassador to Guyana has raised a storm in Georgetown...Development, to be ambassador to Guyana.Administration officials insists...the AFL-CIO group funnelled CIA money to Guyanese labor unions...
October 10, 1992, The Economist (US) The dentist has it: Guyana. (Cheddi Jagan Wins Guyana Presidency)
May 3, 1993, The New Leader, The fiery furnace. (Branch Davidians) by Daniel Schorr, 700+ words
May 3, 1993, The New Leader, The fiery furnace. (Branch Davidians) by Daniel Schorr, 700+ words
...just as President John F. Kennedy relied on the experts of the CIA in proceeding with the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. These experts...Jones' words to members of the People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, cajoling his flock in 1978 to drink the cyanide-laced Kool...
March 6, 1994, The Independent (London) Return of the Cold Warriors, by Peter Gillman, 700+ words ...US had won the Cold War. The CIA's director from 1973 to 1976...want to know what is." The CIA had been engaged in its battle...following year it sent agents into Guyana, in the guise of trade unionists...activities throughout the world, the CIA has usually insisted that it...
June 10, 1994, The Washington Post, Two Strikes on Potential Envoy, by Al Kamen, 700+ words
March 6, 1994, The Independent (London) Return of the Cold Warriors, by Peter Gillman, 700+ words ...US had won the Cold War. The CIA's director from 1973 to 1976...want to know what is." The CIA had been engaged in its battle...following year it sent agents into Guyana, in the guise of trade unionists...activities throughout the world, the CIA has usually insisted that it...
June 10, 1994, The Washington Post, Two Strikes on Potential Envoy, by Al Kamen, 700+ words
...Lima, Peru, set for an ambassadorship to Guyana. But the White House is said to want to...problem: allegations that AIFLD funneled CIA money to Guyanese labor unions in a successful...that time and his name is well-known in Guyana, which is now run by - who else? - Cheddi...
September 19, 1994, The Washington Post, Labor Aide's Past Clouds His Future, by Al Kamen, 700+ words ...to be ambassador to Guyana. Administration types...that AIFLD funneled CIA money to Guyanese labor...Department candidate for Guyana several months ago had...taken by State and the CIA will, "in our unanimous...are Japan and, yes, Guyana. Kimball said the panel...
______________________________________________________________________________September 19, 1994, The Washington Post, Labor Aide's Past Clouds His Future, by Al Kamen, 700+ words ...to be ambassador to Guyana. Administration types...that AIFLD funneled CIA money to Guyanese labor...Department candidate for Guyana several months ago had...taken by State and the CIA will, "in our unanimous...are Japan and, yes, Guyana. Kimball said the panel...
October 30, 1994, New York Times / Albany Times Union, U.S. Wants Subversion in Guyana Kept Secret, by Tim Weiner, 634 words
WASHINGTON It was a small clandestine operation in a little South American country three decades ago. President Kennedy ordered the CIA to subvert the country's leader. The leader fell, and the CIA's men quietly left town.
U.S. law says it is time to unseal the secret documents that detail Kennedy's plot against him. But State Department and CIA officials refuse to release them, saying it is not worth the embarrassment.
In June the Clinton administration prepared to send a new ambassador to the little country apparently unaware that the prospective nominee had helped to undermine the restored leader.
The story begins in 1953, when British Guiana, an English-speaking colony peopled by the descendants of slaves and laborers from Africa and India, elected its first native-born prime minister: Dr. Cheddi Jagan, a son of the colonial plantations, an American-educated dentist and an admirer of the works of Karl Marx.
Four months later, Churchill suspended British Guiana's constitution and ordered its government dissolved. Jagan was too leftist for Churchill's taste, though the people of British Guiana liked him.
Jagan and his wife, the former Janet Rosenberg of Chicago, were freed from jail after the British restored constitutional government, and he was re-elected in 1957 and 1961.
In 1961, President Kennedy met in secret with his top national security officers. A pragmatic plan took shape. Still-classified documents depict in unusual detail a direct order from the president to unseat Jagan, say government officials familiar with the secret papers.
In short order, things started going badly for British Guiana including riots and union problems. The key was the unions, whose rebellion crippled the government and the economy. And the unions were taking advice and money from an interesting assortment of American organizations.
Among them, say the Jagans and historians familiar with the events, was the American Institute for Free Labor Development, headed by a labor official named William C. Doherty Jr.
The agitation grew throughout 1962 and 1963. The British, at the behest of the Kennedy administration, delayed their colony's scheduled independence and changed its electoral system in October 1963. Now the electorate had to vote for parties instead of people, and a still popular but politically weakened Jagan fell from power. Once he fell, the British granted independence to the new republic of Guyana.
In 1992, in the country's first free elections in three decades, Jagan was elected president. In June of this year, unaware of the still-classified Kennedy-Jagan documents, the Clinton administration prepared to nominate a new ambassador to Guyana: William C. Doherty Jr., executive director of the American Institute for Free Labor Development.
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October 31, 1994, Caribbean Today, New U.S. Ambassador for Guyana, by Ali Edwin, 700+ words ...1994 New U.S. Ambassador for Guyana.A recent move by Washington...Leader appointed as Ambassador to Guyana has raised a storm in Georgetown...Development, to be ambassador to Guyana.Administration officials insists...the AFL-CIO group funnelled CIA money to Guyanese labor unions...
November 6, 1994, NPR Weekend Edition, Daniel Schorr Questions Purpose of the CIA in the '90s,
- Sunday, 700+ words ...height of the Cold War, the CIA funneled millions of dollars...elected prime minister in Guyana, Cheti Jagan [sp]. He was...administration to be too leftist. Add Guyana to Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, as arenas for CIA hostile operations in the West...
December 14, 1994, The Independent (London) Voice of the Poor at Clinton's Free-Trade Gala, by Rupert Cornwell, 700+ words ...Jagan? He is the President of Guyana (British Guiana for stamp collectors...again in 1963, this time by the CIA on the express orders of President Kennedy. But in 1992 Guyana was finally allowed to choose...smallest and poorest. Take Guyana, with GDP per head of $570...
June 2, 1995, The Washington Post, Watt's Token Takes Control, by Al Kamen, 700+ words
...Army officer assigned to the CIA's forerunner, the OSS, who...ambush in 1945 and a retired CIA officer who was arrested after...remarks, Deutch alluded to other CIA employees who he said had died...long-open embassy, the one in Guyana that Clinton first was going...
March 6, 1996, Albany Times Union, Pilots Shot Down by Cuba Result of U.S. Actions,
March 6, 1996, Albany Times Union, Pilots Shot Down by Cuba Result of U.S. Actions,
405 words ...the destabilization of democratically elected governments in Guyana, Guatemala and Chile. Our support of right-wing terrorists...Central America is no secret. In addition, there may be other CIA endeavors of which we are ignorant. Hopefully, the President...
May 21, 1996, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Guyana-Population: Another Attempt to Put the Race Issue to Rest, by Bert Wilkinson,
May 21, 1996, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Guyana-Population: Another Attempt to Put the Race Issue to Rest, by Bert Wilkinson,
700+ words ...problems. The effort is being labelled "HUG" -- Hands Uniting Guyana --and it is shaping up to be the most significant event to...consistently blamed the Kennedy administration for using the CIA to stir up problems between the two groups. Ironically, observers...
October 25, 1996, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Grenada-Politics: Imprisoned Former Gov't Official Speaks Out, by Patrick Smikle, 700+ words ...and fear of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) destabilization of the revolution...genuinely seen as somebody in the pay of the CIA, in the pay of the Americans," says...overthrow the government of Cheddi Jagan (in Guyana) with the help of the British. They did.
February 25, 1997, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Caribbean - Religion: Region Shuns Unification Church, by Wesley Gibbings, 700+ words ...Earlier this month, President Cheddi Jagan of Guyana told a gathering of University of Guyana students that it would be"politically unwise...equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Adams has said Moon plans to establish a presence...
March 7, 1997, The Washington Post, President Cheddi Jagan Dies; Reformed Guyanese Economy, 700+ words ...1953 for espionage. He returned to Guyana in 1943 and practiced dentistry before...kept his party alive as a force in Guyana politics, returning to power in...history, including "The Role of the CIA in Guyana and Its Activities Throughout the...
March 13, 1997, Miami Times, Death of Guyana President Cheddi Jagan marked end of an era,
March 13, 1997, Bay State Banner, Manley, Jagan led Caribbean, 700+ words...The loss of President Cheddi Jagan of Guyana and former Prime Minister Michael Manley...Jagan's vision was for a socialist Guyana. The son of Indian sugar cane plantation...office by British intelligence and the CIA. After thirty years in the opposition...
March 15, 1997, The Economist (US) Obituary, Michael Manley.(former prime minister of Jamaica; also former Guyanan Pres Cheddi Jagan)
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May 29, 1997, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Promised CIA Files Were Destroyed; Material on Iran, Other News,
The CIA, which has repeatedly pledged for more than five years to make public the files from its secret mission to overthrow the government of Iran in 1953, said yesterday that it had destroyed or lost almost all the documents decades ago.
Two successive directors of central intelligence, Robert Gates in 1992 and R. James Woolsey Jr. in 1993, publicly pledged that the Iran records would be released as part of the CIA's "openness" initiatives. But they did not know there was virtually nothing left to open: almost all of the documents were destroyed in the early 1960s.
"If anything of substantive importance that was an only copy was destroyed at any time," Woolsey said last night, "this is a terrible breach of faith with the American people and their ability to understand their own history.
"I had every reason to believe in '93 that the full historical record, anything important to the historical understanding, was there and available. I had no notion that anything important had been destroyed."
A historian who was a member of the CIA staff in 1992 and 1993 said in an interview yesterday that the records were obliterated by "a culture of destruction" at the agency. The historian, Nick Cullather, said he believed that records on other major Cold War covert operations had been burned, including those on secret missions in Indonesia in the 1950s and a successful CIA-sponsored coup in Guyana in the early 1960s.
"Iran - there's nothing," Cullather said. "Indonesia - very little. Guyana - that was burned."
Brian Latell, the CIA official who runs the Center for the Study of Intelligence at the agency, acknowledged yesterday that most of the Iran records were destroyed or lost in the 1960s. He said he thought the agency still had "substantial" records on its covert actions in Indonesia, which it has promised to release. He said he could not discuss Guyana, which he called an operation whose existence the CIA had never acknowledged.
"Dr. Cullather is correct" about the Iran records, he said.
In the early 1960s, Latell said, CIA officials told the keepers of the Iran records ``that their safes were too full and they needed to clean them out.''
"This was the culture in the early 1960s," he said. "No such culture exists any longer and hasn't existed for some time."
The directors in that era were Allen Dulles, who served from February 1953 through November 1961, and John McCone, who succeeded Dulles and served through April 1965. It is unclear whether either man was aware of the destruction.
Cullather, now an assistant professor of history at Indiana University and associate editor of the Journal of American History, came to the CIA in 1992 as a member of its history staff. He was assigned to write a warts-and-all account of the CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala in the 1954. Gates had just made his pledge of openness and promised to release the files on Guatemala, Iran and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
But the CIA "quickly found there were no documents on Iran," Cullather said. "They had been routinely purged. When I left in 1993, they had rounded up about 25 to 50 pieces of paper. There was almost nothing. The bulk of the documents on that operation were destroyed."
No one at the agency had told Woolsey about the records' destruction before he gave a speech in September 1993 rededicating the CIA to releasing the Iran files.
Cullather argued that "there's no grand conspiracy in the CIA to destroy documents."
"What there is," he said, "is neglect, or negligence" and a "culture of destruction," born of secrecy.
The broad outlines of the Iran operation are known - the agency led a coup in 1953 that installed the pro-American Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the throne, where he remained until overthrown in 1979. But the CIA's records were widely thought by historians to have the potential to add depth and clarity to a famous but little-documented intelligence operation.
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September 19, 1997, The Washington Post, Neville A. Padmore Dies at 64; Rheumatologist and Teacher,
September 19, 1997, The Washington Post, Neville A. Padmore Dies at 64; Rheumatologist and Teacher,
; 700+ words ...Padmore was a chemist and druggist in his native Georgetown, Guyana, before moving to Washington in 1956. He graduated from Howard...then reenlisted and served as an Army liaison officer to the CIA for five years until his second retirement in 1972. He was...
