Robert Kupperman, extract from The "Terrorism" Industry
Kupperman has been a terrorism specialist at CSIS since 1979. Before that he served for some dozen years in the federal government, first in the President's Office of Emergency Preparedness (1967-73), then as chief scientist and deputy assistant director for military and economic affairs at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1973-79). Kupperman worked ~n terrorism both for a Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism and for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, and published 'Terrorism: Threat, Reality, Response' with Darrell Trent in 1979. (35) He also operated a private consulting firm, Robert Kupperman Associates, which served both private clients and the government. Like Jenkins, Kupperman advised the army on counterinsurgency, codirecting a seven-volume study, 'Strategic Requirements for the Army in the Year 2000', and producing a report, 'Low-Intensity Conflict', in 1983. (36) The 1983 study sets forth a number of policy options for consideration by the army which Kupperman would describe as state terrorism if employed by a hostile power.
His government background and affiliation with CSIS catapulted Kupperman into media prominence as a terrorism expert during the Reagan years, and he made literally scores of appearances on national radio and TV, as well as in the print media. But the same factors that made Kupperman an authentic expert for the mass media also assured that he would work strictly within the bounds of the Western model of terrorism. He notes in his 1979 volume that his past work on terrorism has involved "providing guidance" to government policy makers, and that his aim has been to help in "shaping government policy and operations that would improve our preparedness."(37) His study 'Low-Intensity Conflict' was intended to provide "a conceptual framework for the Army's conduct of lowintensity warfare." Given this service objective and his linkages, it was predictable that Kupperman would never depart from establishment premises or frames.
Kupperman always portrays the West as the victim of terrorism, never as a victimizer. Terrorism has become "a form of low-intensity warfare against the West conducted by trained professionals rather than nihilistic amateurs." (38) Kupperman's own definition of terrorism — "violence either threatened or real, exercised for political ends but outside all normal political relationships"(39) — clearly applies also to Western practice. A large literature exists on low-intensity warfare as a primary Western strategy, but Kupperman never discusses either Western practice or the literature on the new warfare, although he was a contributor to this literature. At an American Academy of Political and Social Science session in 1982, be was asked explicitly if the U.S. training of Cuban exiles and contras and sponsorship of their attacks on Cuba and Nicaragua wasn't a U.S. export of terrorism. He answered that as regards Cuba, "The Castro government would argue that these were terrorists." And as to Nicaragua, "I am not sufficiently familiar with it to comment about it." (40) In 1985, on a panel with one of the present writers (Herman), Kupperman commented that "some people would say that our support of the contras constituted terrorism." But Kupperman cannot say this, even as a simple logical inference from his own definition. Nor can he bear to name a U.S. ally or client as engaging in or supporting terrorism. He not only refuses to apply the word, he operates as if the reality corresponded to his own self-limitation to a