November 23, 1997, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Chicago native may lead Guyana, by Don Bohning, 700+ words ...East Indian laborers brought to Guyana to work the sugar-cane fields...she followed her husband to Guyana, the two became active in politics...its wellspring of support from Guyana's East Indian sugar workers...The effort included a covert CIA destabilization campaign that...
November 23, 1997, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Chicago native may lead Guyana, by Don Bohning, 700+ words ...East Indian laborers brought to Guyana to work the sugar-cane fields...she followed her husband to Guyana, the two became active in politics...its wellspring of support from Guyana's East Indian sugar workers...The effort included a covert CIA destabilization campaign that...
December 13, 1997, The Economist (US) Hello again: Guyana. Janet Jagan, widow of former leader Cheddi Jagan, likely to be elected as president, even though she was once a communist, 691 words ...the Soviet camp. On Monday Guyana's voters will most probably...Cherubim and seraphim smiling on Guyana," says an elderly rice farmer...out as mainland Castros. The CIA fomented strikes that crippled...ever-multiplying emigrants,Guyana sought outside help. That came...
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December 16, 1997, The Herald News, Presidential Favorite: Janet Jagan,
December 16, 1997, The Herald News, Presidential Favorite: Janet Jagan,
The Chicago-born widow of a former president scorned by the United States for his leftist views was favored to win Monday in Guyana's presidential election.
Janet Jagan, the interim prime minister and widow of the late President Cheddi Jagan, was favored over former President Desmond Hoyte. Carlos Jagan Hoyte
Lawyers Replaced: Denouncing his murder prosecution as a "Zionist plot," the terrorist suspect known as Carlos the Jackal accused the CIA and Israel's Mossad on Monday of committing the killings he is on trial for in Paris.
A new lawyer for the accused -- whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez -- was named when his three-member defense team walked out to protest the court's refusal to order a new inquiry in the case.
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Janet Jagan, the interim prime minister and widow of the late President Cheddi Jagan, was favored over former President Desmond Hoyte. Carlos Jagan Hoyte
Lawyers Replaced: Denouncing his murder prosecution as a "Zionist plot," the terrorist suspect known as Carlos the Jackal accused the CIA and Israel's Mossad on Monday of committing the killings he is on trial for in Paris.
A new lawyer for the accused -- whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez -- was named when his three-member defense team walked out to protest the court's refusal to order a new inquiry in the case.
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December 21, 1997, The Washington Post, My Cousin The President, From Chicago To Guyana, by Judy Flander, 700+ words ...his darling daughter again. Guyana was too far away and too expensive...Nadira, during a dicey time in Guyana in 1964, and even made a couple...hope and too little power. In Guyana, particularly on the sugar...British, the United States, the CIA and the opposing People's...
February 1, 1998, The Progressive, From Chicago to Guyana: Janet Rosenberg Jagan Takes over as President, by William Steif, 700+ words ...d one day be president of Guyana, South America's only English...no surprise to the people of Guyana. She has devoted more than...way had to fend off both the CIA and Britain's MI5. In October...Cheddi became president of Guyana. He served until March 6...
April 7, 1998, The Scotsman, Secrets on the brain, by Andrew Collier, 700+ words
...no proof that it is possible to do this," he says. "The CIA and the North Koreans tried it, but it didn't work. Cults...the 1978 horror of the Jim Jones-inspired mass suicide in Guyana, when more than 900 of his followers committed mass suicide...
July 25, 1998, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Guyana: Rights Group Takes Issue with Gov't Over Bouterse, by Bert Wilkinson, 700+ words ...However, yesterday the militant Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA...said a statement from GHRA. Guyana's envoy to Holland did not...academics like University of Guyana political scientist Mark Kirton...allegedly plotting with the CIA to stage a counter coup. The...
July 25, 1998, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Guyana: Rights Group Takes Issue with Gov't Over Bouterse, by Bert Wilkinson, 700+ words ...However, yesterday the militant Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA...said a statement from GHRA. Guyana's envoy to Holland did not...academics like University of Guyana political scientist Mark Kirton...allegedly plotting with the CIA to stage a counter coup. The...
July 31, 1998, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Caribbean: Castro's Visit Underscores Changing Times, by Bert Wilkinson, 700+ words ...ideology as was the case with Guyana. Cuban exiles in Florida...Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been fingered in the...and Barbados and Barbados and Guyana back in 1976. Observers say...family. In fact, Barbados,Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad an
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February 6, 1999, The Scotsman, Keeping up with Jim Jones, by Angus Wolfe Murray, (Seductive Poison by Deborah Layton Aurum, GBP 14.99) 700+ words
IN the history of bad things, the massacre at Jonestown rates among the where-were-you-when-it-happened crimes against reason. In November, 1978, when news broke that over 900 followers of Jim Jones's People's Temple had committed mass suicide in the Guyanan jungle by drinking a concoction of Flavourade and cyanide, the nagging question was: "How could they have killed the children?". Followed by: "Why did they kill themselves?"
Debbie Layton was a wild child of the Sixties. Only five feet tall, startlingly attractive, with long black wavy hair and a Hell's Angels attitude, she was nonconformist before she understood the meaning of the word. Her mother was an upper-class refugee from Hitler's Germany and her father a science scholar from the blue- collar heartland of West Virginia, who worked in the chemical division of the Defence Department. She was youngest of four children, fiercely independent, a teenage firestorm in the dry bush of post-pubescent uncertainty.
February 6, 1999, The Scotsman, Keeping up with Jim Jones, by Angus Wolfe Murray, (Seductive Poison by Deborah Layton Aurum, GBP 14.99) 700+ words
IN the history of bad things, the massacre at Jonestown rates among the where-were-you-when-it-happened crimes against reason. In November, 1978, when news broke that over 900 followers of Jim Jones's People's Temple had committed mass suicide in the Guyanan jungle by drinking a concoction of Flavourade and cyanide, the nagging question was: "How could they have killed the children?". Followed by: "Why did they kill themselves?"
Debbie Layton was a wild child of the Sixties. Only five feet tall, startlingly attractive, with long black wavy hair and a Hell's Angels attitude, she was nonconformist before she understood the meaning of the word. Her mother was an upper-class refugee from Hitler's Germany and her father a science scholar from the blue- collar heartland of West Virginia, who worked in the chemical division of the Defence Department. She was youngest of four children, fiercely independent, a teenage firestorm in the dry bush of post-pubescent uncertainty.
Before igniting flames of passion that would burn all summer, she met the Rev Jim Jones in California, where he preached against the Vietnam war, social injustice and racism, exactly what a privileged, restless, idealistic 17-year-old wanted to hear. She was on holiday from a co-ed boarding school in Yorkshire, which didn't stop Jones going into high seduction gear to persuade her to join him. Her brother, Larry, and his childhood sweetheart wife, Carolyn, soon to be groupie-in-chief of the Jim Is God band of babes, were already active members of the People's Temple.
It has taken 20 years to find the courage to write this book. She did so, she says, for the sake of her daughter. It is not an apology, neither is it a whitewash. She portrays herself as one of the faithful, sucked into the vortex of dependency, a slave to the teachings of a man who believed himself to be Christ and Lenin reborn.
"Those who left or betrayed the Cause in any way would be reincarnated as the lowest life form on earth and it would take us another 100,000 years to get to this point again. I didn't want to start over as an amoeba."
She neither attempts, nor presumes, to understand how thoughtful, sane people are capable of taking their own lives when ordered to do so. Such a situation seems incredible to those who have never experienced the mindwash of a master manipulator. She does not want sympathy. She wants peace. She wants to exorcise the demon. She wants truth. It's not easy, even though she was the only one of the People's Temple cult to escape the massacre. She tried to warn the world, but the world turned away. Her story is a reminder of how vulnerable the psyche is to suggestion, to charm, to a hunger for affirmation. Jones was clever. He played good cop/bad cop, anger and affection together as disorienting techniques, encouraging jealousy among the select few, policing thought by patrolling every avenue of dissent.
It was the rebel in Debbie that saved her, although losing friends and her mother was a tragedy that sealed off memory. She has taken a crowbar to those secrets and prised them open. It must have been desperately hard. The book's honesty is its abiding strength. She cannot answer the "why" question. Her final escape from the Promised Land reads like a thriller. All she can do is explain how it was.
"We were 250 miles inside the jungle, on a tiny portion of cleared land. All around us, imprisoning and concealing us from the civilised world, were hundreds of miles of impenetrable growth. Armed guards were now posted along the Jonestown road."
Was Jim Jones mad? Strangely enough, it is irrelevant. He used the methods of the Stasi to control his flock and once in Guyana, driven there by fantasies of CIA plots, became the prince of darkness, living in conditions that made a mockery of milk-and- honey, torturing the old and the tired, even children, forcing families to spy on each other. His twisted ego drove him beyond the fair causes at the centre of his beliefs. Whether he would have survived in Cuba, or Russia - he was negotiating with both - is a moot point. If he had, what then?
Seductive Poison is well titled. Debbie does not ask herself whether Jones destroyed her youth. Under the circumstances, it would be a selfish thought. He destroyed the lives of so many people. If power corrupts, his killed, which is too horrible to contemplate. Except she does. With eyes wide open
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April 1, 1999, The American Spectator, Jonestown Revisited, by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., 700+ words
It is interesting that the twentieth anniversary of the Rev. Jim Jones's Jonestown holocaust has come and gone, unremarked by such liberal thought leaders as Professor Alan Dershowitz and the Hon. Barney Frank. Located in the steamy jungles of Guyana, Jonestown was the site of the People's Temple, "an interracial sharing community" that originated in San Francisco. Over goo of the Rev. Jones's followers died there late in 1978. At his orders they drank poison or had it imposed on them.
The Rev. Jones had risen from being director of the Indianapolis Housing Authority in 1963 to being chairman of San Francisco's Housing Authority a few years later. Conjuring with race relations was a trendy con game in those days. From his positions in various race relations bureaucracies, the Rev. Jones boasted of his knack for solving civil rights problems, adopting left-wing radical programs for the very poor, and bringing the destitute of all races together. The Rev. Jones was white and he brought them all together in an open grave.
Race and i96o's radicals became his snake oils. When the corpses were discovered in Guyana the Rev. Jones was palmed off as just another religious zealot, but there was very little religion in his song and dance, at least not religion as conventionally understood. Christ and his colleagues were wholly missing from his galaxy of heroes. He had come to disdain the Bible and to extol only a very restricted collection of luminaries: Lenin, Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada, Fidel Castro, even Adolf Hitler. He particularly admired the Soviet Union-not Mao's China, but for some reason Papa Brezhnev's Soviet Union. This is one of the perils of being an autodidact; orderly thought is sacrificed. At the time of the poisoning the Rev. Jones was longing to take his followers to Moscow's workers' paradise.
Letters found in the vast killing field that had been the People's Temple, "dedicated against the evils of racism, hunger, and injustice," maundered on about his followers' dread of "the capitalist U.S." and their affection for "the beauty of Communism." None of the thousands of letters found among their paltry possessions betrayed any interest in Christianity or any other organized religion but in "Communism." Yet when their corpses were found I cannot recall any major news report calling them "Communists." As I say, the notion spread that they were some sort of Christian believers run amok.
Actually, the Rev. Jones abounded with 196o's moonshine right down to the reason he took his flock from San Francisco to Guyana. He left in 1977 to escape nuclear calamity, capitalism, the CIA, the FBI, and a series of concentration camps that he was convinced the government was building for him and his faithful flock, composed of a mixture of the very poor and aging flower children from that summer of love way back when.
Perhaps one of the reasons we heard so little about the twentieth anniversary of Jonestown's ghastly climax was that it revealed some of the dangerous aspects of the 196o's: the nihilism at the heart of radicalism, the exploitation of trendy radical notions by establishment figures, their imprudence in cultivating obvious lunatics.
The Rev. Jones had gotten much of his power and wealth through government aid programs supposedly targeted for the very poor. He had courted establishment figures and they had exploited him. Two years before the Jonestown holocaust Vice President Walter Mondale met with the Rev. Jones on the Mondale campaign plane, after which he wrote to this great visionary: "Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me." Brutal corporal punishment was often meted out to the faithful at Jonestown, especially to its children, which makes a letter to the Rev. Jones from another member of the Carter cabinet so arresting. Wrote Joseph Califano: "Knowing your commitment and compassion, your interest in protecting individual liberty and freedom have made an outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of human dignity." Midst the corpses other laudatory letters were found, from California's Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Senator Mike Gravel, and from Mrs. Jimmy Carter, who wrote from the White House that "your comments about Cuba are helpful."
Yet given the foul ending of the People's Temple in faraway Guyana, an admiring editorial from Washington Post is the most memorable. "The hands-down winners," the editorialist sang, "of anybody's tourists-of-the-year award have got to be the 66o members of the People's Temple...who bend over backwards to leave every place they visit more attractive than when they arrived." Perhaps it is not so surprising that the liberal thought leaders of our time let the anniversary of the Jonestown holocaust pass unremarked. Twenty years from now rereading what they have said about this impeachment trial will not be pleasant either. *
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April 9, 2000, The Mail on Sunday (London, England) 'Messiahs' Who Put Their Faith in Fornication, by John Williams,700+ words
The Devil's Party, by Colin Wilson John Williams Virgin [pounds sterling]17.99 %[pounds sterling]14.99 (0870 165 0870) Given a sharp topicality by the recent mass suicide of a Christian sect in Uganda, Colin Wilson's new book attempts to make sense of one of the modern world's less rational phenomena: the proliferation of charlatan messiahs.
Wilson starts his history with the most notorious example of recent times, David Koresh. He was born Vernon Howell, a drifter whose first religious experience came when God told him to possess the daughter of his church pastor. When the pastor responded by throwing him out of the church, Howell figured that if he wanted to continue his religious calling, he'd better get his own church.
So Howell became Koresh and took over an obscure sect called the Branch David-ians. Once Koresh was in charge, God started making regular contact with him, generally telling him to possess one teenage daughter of a cult member after another. Remarkably, the sect members went along with this until one of his followers finally rebelled and set in motion the investigation that would end with the mass death at Waco, Texas.
Wilson argues that Koresh is a not a oneoff but a very typical modern messiah: mid-American, often of Mormon descent and almost invariably convinced of the divine necessity of frequent fornication.
Jim Jones, whose People's Temple ended with 900 dead of cyanide poisoning in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978, was the most successful of them. At his height, he took tea with the president's wife and was appointed to San Francisco's council. At the other extreme were Ervil LeBaron, Jeffrey Lundgren and Rock Theriault - lumpen conmen and psychopathic sadists whom it's hard to believe anyone took seriously.
In his efforts to explain the appeal of the likes of Koresh, Jones and Shoko Asahara (the Japanese guru whose cult committed mass murder by releasing nerve gas into the Tokyo underground system), Wilson roves widely through history. He offers accounts of long-forgotten messiahs like the 17th Century Sabbatai Zevi and Moses of Crete, rambling into the world of Freud and Jung as he does so.
However, he does no more than recap previously published accounts of the messiahs' activities; there is no original research here.
Particularly lacking is any sociological analysis. There's no discussion of race and class - surely relevant to both Koresh and Jones, who were white preachers with largely black congregations. Nor is there any consideration of the effects of drugs or of America's gun culture - both surely germane to Waco and Jonestown. And he does not go into the CIA conspiracy theories which, in the truly bizarre and troubling case of Jonestown, should not be entirely discounted.
Wilson concludes the book with the tale of his own brush with a false messiah, a Hungarian immigrant called Charlotte Bach who believed sexual deviants were the truly enlightened. This being London in the Seventies, Bach soon acquired a following, and was written up by Wilson in his Prophet of doom...Shoko Asahara, whose teachings led to mass murder in Japan book Mysteries. Imagine the chagrin of all concerned when Bach died and was revealed to be a man called Carl Hajdu, a transvestite fantasist and compulsive shoplifter.______________________________________________________________________________
April 1, 1999, The American Spectator, Jonestown Revisited, by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., 700+ words
It is interesting that the twentieth anniversary of the Rev. Jim Jones's Jonestown holocaust has come and gone, unremarked by such liberal thought leaders as Professor Alan Dershowitz and the Hon. Barney Frank. Located in the steamy jungles of Guyana, Jonestown was the site of the People's Temple, "an interracial sharing community" that originated in San Francisco. Over goo of the Rev. Jones's followers died there late in 1978. At his orders they drank poison or had it imposed on them.
The Rev. Jones had risen from being director of the Indianapolis Housing Authority in 1963 to being chairman of San Francisco's Housing Authority a few years later. Conjuring with race relations was a trendy con game in those days. From his positions in various race relations bureaucracies, the Rev. Jones boasted of his knack for solving civil rights problems, adopting left-wing radical programs for the very poor, and bringing the destitute of all races together. The Rev. Jones was white and he brought them all together in an open grave.
Race and i96o's radicals became his snake oils. When the corpses were discovered in Guyana the Rev. Jones was palmed off as just another religious zealot, but there was very little religion in his song and dance, at least not religion as conventionally understood. Christ and his colleagues were wholly missing from his galaxy of heroes. He had come to disdain the Bible and to extol only a very restricted collection of luminaries: Lenin, Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada, Fidel Castro, even Adolf Hitler. He particularly admired the Soviet Union-not Mao's China, but for some reason Papa Brezhnev's Soviet Union. This is one of the perils of being an autodidact; orderly thought is sacrificed. At the time of the poisoning the Rev. Jones was longing to take his followers to Moscow's workers' paradise.
Letters found in the vast killing field that had been the People's Temple, "dedicated against the evils of racism, hunger, and injustice," maundered on about his followers' dread of "the capitalist U.S." and their affection for "the beauty of Communism." None of the thousands of letters found among their paltry possessions betrayed any interest in Christianity or any other organized religion but in "Communism." Yet when their corpses were found I cannot recall any major news report calling them "Communists." As I say, the notion spread that they were some sort of Christian believers run amok.
Actually, the Rev. Jones abounded with 196o's moonshine right down to the reason he took his flock from San Francisco to Guyana. He left in 1977 to escape nuclear calamity, capitalism, the CIA, the FBI, and a series of concentration camps that he was convinced the government was building for him and his faithful flock, composed of a mixture of the very poor and aging flower children from that summer of love way back when.
Perhaps one of the reasons we heard so little about the twentieth anniversary of Jonestown's ghastly climax was that it revealed some of the dangerous aspects of the 196o's: the nihilism at the heart of radicalism, the exploitation of trendy radical notions by establishment figures, their imprudence in cultivating obvious lunatics.
The Rev. Jones had gotten much of his power and wealth through government aid programs supposedly targeted for the very poor. He had courted establishment figures and they had exploited him. Two years before the Jonestown holocaust Vice President Walter Mondale met with the Rev. Jones on the Mondale campaign plane, after which he wrote to this great visionary: "Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me." Brutal corporal punishment was often meted out to the faithful at Jonestown, especially to its children, which makes a letter to the Rev. Jones from another member of the Carter cabinet so arresting. Wrote Joseph Califano: "Knowing your commitment and compassion, your interest in protecting individual liberty and freedom have made an outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of human dignity." Midst the corpses other laudatory letters were found, from California's Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Senator Mike Gravel, and from Mrs. Jimmy Carter, who wrote from the White House that "your comments about Cuba are helpful."
Yet given the foul ending of the People's Temple in faraway Guyana, an admiring editorial from Washington Post is the most memorable. "The hands-down winners," the editorialist sang, "of anybody's tourists-of-the-year award have got to be the 66o members of the People's Temple...who bend over backwards to leave every place they visit more attractive than when they arrived." Perhaps it is not so surprising that the liberal thought leaders of our time let the anniversary of the Jonestown holocaust pass unremarked. Twenty years from now rereading what they have said about this impeachment trial will not be pleasant either. *
_________________________________________________________________
April 9, 2000, The Mail on Sunday (London, England) 'Messiahs' Who Put Their Faith in Fornication, by John Williams,700+ words
The Devil's Party, by Colin Wilson John Williams Virgin [pounds sterling]17.99 %[pounds sterling]14.99 (0870 165 0870) Given a sharp topicality by the recent mass suicide of a Christian sect in Uganda, Colin Wilson's new book attempts to make sense of one of the modern world's less rational phenomena: the proliferation of charlatan messiahs.
Wilson starts his history with the most notorious example of recent times, David Koresh. He was born Vernon Howell, a drifter whose first religious experience came when God told him to possess the daughter of his church pastor. When the pastor responded by throwing him out of the church, Howell figured that if he wanted to continue his religious calling, he'd better get his own church.
So Howell became Koresh and took over an obscure sect called the Branch David-ians. Once Koresh was in charge, God started making regular contact with him, generally telling him to possess one teenage daughter of a cult member after another. Remarkably, the sect members went along with this until one of his followers finally rebelled and set in motion the investigation that would end with the mass death at Waco, Texas.
Wilson argues that Koresh is a not a oneoff but a very typical modern messiah: mid-American, often of Mormon descent and almost invariably convinced of the divine necessity of frequent fornication.
Jim Jones, whose People's Temple ended with 900 dead of cyanide poisoning in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978, was the most successful of them. At his height, he took tea with the president's wife and was appointed to San Francisco's council. At the other extreme were Ervil LeBaron, Jeffrey Lundgren and Rock Theriault - lumpen conmen and psychopathic sadists whom it's hard to believe anyone took seriously.
In his efforts to explain the appeal of the likes of Koresh, Jones and Shoko Asahara (the Japanese guru whose cult committed mass murder by releasing nerve gas into the Tokyo underground system), Wilson roves widely through history. He offers accounts of long-forgotten messiahs like the 17th Century Sabbatai Zevi and Moses of Crete, rambling into the world of Freud and Jung as he does so.
However, he does no more than recap previously published accounts of the messiahs' activities; there is no original research here.
Particularly lacking is any sociological analysis. There's no discussion of race and class - surely relevant to both Koresh and Jones, who were white preachers with largely black congregations. Nor is there any consideration of the effects of drugs or of America's gun culture - both surely germane to Waco and Jonestown. And he does not go into the CIA conspiracy theories which, in the truly bizarre and troubling case of Jonestown, should not be entirely discounted.
Thankfully, Hajdu was harmless. But one finishes Wilson's book with the thought that it is perhaps the culture that surrounds messiahs that finally determines their power to do evil. In a godless country like modern Britain, could messiahs have the same impact as in the God-fearing climate of the USA or Uganda? In Britain, could the dangerous, messianic individual ever become anything more than a figure of fun?
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June 10, 2000, The Economist (US) Politics this week: Boundary dispute between Suriname and Guyana,
700+ words ...A boundary dispute between Suriname and Guyana flared. A Surinamese patrol boat evicted...preparing to drill in a concession belonging to Guyana. Mexico's peso and financial markets...Iranian airliner earlier that year. The CIA is interviewing him. Hopes that the Ethiopian...
August 1, 2000, Internal Auditor, Around the Globe: Guyana, by Lal Balkaran,
700+ words ...training. None of Guyana's internal auditors...internal auditor (CIA) or member of The...to establish IIA-Guyana in April 2000. The...membership, promote CIA certification, and...internal auditing in Guyana. LAL BALKARAN, MBA, CIA, ACIS, CGA, FCMA...
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October 1, 2000, Internal Auditor, Letter, Global Efforts Appreciated,
I'd like to thank Internal Auditor for featuring Lal Balkaran's "Around the Globe" article on Guyana (August 2000). As a first-generation Guyanese American, I was delighted to see a section in the magazine devoted to this little-known nation. I appreciated Balkaran's account of the profession's history and enjoyed learning about The IIA's role in helping to develop a Guyanese national chapter. In addition, the map that showed where Guyana is situated within South America was quite useful, since many readers may not have been familiar with the country's exact location. Thanks for bringing attention to this important, growing nation and for providing such an informative article.
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November 29, 2000, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Cuba: Gov't Suggests Int'l Tribunal for Posada Carriles, 700+ words ...El Salvador, Nicaragua,Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Guyana, North Korea, Italy, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Chile...to the support of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) and prison officials. "It is hard to believe that the Ibero...
June 22, 2001, World Literature Today, The Hungry Sailor. (Verse) by Peter Nazareth, 700+ words ...islands, Marie, our histories did not end there." Born in Guyana, Persaud is continuing his dialogue with Walcott, who comes...thus dialogue with history, but also with politics ("Jagan CIA-ed and raced from office") and love/not-love, much...
July 16, 2001, The Washington Post, Ambassador to Rome Not Picked in a Day, by Al Kamen, 700+ words ...Nations. Word was some folks on the committee would like to see CIA documents on Negroponte's tour as ambassador to Honduras in...career diplomat George Fleming Jones, who eventually went to Guyana. That shattered his own record 11-month hold on diplomat...
September 2, 2001, Sunday Mirror (London) Trance in a Million; Irish Hypnotists's Eyes Firmly on Film About His Life, 700+ words ...Few will forget the horrors of Jonestown - a cult commune in Guyana set up by Jim Jones, leader of the People's Temple. In November...going to die because the commune was about to be raided by the CIA. Jonestown medical staff then prepared two 50-gallon drums...
October 8, 2001, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Caribbean: Unsolved Air Terror Attack Recalled, by Bert Wilkinson, 700+ words ...aircraft a terrorist attack.Guyana and Cuba went even further...Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for being behind what...prompting allegations from Guyana and Cuba that the CIA had a hand in allowing...among exiles in Miami. Guyana's previous People...
November 26, 2001, Insight on the News, Al-Qaeda across the Americas: Islamic Terrorist Groups, Including Al-Qaeda, Have Established Themselves throughout Latin America and, from There, Are Poised to Infiltrate the United States, by Martin Edwin Andersen, 700+ words ...president Carlos Menem. As former CIA director James Woolsey tells...throughout the Caribbean, Suriname, Guyana and the West Indies. Bin Laden...says Miguel Diaz, a former CIA official and director of the...support from the FBI and the CIA. Paraguay, too, has promised...
February 23, 2002, The Washington Post, Political Crisis in Venezuela Worries White House; Declining Popularity of Country's President Threatens Stability of a Key U.S. Oil Supplier, by Peter Slevin, 700+ words ...administration officials publicly criticized Chavez on Capitol Hill. CIADirector George J. Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee...Venezuelan nationalism and disputes with Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Guyana, Trinidad and Colombia, where Chavez is suspected of supporting...
April 18, 2002, The Scotsman, Paradise lost, by Sally Raikes, 483 words ...results. Jonestown AN ENCLOSED agricultural commune in the Guyana jungle on the Venezuelan border, this cult was set up in 1973...Jones became convinced the commune was about to be raided by the CIA. Waco THE Waco compound in Mount Carmel, Texas, was a religious...
May 28, 2002, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Suriname: Dutch Troops Worry Former Stringman, by Bert Wilkinson, 700+ words 00-00-0000 GEORGETOWN, Guyana, May 27 (IPS) -- A group of 16 Dutch marines arrived in Suriname...They were accused of plotting with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against the military. Bouterse has persistently denied ordering...
June 18, 2002; The Independent (London) Gunning for Saddam - but Is the CIA Capable of Triggering His Demise? ; SECRET WAR Bush Has Ordered His Intelligence Chiefs to Drive out the Iraqi Dictator, Reviving All the Old Questions about Covert US Actions, David Usborne, 700+ words ...laughter? On the one hand, the CIA has 55 years of experience in...ind been snuffed out, with CIA connivance. During the 1950s...Guatemala, Iraq, Chile,Guyana and the Congo, formerly Zaire. On the other hand, the CIA's operations over the decades...
November 19, 2002, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Politics-Carib: Crime-Ridden Guyana Hears Calls for Partition, by Bert Wilkinson, 700+ words
November 23, 2002, AP Worldstream, Caribbean Community leaders to mark 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Cuba, by Bill Wilkinson, Associated Press Writer; 536 words 00-00-0000 Dateline: GEORGETOWN, Guyana Caribbean leaders are headed to Cuba early...that we are always going to appreciate." Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados were...trade embargo since Castro defeated the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs i
December 17, 2002, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Caribbean: Suriname Exhumes 'Counter-Revolutionaries', by Bert Wilkinson and Marcela Valente, 700+ words
GEORGETOWN,Guyana, Dec. 16 (IPS) -- Twenty...Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other western counter...Suriname's ambassador to Guyana and the Caribbean Community...coup with the help of the CIA and a band of South Koreans...
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March 9, 2003, Scotland on Sunday, The trademark of Caine, by Siobhan Synnot,
What drives Michael Caine now is a hunger for acknowledgement. He feels his recent performance in the Quiet American to be the best of his career and lobbied hard for a proper release when Miramax's Harvey Weinstein was inclined to bury it. After September 11 ushered in the war against terrorism, it seemed less than diplomatic to put out a film that suggested CIA action manipulated the outbreak of the Vietnam War. But Caine persisted; "I said that by the time the Oscars are on I'd be 70, how many more chances was I going to have to get nominated for an Oscar? I'll be doing Driving Mr. Daisy or something when I'm 82, and that'll be it."
Weinstein agreed to put the film in the Toronto Film Festival to test audience response and when both the critics and the public were enthusiastic, the film was released in December - just inside the deadline for Oscar qualification. Five weeks later it was announced that Caine had secured a Best Actor nomination for this year's Academy Awards. If he wins, it will be his third Academy award.
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May 25, 2003, Sunday Gazette-Mail, GIs still in harm's way, by Calvin Woodward, 700+ words ...Brooklyn, and his nickname was Smiley. His family had come from Guyana in 1988, and his ambition was to become an FBI agent. All...finish the job and then get unlucky. In the Afghanistan war, CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann became the first American to die...
May 25, 2003, The Columbian (Vancouver, WA) Little-knowns get their due, by Calvin Woodward,
CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press writer; 700+ words ...cleaning it. His nickname was Smiley. His family had come from Guyana in 1988 and his ambition was to become an FBI agent. All wars...to finish the job and then get unlucky. In the Afghan war,CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann became the first American combat...
September 5, 2003, Deseret News (Salt Lake City) World datelines,
Compiled from Deseret Morning News wire services; 700+ words ...stage hands and artists marched to the Culture Ministry. Guyana GEORGETOWN -- Former Guyanese Prime Minister Ptolemy Alexander...business. The four-member commission -- which includes former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr -- was warmly welcomed by Ulster...
October 1, 2003, Journal of Third World Studies, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Community Revolution in Latin America, by Steven S. Volk, 700+ words
...Argentina, and Chile. In 1962, the CIA spent $5 million on political campaigns...of dictatorship. At the same time, the CIA authorized more than $3 million of covert...Minister Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana (Guyana), are significant additions. Kennedy...
October 18, 2003, The Birmingham Post, Dirty Bomb Suspect 'In Search of Materials',
700+ words ...suspected senior al Qaida operative, is being hunted by the FBI and CIA who fear that he is plotting an attack on a US city with a crude...current whereabouts are unknown. 'El Shukrijumah carries a Guyana passport, but may attempt to enter the US with a Saudi, Canadian...
November 9, 2003, The Roanoke Times, Anniversary Recalls Pitfalls of Blind Faith, Lowe: A Charismatic Leader Led Hundreds to Their Deaths, by Cody Lowe,
February 24, 2004, The Washington Post, Administration Announces Details of Global AIDS Plan, by Robin Wright, 700+ words ...Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia in Africa, and Haiti andGuyana in the Caribbean. The 14 countries are home to about half of...AIDS activists say the administration is ignoring its own CIA analysis, which predicted in 2002 that Asia would have more...
March 10, 2004, Pittsburgh City Paper, Thunder in Guyana,
347 words ...late 1940s moved to British Guyana with her Indian husband, Cheddi...independence. Janet Jagan remained in Guyana despite fluctuating fortunes...as Winston Churchill and the CIA. Yet, she persevered and in...Jewish grandmother was elected Guyana's president. Wasserman...
May 3, 2004, The Jerusalem Report, If I Forget Thee, O Guiana, by Hanan Sher,
643 words ...Suriname) and British (since 1966 the Republic of Guyana -- which, incidentally, had a Jewish president...which is subject to heavy rainfall according to the CIA Factbook (at www.cia.org), has a population of only 187,000. Would...
June 15, 2004, Inter Press Service English News Wire, Rights: U.S. Sees Gains In Fight Against Human Trafficking, by Jim Lobe, 700+ words ...lower than the 50,000 figure that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)had offered in a ground-breaking study five years ago...Bangladesh, Burma, Cuba, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Venezuela. All could be...
June 18, 2004, The Washington Times, Japan Tries to Erase Taint of Sex Slavery; Exploitation of Women Is Deeply Rooted, 700+ words ...include Bangladesh, Burma, Cuba, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Venezuela. Like most...into the United States for prostitution. According to a 2000 CIA report, while victims have traditionally come from Southeast...
June 18, 2004, The Washington Post, Paul M. Kattenburg; Diplomat, Southeast Asian Affairs Adviser,
By the mid-1960s, Dr. Kattenburg was in Georgetown, Guyana, as counselor of embassy and charge of the mission. He was deputy coordinator of political studies at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute before retiring in 1973.
June 19, 2004, The Irish Times, Tireless activist who spent 30 years in exile,
700+ words ...Nyerere, and Walter Rodney, author of the influential How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and assassinated by the CIA in Guyana in the 1970s. Exiled to Zambia, Sejake worked with the South African Pan- Africanist Congress (PAC), and travelled...
September 24, 2004, The Washington Times, Keep the Pressure on; Energetic Diplomacy Will Curb Today's Slavery, 700+ words ...international borders is estimated by the CIA to be 600,000 to 800,000. A stunning...their victims. Bangladesh, Ecuador, Guyana and Sierra Leone rose to the challenge...supported by political commitment. In Guyana, as well, the government is responding...
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March 22, 2005, California History, The Peoples Temple Collectio, 700+ words
One of the top news stories of 1978 was the deaths of 918 people in Jonestown, Guyana, a small country in the jungles of South America. Members of the California-based Peoples Temple had developed an agricultural community in Guyana; California Congressman Leo J. Ryan organized a fact-finding mission to Jonestown in response to questions raised by the U.S. media and former followers. His visit ended in tragedy: on November 18, a long-time member, Ryan, and three journalists were killed by Peoples Temple members. That day, more than nine hundred Jonestown residents died from poisoning, and four members died in Georgetown, Guyana's capital.
In San Francisco, surviving Peoples Temple members immediately filed papers to dissolve the church. The superior court of California appointed a receiver to oversee the winding up of the Peoples Temple estate, a process that took five years. In 1983, the receiver placed the official records at the California Historical Society. Since then, former members, relatives, and
The Peoples Temple recruited members from African American communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles; by 1973 there were more than 2,500 members. Some lived in communal housing and worked fall time for the Peoples Temple, others contributed significant portions of their income and property to the church. Operations included real estate management, home care facilities for seniors and youths, publishing, and maintenance of a fleet of buses to transport members to services throughout California and across the country.
Scholars have donated additional materials related to Peoples Temple.
The Peoples Temple Collection currently contains more than 170 boxes of letters, documents, photographs, and audiotapes, including original items from the 1950s; government records from the FBI, CIA, and other agencies; and personal papers of former members and their families. Recent additions to the collection include papers collected by a psychologist who worked with former members of Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivors; nearly 1,200 slides of Peoples Temple activities in the United States and Guyana from the late 1960s to 1978; and nine hundred audiotapes of church services, amateur radio transmissions, and media broadcasts.
Recently, the collection has been featured in several new works that explore a wide array of perspectives on the Jonestown tragedy. In April 2005, the California Historical Society Press released Dear People: Remembering Jonestown, a selection of letters, personal histories, and photographs from the collection. This publication coincided with the world premiere of Leigh Fondakowski's The People's Temple, a play based on contemporary interviews and archival materials, produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Z Space Studio. A documentary about the making of the play, produced by KQED, San Francisco's local PBS station, will air in November 2005. In 2006 the PBS series American Experience will broadcast award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson's documentary about the story of Peoples Temple.
The Peoples Temple Collection is available to researchers in the North Baker Research Library at the Society's headquarters in San Francisco. For current reading room hours, check the CHS website at www.californiahistoricalsociety.org
March 22, 2005, California History, The Peoples Temple Collectio, 700+ words
One of the top news stories of 1978 was the deaths of 918 people in Jonestown, Guyana, a small country in the jungles of South America. Members of the California-based Peoples Temple had developed an agricultural community in Guyana; California Congressman Leo J. Ryan organized a fact-finding mission to Jonestown in response to questions raised by the U.S. media and former followers. His visit ended in tragedy: on November 18, a long-time member, Ryan, and three journalists were killed by Peoples Temple members. That day, more than nine hundred Jonestown residents died from poisoning, and four members died in Georgetown, Guyana's capital.
In San Francisco, surviving Peoples Temple members immediately filed papers to dissolve the church. The superior court of California appointed a receiver to oversee the winding up of the Peoples Temple estate, a process that took five years. In 1983, the receiver placed the official records at the California Historical Society. Since then, former members, relatives, and
The Peoples Temple recruited members from African American communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles; by 1973 there were more than 2,500 members. Some lived in communal housing and worked fall time for the Peoples Temple, others contributed significant portions of their income and property to the church. Operations included real estate management, home care facilities for seniors and youths, publishing, and maintenance of a fleet of buses to transport members to services throughout California and across the country.
Scholars have donated additional materials related to Peoples Temple.
The Peoples Temple Collection currently contains more than 170 boxes of letters, documents, photographs, and audiotapes, including original items from the 1950s; government records from the FBI, CIA, and other agencies; and personal papers of former members and their families. Recent additions to the collection include papers collected by a psychologist who worked with former members of Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivors; nearly 1,200 slides of Peoples Temple activities in the United States and Guyana from the late 1960s to 1978; and nine hundred audiotapes of church services, amateur radio transmissions, and media broadcasts.
Recently, the collection has been featured in several new works that explore a wide array of perspectives on the Jonestown tragedy. In April 2005, the California Historical Society Press released Dear People: Remembering Jonestown, a selection of letters, personal histories, and photographs from the collection. This publication coincided with the world premiere of Leigh Fondakowski's The People's Temple, a play based on contemporary interviews and archival materials, produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Z Space Studio. A documentary about the making of the play, produced by KQED, San Francisco's local PBS station, will air in November 2005. In 2006 the PBS series American Experience will broadcast award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson's documentary about the story of Peoples Temple.
The Peoples Temple Collection is available to researchers in the North Baker Research Library at the Society's headquarters in San Francisco. For current reading room hours, check the CHS website at www.californiahistoricalsociety.org
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Mining Engineering; April 1, 2005; Anonymous; 425 words Brazil'sCia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) has signed a memorandum of understanding with...The memorandum of understanding, signed with Corporacion Venezolana de Guyana (CVG), would establish the joint venture, Carbosuramerica. It would...
Mexico's Advantage
The Washington Times (Washington, DC); April 11, 2005; 700+ words ...Costa Rica, Francisco Lainez of El Salvador, Rudy Insanally of Guyana, Luis Ernesto Derbez of Mexico, Norman Caldera Cardenal of...State Nicholas Burns. On Wednesday, Mr. Voulgarakis meets CIA Director Porter J. Goss. Tomorrow * Italian Foreign Minister...
The Toll of a Terrorist
The Washington Post; May 13, 2005; Eugene Robinson; 700+ words ...Castro. Declassified FBI and CIA documents released by the National...this time he worked for theCIA, at one point being paid $300 a month; one CIA document says he became "of...The flight was a milk run from Guyana to Cuba, with stops at various...
U.S. documents link Cuban exile to 1976 bombing, say CIA had information on plot
AP Worldstream; May 19, 2005; CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer; 700+ words ...according to one declassified CIAdocument made public Wednesday. The CIA had a report from an informant...Fidel Castro, was a longtime CIA agent.The latest documents...involved in a previous bombing of Guyana's consulate in Trinidad.Another...
Papers Allege Ties Between Posada, Bombing
AP Online; May 19, 2005; CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer; 700+ words ...sheltering a terrorist. "The CIA knew those lords of death were...Cuban airliner." A declassified CIA document, also made public Wednesday...Fidel Castro, as a longtime CIA agent. Posada, 77, is accused...involved in a previous bombing of Guyana's consulate in Trinidad. Another...
U.S. documents link Cuban exile to 1976 bombing
AP Worldstream; May 19, 2005; CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer; 700+ words ...Cuban airliner."A declassified CIAdocument, also made public Wednesday...Fidel Castro, as a longtime CIA agent.Posada, 77, is accused...involved in a previous bombing of Guyana's consulate in Trinidad.Another...thanks to the help" of the CIA.Associates have said Posada...
Caribbean leaders agree to preferential treatment for smaller countries in single market
AP Worldstream; July 7, 2005; BERT WILKINSON, Associated Press Writer; 700+ words ...leaders also resolved to send the leaders St. Kitts, Jamaica and Guyana on a European tour this month to lobby against an EU proposal...year-old Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile and one-timeCIA operative who was arrested in Miami in May after slipping into...
Suriname
Governments of the World: A Global Guide to Citizens' Rights and Responsibilities; January 1, 2006; 700+ words ...north, French Guiana on the east, Guyana on the west, and Brazil on the south...suriname.htm>."Suriname."CIA World Factbook. Washington, DC...Agency, 2005.
In the Name of Anti-Americanism
The American Spectator; March 1, 2006; Whelan, James R.; 700+ words ...complicity in their son's death. Both the State Department and the CIA, after ransacking their files, responded then-as they have...on the former British colony of British Guiana (since 1970, Guyana). In 1964, in a setting of prolonged and seemingly uncontrollable...
From the Halls of Montezuma ...(Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer)(Book review)
The Progressive; September 1, 2006; Pal, Amitabh; 700+ words ...so-subtle references to the CIA. Those of us who disliked her...invaluable accounts of the CIA-orchestrated coups against...1890s. In the early 1960s, the CIA, acting through the AFL-CIO...was to condemn independent Guyana to the kleptocratic racist dictatorship...
In 30-Year-Old Terror Case, a Test for the U.S.; Decision Due on Cuban Exile Suspected in Airliner Blast
The Washington Post; October 5, 2006; Manuel Roig-Franzia - Washington Post Foreign Serv; 700+ words ...Ludlum is famous for." Posada Carriles was trained by theCIA, along with other Cuban exiles, for the botched Bay of Pigs...claimed the lives of 57 Cubans, as well as passengers from Guyana and North Korea. But he escaped from a Venezuelan
Margaret C. Adams State Depa ...
The Washington Post; October 11, 2006; 700+ words ...complications of emphysema Oct. 4 at Fairfax Nursing Center. He lived in Vienna. He worked for the CIA in Bolivia, Panama, Guatemala, Guyana and Mexico, as well as Washington. When he retired in 2003, he was awarded the Career Intelligence...
A version of paradise, betrayed
The Record (Bergen County, NJ); October 20, 2006; LAWRENCE AARON; 700+ words ...accompanying him. Ryan had gone down to Guyanawith news crews at the urging of constituents...The government denied Jonestown was a CIA plot. But many documents from internal...Illustrations/Photos: * *Keywords: GUYANA, MASSACRE, ANNIVERSARYCopyright 2006...
Today in History - Nov. 18
AP Online; November 18, 2006; 685 words ...Leo J. Ryan and four other people were killed in Jonestown,Guyana, by members of the Peoples Temple; the killings were followed...Texas A&M University collapsed. Ten years ago: One-timeCIA station chief Harold J. Nicholson was charged with selling...
Colonial Suriname is topic of UA Town/Gown lecture.
AZ Daily Star; January 31, 2007; 433 words ...mixture. Suriname is in northern South America, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between French Guiana and Guyana. According to theCIA Factbook, it became a Dutch colony in 1667. Slavery was abolished in 1863 and workers were brought in from...
Colonial Suriname is topic of UA Town/Gown lecture
AZ Daily Star; January 31, 2007; Stephanie Innes; 365 words ...mixture. Suriname is in northern South America, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between French Guiana and Guyana. According to theCIA Factbook, it became a Dutch colony in 1667. Slavery was abolished in 1863 and workers were brought in from...
Jonestown
Pittsburgh City Paper; February 21, 2007; Hoff, Al; 630 words ...reports from Jonestown, the commune inGuyana that was born of the San Francisco-based...recently declassified material from the CIA(which had monitored Jones for years...his organization and what unfolded in Guyana. Similarly, Nelson's film doesn't...
Democrats Found Guilty
The American Spectator; May 1, 2007; Tyrrell, R. Emmett, Jr.; 700+ words ...when he said his wife was a covert CIA operative. If so, she was the CIA's station chief in Georgetown (as in D.C, not Guyana). Then there is this lubricious...revealing that Mr. Wilson's wife was a CIA employee, the Libby trial has been...
CARIBBEAN: ANGER MOUNTS OVER U.S. INACTION ON 1976 BOMBING.
Interpress Service; May 25, 2007; 700+ words ...fencing team, 11 people from Guyana -- mostly medical students...Venezuela to Trinidad and then to Guyana, before heading to Barbados...Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad, have...three years ago, declassified CIA files confirmed that Posada...
CARIBBEAN: ANGER MOUNTS OVER U.S. INACTION ON 1976 BOMBING
Inter Press Service English News Wire; May 25, 2007; Bert Wilkinson; 700+ words ...05-25-2007 GEORGETOWN, Guyana, May 24, 2007 (IPS/GIN...fencing team, 11people from Guyana -- mostly medical students...Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad,have...three years ago, declassified CIA files confirmed thatPosada had...
Evelyn Ballou Turner Artist, ...
The Washington Post; May 27, 2007; 700+ words ...overseas in the Ivory Coast, Togo, Guyana and Haiti and was a diplomat...82, a former officer with the CIA who later became a professor...Services, forerunner of the CIA. He was awarded the Bronze Star...Kappa. Dr. McCoy served in theCIA from the late 1940s to 1964...
N.Y. Airport Target of Plot, Officials Say; 3 Held in Alleged Plan to Bomb JFK
The Washington Post; June 3, 2007; Anthony Faiola Steven Mufson - Washington Post St; 700+ words ...small South American nation ofGuyana, was arrested in Brooklyn...parliament and religious leader in Guyana -- were being held abroad...information gathered by theCIA in South America and the Caribbean...and a former mayor of Linden, Guyana. Nur, a Guyanese national...
FBI Foils Alleged Attack on JFK Airport
NPR Morning Edition; June 4, 2007; STEVE INSKEEP; 700+ words ...the airport, another was a former member of parliament from Guyana in South America. Yet another was from the Caribbean, and...sources tell me that the plot actually came to light through a CIA intercept from South America. They're not providing a lot...
June 4, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times, Plot plaudits for FBI; Shows agency's shift from G-men to counter- spies, by Alexandra Marks; 515 words
JFK plot derailed.(USA)
The Christian Science Monitor; June 4, 2007; 700+ words ...have long inhabited the warrens of the CIA's Langley headquarters. The four...complaint. Another, a former member of Guyana's parliament, planned to tap radical...who spent most of his career at the CIA. "I want to be sure that I know who...
Terror Suspect Surrenders in Trinidad
AP Online; June 6, 2007; 700+ words ...a poor neighborhood back in Guyana. "It is a conspiracy and a...said. Mike Ackerman, a former CIA terrorism expert, said Caribbean...years as a civil engineer in Guyana's state-owned bauxite company...a U.S. citizen native to Guyana, a former Dutch and British
Deseret News (Salt Lake City); June 6, 2007; Michael Melia Associated Press; 700+ words ...and lived in a poor neighborhood back in Guyana. "This is a conspiracy," he told reporters...Bryan said. Mike Ackerman, a former CIA terrorism expert, said Caribbean natives...York. He is a U.S. citizen native to Guyana, a former Dutch and British colony on...
June 9, 2007, Virgin Islands Daily News, Caribbean could suffer from the JFK Airport 'plot' stupidity, by Ronald Sanders,
Mapping the news
June 9, 2007, Virgin Islands Daily News, Caribbean could suffer from the JFK Airport 'plot' stupidity, by Ronald Sanders,
Mapping the news
AZ Daily Star; September 11, 2007; 700+ words ...background to developing world news. Last week's mystery country: Guyana WHAT COUNTRY AM I? Pop.: 39.5 million Gov't: republic...this month. Sources: The Associated Press, Reuters, BBC,CIA World Factbook, Factmonster, Financial Times World Desk Reference
DIPLOMATIC ASSURANCES ON TORTURE:BILL DELAHUNT
Congressional Testimony; November 15, 2007; 700+ words ...international athletic competition and high schoolgraduates from Guyana who had won full scholarships to medical schoolsin Cuba. And...s guilt is substantial.It includes declassified FBI and CIA documents that link him to the bombing.One of our other witnesses...
I Get Signs. Odd Things Happen. Im Like: Like Dad, I Know You. Its I Believe He Is Still with Me, Telling Me What to Do, Guiding Me in Everything. Daddys Girl: Hynotherapist Katie Jane Goldin, 24, Pictured with Her Dog Kayhala in Co. Wicklow, Has Assumed Her Fathers Mantle Friends: Paul Goldin and Daughter
Daily Mail (London); July 14, 2008; 700+ words ...interestin mind-control techniques. He went on to work with the CIA and the U.S.government. He was famously called in to de...followers of the religious-socialist Reverend JimJones died Guyana, South America. Some willingly drank cyanide-laced Kool...
Daily Mail (London); July 14, 2008; 700+ words ...interestin mind-control techniques. He went on to work with the CIA and the U.S.government. He was famously called in to de...followers of the religious-socialist Reverend JimJones died Guyana, South America. Some willingly drank cyanide-laced Kool...
Candidates' stances should be the focus
Deseret News (Salt Lake City); September 21, 2008; Cliff May Scripps Howard News Service; 700+ words ...Gambia and Zambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea-Conakry, Guyana and Guiana, Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa. This...included former ambassadors and senior Foreign Service Officers, CIA operatives and professors -- was certain that the conflict...
Deseret News (Salt Lake City); September 21, 2008; Cliff May Scripps Howard News Service; 700+ words ...Gambia and Zambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea-Conakry, Guyana and Guiana, Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa. This...included former ambassadors and senior Foreign Service Officers, CIA operatives and professors -- was certain that the conflict...
Reality TV in Britain: Sadism is entertainment
Hindustan Times (New Delhi, India); October 6, 2008; 651 words ...said to be used by America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on terror suspects. This involves being tied down on a board...suffered convulsions. We were stuck in the depths of jungle in Guyana and we had to get him out. It didn't start well," he said...
Water Torture for Our Viewing Pleasure. the Show That Proves Reality TV Can Sink Still Lower; Controversial: Activists Demonstrate Waterboarding on a Volunteer in a Human Rights Protest in Washington
Daily Mail (London); October 6, 2008; 667 words ...subjected to waterboarding - a torture technique used by the CIA on terror suspects. This involves being tied down on a board...suffered convulsions. We were stuck in the depths of jungle inGuyana and we had to get him out. It didn't start well.' A source...
Sheldon, Sidney
Newsmakers 2008 Cumulation; January 1, 2009; 700+ words ...He has been featured on a postage stamp in Guyana, honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk...he depicted in each. He interviewed former CIA chief Richard Helms for a novel involving the CIA and read 60 books on Swiss cosmetics for a...
January 5, 2009, Daily News (South Africa) Plots, ploys and puzzles, 700+ words
in the affidavit - signed in 2002 - that he saw alien corpses and a craft and that he had been involved in a military cover-up. Haut died in 2005.
4Nasa faked moon landings:
Some people think Nasa faked some or all of the landings.
There are theories that the Apollo astronauts did not land on the moon; Nasa and others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landings did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, and rock samples; and that they continue to actively participate in the conspiracy to this day.
Those who think Nasa faked some or all of the landings base their theories on photographs from the lunar surface which they claim show camera crosshairs partially behind rocks, a flag planted by Buzz Aldrin moving in a strange way, the lack of stars over the lunar landscape and shadows falling in different directions.
Many commentators have published detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims, and they have been generally discounted.
5The Illuminati:
A conspiracy in which powerful, secretive groups (the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group and other shadowy cabals) are plotting to rule the world with a single government.
Many historical events are said to have been engineered by these groups with one goal - the New World Order (NWO). The groups use political finance, social engineering, mind control, and propaganda to achieve their aims.
International organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union, the United Nations, and Nato are listed as founding organisations of the New World Order.
6The Jesus conspiracy:
The theory behind the books The Holy Blood and Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.
Those who believe in this think Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had one or more children, and that those children or their descendants emigrated to southern France.
Once there, they intermarried with the noble families and became the Merovingian dynasty, whose special claim to the throne of France is championed today by a secret society called the Priory of Sion.
7Diana was murdered:
Why won't this one go away? Despite an official inquiry that found no evidence of a plot by MI6 or any other entity to murder the princess and Dodi Al-Fayed in 1997, fevered speculation continues.
The theory is that rogue elements in the British secret service decided that Diana's relationship with Fayed was a threat to the monarchy and, therefore, to the British state. A plot was hatched which included a white Fiat Uno carrying agents to disorientate driver Henri Paul as he sped through the Paris underpass and Paul's blood being switched with a sample of somebody who had drunk a lot of alcohol. No evidence exists to support it.
8Elvis Presley faked his death:
A persistent belief is that "the King" did not die in 1977.
The main reason given in support of the belief that Elvis Presley faked his death is that, on his grave, his middle name Aron is spelt as Aaron. But "Aaron" is actually the genuine middle name for Presley. Apparently, either Presley or his parents tried to change the name to "Aron" to make it more similar to Presley's stillborn twin, Jesse Garon Presley.
Two tabloid newspapers ran articles covering the continuing "life" of Presley after his death, in great detail, all the way up to his "real death" in the mid 1990s.
9 Operation Northwoods:
A genuine conspiracy involving a plan by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to launch a fake Cuban terror campaign on American soil to persuade the public to support an invasion against Castro. The plan involved bombings and hijacking and blowing up of American planes. The operation was quashed by President Kennedy.
10MK-ULTRA:
The code name for a covert mind-control and chemical interrogation research programme, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The programme began in the 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, using US citizens as test subjects.
Project MK-Ultra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the US Congress and the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA director Richard Helms ordering all MK-Ultra files destroyed in 1973.
Although the CIA insisted MK-Ultra-type experiments were abandoned, CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has claimed the agency routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and mind control research.
Conspiracy theorists believe MK-Ultra was behind many so-called black-ops: Lawrence Teeter, the attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, believed Sirhan was under MK-Ultra mind control techniques. Jonestown, in Guyana, where members of the Jim Jones cult and Peoples Temple committed mass suicide, was thought to be a test site for MK-Ultra experiments.
11 North American Union:
The North American Union (NAU) is a theoretical regional union of Canada, Mexico and the United States similar in structure to the European Union, including a common currency called the amero.
Theorists who believe the three countries are planning for this believe that it is part of a global conspiracy to set up something called the New World Order (NWO). Officials from all three nations have repeatedly denied that there are plans to create a NAU.
12Shakespeare was somebody else:
Who really was the English language's greatest writer? Among the numerous alternative candidates that have been proposed, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley (6th Earl of Derby) and Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford), are the most popular.
Theorists believe there is a lack of evidence proving that the actor and businessman sometimes known as Shaksper of Stratford was responsible for the body of works that bear his name. Very little biographical information exists about Shakespeare.
13 Disappearance of Shergar:
On February 8 1983, a group of armed men wearing balaclavas turned up at the Ballymany Stud Farm in County Kildare, Ireland, and took a hostage - Jim Fitzgerald, the stud's head groom. "We've come for Shergar," they said. "We want [pounds sterling]2 million for him." Shergar was arguably the greatest racehorse to have ever lived.
But 25 years after he was kidnapped, the mystery of what happened to Fitzgerald after he was snatched that night still lingers. The theories are numerous, with the IRA, Colonel Gadaffi and the Mafia featuring among the most lurid.
14 Paul is dead:
"Paul is dead" is an urban legend alleging that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike. "Evidence" for McCartney's death consists of "clues" found among the Beatles' many recordings. Hundreds have been cited at various times, including statements allegedly heard when a song is played backwards, symbolism found in obscure lyrics, and ambiguous imagery on album covers. A few of them are well known, such as the fact that McCartney is the only barefooted Beatle and is out of step with the others on the cover of Abbey Road.
15 The 2005 Tube bombings:
One of the supposed mysteries surrounding the 7/7 attacks is an image of the bombers entering Luton station on their way to London at about 7.20am on July 7. Theorists claim this image is fake because the man in the white hat - believed to be Mohammed Sidique Khan - has been electronically placed on the picture after it was taken. They claim it shows his arm behind a railing while the rest of his body is in front and that the bar behind his head goes across and in front of his face. Theorists postulate, among other things, that the bombs which went off on the Tube trains were actually under the floors of the vehicles and not in the alleged plotters' back packs.
16 The Moscow bombings:
Former GRU officer Aleksey Galkin and former FSB officer the late Alexander Litvinenko (who was killed with Polonium-210 in London in November 2006) and other whistle-blowers from the Russian government and security services have asserted that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings were operations perpetrated by the FSB, the successor to the KGB, to justify the second Russian war against Chechnya.
17 Black helicopters:
The concept became popular in the American militia movement and associated political circles in the 1990s as an alleged symbol and warning sign of a military takeover of part or all of the US.
18Wilson was a Soviet agent:
Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is thought to have claimed that Labour leader and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a KGB spy. He further claimed that Hugh Gaitskell was assassinated by the KGB so he could be replaced by Wilson. Former MI5 officer Peter Wright also claimed in his memoirs - Spycatcher - that he had been told Wilson was a Soviet agent.
MI5 investigated Wilson over several years before conclusively deciding that he had no relationship with the KGB. On the BBC TV programme, The Plot Against Harold Wilson, broadcast in 2006, it was claimed that the military was on the point of launching a coup d'etat against Wilson in 1974. Wilson himself told the BBC that he feared he was being undermined by MI5 in the late 1960s after devaluation of sterling and again in 1974 after he narrowly won an election.
19Protocols of Elders of Zion:
Despite being utterly discredited for at least 100 years, belief in this document has proved remarkably resilient. The text takes the form of an instruction manual to a new member of the "elders", describing how they will run the world through control of the media and finance, and replace the traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation.
Scholars generally agree that the Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, fabricated the text in the late 1890s or early 1900s.
20 The peak oil conspiracy:
Peak oil (a theory in itself) is the supposed peak of oil production during and after which demand for oil outstrips supply, sending prices through the roof. The peak oil conspiracy theorists believe that peak oil is a fraud concocted by the oil industry to increase prices amid concerns about future supplies. The industry is aware of vast reserves of untapped oil, but does not use them to maintain the illusion of scarcity.
21Pearl Harbour was allowed to happen:
Theorists believe President Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Hawaii in December 1942, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn fleet commanders.
He apparently needed the attack to provoke Hitler into declaring war on the US because the American public and Congress were against entering the war in Europe.
Theorists believe the US was warned by the governments of Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea and the Soviet Union that an attack on Pearl Harbour was coming and the Americans had intercepted and broken all the important Japanese codes in the run up to the attack.
22Philadelphia Experiment:
Popularised by the Charles Berlitz novel of the same name, conspiracy theorists believe that during an experiment at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in October 1943, the US Navy destroyer Eldridge was rendered invisible.
According to some accounts, the scientists on the experiment found a way to bend light around an object but that the experiment went wrong and Eldridge was transported through space and time, reappearing at sea. Several sailors, it is said, were badly hurt when the experiment went wrong and some were melded into the ship's superstructure. The US Navy has denied that the experiment ever took place.
23Pan Am Flight 103:
Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York was destroyed by a bomb on December 21 1988, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland.
A popular theory for which no evidence has been produced suggests that the CIA had set up a protected drug route from Europe to the US - allegedly called Operation Corea - which allowed Syrian drug dealers to ship heroin to the US using Pan Am flights. The CIA allegedly protected the suitcases containing the drugs and made sure they were not searched. On the day of the bombing, terrorists exchanged suitcases: one with drugs for one with a bomb.
Another version is that the CIA knew in advance this exchange would take place, but let it happen because the drugs route was a rogue operation, and the American intelligence officers on the flight had found out about it, and were on their way to Washington to tell their superiors.
24 Fluoridation:
Fluoride is commonly added to drinking water as a way to reduce tooth decay. However, there has been some evidence that there could be some harmful side effects, and conspiracy theorists believe this information is known and recognised by those responsible for adding the fluoride, but they continue the practice regardless.
Drug companies have been targeted as possible beneficiaries because they will profit from a population with ill-health. Another motive is that fluoride lowers mental abilities, "dumbing down" the entire population.
25 The Indian Ocean tsunami:
A popular theory in the Muslim world is that the tsunami could have been caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which Israeli and American nuclear experts participated.
Newspapers in Egypt and the Middle East alleged that India, in its nuclear race with Pakistan, has acquired sophisticated nuclear technology from the US and Israel, both of which "showed readiness to co-operate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind," beginning with the heavily populated Muslim regions of south-east Asia.
26Plastic coffins & concentration camps:
Just outside Atlanta, Georgia, beside a major road are about 500 000 plastic coffins. Stacked neatly and in full view, the coffins are allegedly owned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). Conspiracy theorists believe Fema has set up several concentration camps in the US in preparation for the imposition of a state of martial law and the killing of millions of Americans. They suggest the financial crisis will be used to justify the imposition of a police state.
27HAARP:
More than 300km east of Anchorage, Alaska, is the Pentagon's High-frequency Active Auroral Research Programme, officially an enormous experiment to heat the ionosphere with radio waves. But conspiracy theorists believe the project is a weapon to bring down aircraft and missiles by lifting sections of the atmosphere, cause earthquakes or even a huge weather modification machine.
28Aids virus was |man-made:
Based on the theories of Dr William Campbell Douglass, many believe HIV was genetically engineered in 1974 by the World Health Organisation. Douglass believed it was a cold-blooded attempt to create a killer virus which was then used in a successful experiment in Africa. Others have claimed it was created by the CIA or the KGB as a means to reduce world population.
29 Global warming |is a hoax:
Some climate change doubters believe man-made global warming is a conspiracy designed to soften up the world's population for higher taxes, controls on lifestyle and more authoritarian government. These sceptics cite a fall in global temperatures since last year and a levelling off in the rise in temperature since 1998 as evidence.
30Chemtrails:
Theorists believe some contrails, which consist of ice crystals or water vapour condensed behind aircraft, result from chemicals or biological agents being deliberately sprayed at high altitude for some undisclosed purpose.
There is fevered speculation that the chemicals are part of a wider plot that involves the so-called New World Order and is being directed by shadowy forces within the government. The existence of chemtrails has been repeatedly denied by US agencies and scientists. - The Telegraph
__________________________________________________________________________________________Structural Arrangements of Indo-Guyanese Family: An Assessment of the Assimilation Hypothesis
Journal of Comparative Family Studies; June 22, 2009; Samuel, Preethy S. Wilson, Leon C.; 700+ words ...Belize, Dominica, Grenada,Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat...constitutes the cultural landscape of Guyana. The largest concentration of persons of Indian origin is in Guyana (43.5%), which is followed...Bureau of Statistics, 2002;CIA World Fact Book, 2002). Despite...
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October 16, 2009, The Independent (London, England) Spin with the Spies, by Susan Williams,
BOOK OF THE WEEK The Defence of the Realm By Christopher Andrew ALLEN LANE Pounds 30 (1032pp) Pounds 27 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 08430 600 030
The fact that this is not so much "a" history of MI5 as "the authorized history" is underlined by its sombre black jacket, which gives it the appearance of a British government document. In a very real sense, it is. For although the book has been commercially published and Christopher Andrew is an academic historian, it was commissioned by MI5. Once he had been appointed to the post of official historian, the book was written on MI5 premises.
This is a centenary history, starting with the founding of the security service in 1909. In the following year, MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) were created as separate services. Andrew engagingly charts the evolution of MI5 through two world wars, the Cold War, and now the war against fundamentalist terrorists.
Inevitably, the agency's focus has shifted from counter- espionage and counter-subversion to counter-terrorism. What hasn't changed is its clandestine nature. The existence of MI5 was not acknowledged officially until 1979, when Mrs Thatcher unmasked Sir Anthony Blunt as the Fourth Man in a statement to the Commons.
MI5 has to tread a wire: it needs to be secret to protect parliamentary democracy, but is under pressure to be as transparent as possible. This has led to an uneasy compromise. Andrew was given unrestricted access to almost 400,000 files, but most are referenced only as "Security Service Archives" and closed to the rest of us.
This puts him in a difficult position: if he can't share his key sources, he must ask his readers to take his analysis on trust. We have only limited means of evaluating MI5's official view, as transmitted by Andrew, on various critical issues - such as the "Wilson plot" of the 1970s or the "Death on the Rock" episode in Gibraltar in 1988.
Publicity material for the book has filled newspapers with stories of double agents and courageous derring-do. But what also emerges from these pages is a fascinating picture of MI5 as a tightly-knit institution, thriving on its atmosphere of secrecy. "No one, not even our own families, should be told where we worked or for whom," was the firm instruction to a new employee in 1931. Morale sank after the end of the Cold War and the Good Friday agreement of 1998, which led to massive cutbacks. But after 9/11, there was a rapid expansion of staff and a renewed sense of purpose.
The Service had a choral society, which takes its name "The Oberon Singers" from Oberon's words in A Midsummer Night's Dream - "We are invisible, we will o'er hear their conference." It also had a cricket team and cricket imagery frequently appears in correspondence. "So the first XI of MI5 is to play the Mau Mau," commented the head of the Overseas Division when MI5 officers were sent to Kenya in 1952.
The Service did not advertise openly for recruits before 1997: until then, recruitment was based on personal recommendation. This was a narrow social group, many of whom had served in India or elsewhere in the Empire.
Male officers listed their recreations as cricket and hunting, while women were graduates of elite schools and universities. Women have always played an important role in MI5 and two recent Director Generals have been female - Stella Rimington, one of the first women agent-runners, and Eliza Manningham-Buller.
Right up to the mid-1970s, the post-war Service refused to recruit Jews on the grounds that a dual loyalty to both Britain and Israel might create a conflict of interest. This was "inexcusable", Andrew rightly observes. So too was the attitude to black people of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director General. "It was true," he told the Joint Intelligence Committee in 1949, "that niggers coming here often went to the C[ommunist] P[arty]." There was no doubt in his mind that "West African natives are wholly unfitted for self-rule."
Shockingly, the Service carried out secret surveillance of the colonial delegations which came to London to discuss terms for independence in the 1950s and 1960s. Andrew gives a disturbing account of the stealthy gathering of intelligence on the delegates attending conferences which negotiated the independence of Cyprus and Kenya. The Home Secretary, Rab Butler, cynically condoned these operations on the grounds that "obviously the product was of great importance and of great value to the government negotiators".
In most of the Empire, claims Andrew, MI5 contributed to a smooth transfer of power through the work of its liaison officers. But Guyana, where Churchill wanted to "break the Communist teeth", was a shameful exception. Here, MI5 supported British and American covert action to oust the democratically-elected Cheddi Jagan from power. Andrew claims that the Service was not "directly" involved and that the dominant intelligence agency in the years leading up to independence in 1966 was the CIA. But neither point exculpates MI5 or, more pertinently, the British government.
The Service has had some remarkable achievements, notably the Double-Cross System of the Second World War, which fed disinformation to the Germans. For the most part, however, it is difficult to measure MI5's success, since it can only be judged by things which do not happen - like the prevention of sabotage.
But it seems astonishing that it was not until 1951, as the result of the decrypt of a KGB telegram, that any of the Cambridge Five - all MI5 or MI6 employees, recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s to become spies for the Soviet Union - were identified. The decrypt took the Service completely by surprise and began the most drawn- out investigation in its history, taking over 30 years to complete.
The thousand pages of this book are brimming with some wonderful details. But many could be pruned - like the fact that the first Director's garden contained "400 rose trees and a grass tennis court". This would make room, perhaps, for a fuller account of the human factor in spying.
What was the intellectual and psychological motivation of the staff of MI5? - not only of the spies, agent-runners, and codebreakers, but those who steamed open envelopes and eavesdropped on telephone conversations. How did they feel about deceit?
The Defence of the Realm is a valuable and important contribution to our understanding of the 20th century. But an official history can only do so much, especially of an organisation that is inherently secret. In this hazy world of smoke, mirrors and lies - where actual conspiracies are barely distinguishable from conspiracy theories - we also need the scrutiny of genuinely independent investigators, such as Robin Ramsay, the maverick editor of the journal Lobster, and of unofficial historians. It will be interesting to compare The Defence of the Realm with the authorised history of MI6, which is set to follow next year.
Susan Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Her latest book is 'Colour Bar' (Penguin)
__________________________________________________________________________________________A Breakdown of National Consensus
The New Leader (Online); November 1, 2009; Grossman, Lawrence; 700+ words ...was transported to Devil's Island off the coast of French Guyana, to serve a life sentence on that desolate volcanic formation...believing that the detainees at Guantánamo - and those held in CIA jails - were terrorists simply because they were Muslims...
CARIBBEAN BASIN SECURITY INITIATIVE:STEPHEN C. JOHNSON
Congressional Testimony; December 9, 2009; 700+ words ...to tiny Dominica with a $364 million GDP, according to the CIA WorldFactbook. The Bahamas ranks among the top countries of...speakingnations (including South America`s Suriname and Guyana), five associates,and seven observers. The eastern Caribbean...
We'd Go to Barry Island Every Weekend. I've Been on the Log Flume and the Pirate Ship, but My Favourite Was Quasar. X Factor Winner Leona Loved Her Welsh Holidays
Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales); February 24, 2010; 700+ words ...Lewis, 24, was brought up in Hackney, London, to Joe, fromGuyana, and Maria, from Penarth. She shot to fame as the third winner...26 then returns between March 22-25. Leona Lewis plays the CIA on July 5. Her new single I Got You is out this week CAPTION...
Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple.(Book review)
California History; March 22, 2010; Zeidel, Robert F.; 700+ words ...the expatriate colony in the Guyanajungle whose 900 Americans died...followers to move their operation to Guyana, where they hoped to create...insightful revelation, such as the CIA's involvement in the Jonestown...than indicate the existence of CIA surveillance and direct readers...
(10/2010) Terror Plots A Possible Diversion.(Breaking News and Opinion)
Basilandspice.com; October 4, 2010; 700+ words ...mind, one god, one creed. Remember the Jim Jones cult of Guyana? Convinced that murder was what God wished, those parents...diplomats in the United States embassy in Moscow.....The CIAdid investigate the use and effect of microwaves on human beings...
January 12, 2011, AP / The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) Safety Moves to the Forefront for Lawmakers, by Charles Babington and Donna Cassata, 700+ words
WASHINGTON
Several lawmakers defiantly vowed Tuesday to arm themselves after the shooting rampage in Arizona, despite an admonition from the Senate's top law enforcement officer that more guns would not be the answer.
In a Capitol already ringed by concrete stanchions and armed guards, members of Congress struggled to come up with new ways to ensure their safety in a democracy suddenly shaken by an assassin's bullets. Republican and Democratic leaders signaled that closer coordination with local law enforcement was a practical first step after the Arizona shootings that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded.
Beyond that, talk centered on legislation that would make it a crime to carry a weapon within 1,000 feet of elected or high-ranking federal officials at publicly announced events and a proposal to install a Plexiglas enclosure to protect the House floor from gallery spectators - two ideas unlikely to get much traction in the new Congress. Democrats also called for rolling back a 5 percent, GOP-engineered cut in congressional spending and redirecting the money to security.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, seemed cool to the idea. "We will rely on the recommendations of the sergeant-at-arms and the Capitol police," he said.
A security briefing for lawmakers was scheduled for this morning. Questioned about lawmakers taking matters into their own hands by carrying concealed weapons, Terrance Gainer, the Senate's sergeant-at-arms and former Washington, D.C., police chief, said it wouldn't solve the problem.
"I don't think it's a good idea," Gainer told ABC's "Good Morning America." "I don't think introducing more guns into the situation is going to be helpful."
Gainer said threats to members of the Senate had increased over the past year - to 49. But he said he considered the number small, given all the interactions that lawmakers have with the public.
"It's not that I'm going to be like Wyatt Earp," said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who said he was re-applying for a state permit to carry a concealed weapon even if he didn't necessarily plan to carry the pistol to public events.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, still plans to carry his handgun at public events, his office said, despite Gainer's remarks. "It's a personal choice," said Chaffetz spokeswoman Alisia Essig.
Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., also said he plans to carry a concealed handgun more often. He obtained a permit after a constituent threatened his life in 2009.
Several other lawmakers questioned whether sweeping changes to congressional security are logistically or politically possible.
"The body is just too large. I don't think democracy ever anticipated that there would be problems like this," said Rep. John Larson, D-Conn.
Threats against lawmakers are not uncommon, but actual violence is rare. Rep. Leo Ryan, D-Calif., was murdered in Guyana by cult members just before the massive suicide in Jones-town in 1978.
In 1954, several Puerto Rican nationalists fired about 30 pistol shots in the House of Representatives chamber, wounding five lawmakers, and in 1983, a bomb, planted by people protesting the U.S. military presence in Lebanon and Grenada, did minor damage in a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
Security in the Capitol became considerably tighter after a July 1998 incident in which a man fatally shot two Capitol Police officers.
Republican Rep. Peter King of New York plans to introduce a bill that would make it a crime to carry a weapon within 1,000 feet of elected or high-ranking federal officials at publicly announced events.
King, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said the measure would give local police another tool to check and possibly question people approaching members of Congress, the Cabinet, the CIA director and people attending their public events.
Winning congressional approval of such a bill won't be easy, King said. "There's a good number of members in Congress who instinctively oppose gun legislation," he said.
In the wake of the attack on Giffords, longtime Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., is reviving his legislation to install a Plexiglas shield enclosing the visitors' gallery in the House chamber, which he argues would protect lawmakers. The proceedings of the House could still be seen and would be clearly audible to the general public.
Burton has pushed for the measure in previous sessions of Congress, but it's never gotten out of the House Administration Committee. He planned to propose a version of the bill next week.
____________________________________________________________________________CEREMONY ANNOUNCES BEGINNING OF EXERCISE TRADEWINDS 2011.
States News Service; March 3, 2011; 552 words ...Colombia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala,Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia...Columbia and has a population of 86,754, according to the Web site www.cia.gov.
CEREMONY ANNOUNCES BEGINNING OF EXERCISE TRADEWINDS 2011
US Fed News Service, Including US State News; March 3, 2011; 569 words ...Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts-Nevis...has a population of 86,754, according to the Web site www.cia.gov. For any query with respect to this article or any other...
Kim Scipes, AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?(Book review)
Labour/Le Travail; March 22, 2011; Nastovski, Katherine; 700+ words ...governments in Brazil and Chile, and participated in interventions in Guyana, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, El Salvador, Guatemala...externally imposed by the state and state agencies like the CIA to more recent accounts that see it as emerging from within...
A union activist's call for change.(Thinking Economically)(Book review)
Synthesis/Regeneration; March 22, 2011; Egnatz, Nick; 700+ words ...movements to attack pro-labor, progressive governments (in Guyanain 1963; Dominican Republic in 1965; Nicaragua in the late...employees." Was the labor leadership simply carrying water for the CIA and US Empire? One might make that assumption, but Scipes...
IDB ANNOUNCES NAMES OF YOUTH LEADERS SELECTED TO ATTEND THE YOUTH FOR DEVELOPMENT - DEVELOPMENT FOR YOUTH CONFERENCE IN CALGARY.(Conference news)
States News Service; March 22, 2011; 700+ words ...Bolivia Eduardo Cader, San Salvador, El Salvador Tamaisha Eytle, Guyana Maximiliano G-mez, Entre Rios, Argentina Gerson Abel Morales, Chimaltenango, Guatemala AderlA*cia Nascimento da Silva, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Jose Miguel Palechor...
Anti-Castro radical was acquitted in jet bombing
The Washington Post; April 30, 2011; T Rees Shapiro; 700+ words ...Airlines Flight 455, bound for Cuba from Guyana, had sent the plane plunging into the...third, Luis Posada Carriles, a onetime CIA operative, escaped from confinement in...was trained in guerrilla warfare by the CIAbefore the failed Bay of Pigs invasion...
Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power
Caribbean Quarterly; June 1, 2011; Premdas, Ralph; 700+ words ...these episodes transpired inGuyana in the early 19605, when a combined CIA and British intelligence operation...minds of Third World peoples. Guyana was an unlikely place for such...of colonial exploitation of Guyana's multi-ethnic population...
Aavo Albert Soobert
The Washington Post; July 14, 2011; 700+ words ...CIA employee Wanda Shaver vanVliet, 94, a CIAemployee who did administrative work for more...Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA. She served with the CIA in England, Iran,Guyana and Sweden before retiring in 1972. She was...
International Paint broadens Mexico network: China will become Latin America's largest trade partner by 2015.(Latin America)
Coatings World; August 1, 2011; Thurston, Charles W.; 700+ words ...17 Brazil 12 Argentina 9 Peru 9 Suriname 7 Paraguay 7 Colombia 6 Bolivia 4 Ecuador 4 Chile 3 Guyana 3 Venezuela -8 Source: Index Mundi compilation of CIA World Factbook data; January 2017. by Charles W. Thurston Latin America Correspondent thurstoncw...
UK spy files reveal details of 1950s Guyana coup
AP Worldstream; August 25, 2011; JILL LAWLESS; 700+ words ...Oct. 9, Britain suspended Guyana's constitution, fired its legislators...Communist Cuba, possibly making Guyana a base for Latin American revolutionaries...the White House to allow the CIA to use subterranean means to...first leader of independent Guyana in 1966 was not Cheddi Jagan...
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September 2, 2011, AP / Manila Bulletin, 1950s Guyana Coup Details Bared, 700+ words
LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) - It was a very British coup. The warship slipped into the harbor, the soldiers landed in darkness - and the diplomatic wives made sandwiches for the hungry troops.
Secret documents declassified Friday by Britain's MI5 security service reveal in dramatic and everyday detail how the UK under Prime Minister Winston Churchill overthrew the elected government of British Guiana - now Guyana - because he feared its left-wing leader and his American wife were leading the British colony into the arms of the Soviet Union.
The documents reveal how British spies kept up intense scrutiny on Cheddi and Janet Jagan, who founded the People's Progressive Party to campaign for workers' rights and independence from British rule for the sugar-producing colony in northern South America.
Christopher Andrew, the spy agency's official historian, said the files provide new details of the coup, and "further evidence that MI5 played a more important part in British decolonization than is often realized.''
The Jagans, a US-educated former dentist and his Chicago-born wife, seem an unlikely threat. But the 39 folders of files released by Britain's National Archives are crammed full of tapped phone conversations, intercepted letters, and accounts of physical surveillance over more than a decade.
In 1951, the year after the Jagans founded their party, an MI5 agent based on the Caribbean island of Trinidad described them as "something new in British Guiana politics.''
"Both are able and intelligent and the mere fact that Janet Jagan is white, young, and not unattractive in appearance lends considerable interest to her activities and those of her husband,'' he said.
To British authorities, the Jagans were a headache. To the Americans, they were a potential Communist threat on America's doorstep.
MI5 concluded that the party was "not receiving any financial support from any Communist organization outside the country.''
Nonetheless, amid worsening strikes and unrest, Britain grew unhappy with the Jagans' "disruptive antics.''
After the party won a huge majority in British Guiana's 1953 election, making Cheddi Jagan prime minister, Churchill decided to act. "We ought surely to get American support in doing all that we can to break the Communist teeth in British Guiana,'' Churchill wrote to his colonial secretary.
In the end, Britain acted alone, mounting a military operation code-named Operation Windsor. Churchill dispatched a warship, HMS Superb, and brought hundreds of troops by air and sea to secure key sites. On Oct. 9, Britain suspended Guyana's constitution, fired its legislators, and arrested the Jagans.
The surprise military operation went according to plan. The Trinidad-based MI5 officer noted with quiet satisfaction that "it was obvious that the PPP leaders had no idea that the Constitution would be suspended or that they might be arrested.''
And the spy threw in a note of thanks for the women who helped the army march on its stomach.
"I might add in parenthesis that catering arrangements for the airborne troops during their halt in Trinidad were carried out by Mrs. Beadon, wife of the Commissioner of Police, Mrs. Rahr, my wife, and Joyce Huggins... and I understand that no less than 600 large sandwiches were cut by these ladies,'' he wrote.
An outraged Cheddi Jagan appealed by telegram to Britain's opposition Labour Party for help. Labour leader Clement Attlee replied curtly, "Regret impossible to intervene.''
For the next three years, British Guiana was ruled under emergency powers by the British governor and appointed officials, and the Jagans were kept under house arrest and intensive surveillance. In the years that followed, MI5 softened somewhat toward Cheddi Jagan, acknowledging that he was an astute and popular politician, though the agent based in Trinidad strongly disliked Janet Jagan, whom he described as a committed Communist "uncompromising in her hatreds.''
By the 1960s, Britain's spies worried the Jagans would turn to newly Communist Cuba, possibly making Guyana a base for Latin American revolutionaries. "If the Jagans remain in power after independence and if their activities and views remain unchanged, they will represent a threat to the stability both of British Guiana itself and of the neighboring territories,'' the officer wrote.
Andrew said it's clear from previously released government documents that successive British governments "gave in to pressure from the White House to allow the CIA to use subterranean means to ensure that the first leader of independent Guyana in 1966 was not Cheddi Jagan.''
"In most British colonies, there was a relatively friendly transfer of power to independent governments,'' Andrew said in a podcast for the National Archives. "British Guiana was a notable exception.''
The Jagans remained a major force in Guyanese politics, and Cheddi Jagan became prime minister again in 1961, when the batch of MI5 files ends. After the Cold War ended, Cheddi Jagan served as president of Guyana from 1992 until his death in 1997. His wife succeeded him between 1997 and 1999.
________________________________________________________________________________________POLITICS: CUBA PROTESTS U.S. "DOUBLE STANDARDS" ON TERRORISM
Inter Press Service English News Wire; October 10, 2011; Patricia Grogg; 700+ words ...the country's entire Olympic fencing team - 11 people from Guyana and five from North Korea when it exploded just after taking off...The bombing of the Cubana jet was carried out by a former CIA agent, Luis Posada Carriles.The day after the anniversary...
Today In History
AP Worldstream; February 8, 2012; The Associated Press; 700+ words ...Anti-government riots break out in Georgetown, BritishGuyana.1970 - Moscow says Arab nations will get "necessary support" from...capture of the Afghan Taliban's No. 2 commander by a joint CIA and Pakistani team deals a fresh blow to insurgents under heavy...
'I Feel Guilty I'm the Only One Alive'
The Independent (London, England); February 14, 2012; Sengupta, Kim; 700+ words ...military and UK police officers based at the embassy and the CIA. He then returned to the UK and meetings with dignitaries such...could not settle in England. Before Iraq he had been working in Guyana and that is where he returned, to set up a computerised system...
MISSION BECOMES BATTLE FOR TREASURE.
States News Service; February 15, 2012; 700+ words ...border and served in Desert Storm, South Korea, Lithuania, Guyana, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kosovo. Bogdanos lost good friends...responsible for counter-terrorism, including the FBI, the CIA, U.S. Customs Office and the four branches of the military...
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February 8, 2013, The Associated Press, On This Day: Saturday, February 16, 1962 - Anti-government riots break out in Georgetown, British Guyana.March 15, 2013, Newsweek, Once upon a Time in Venezuela, by Roger Lowenstein, 700+ words
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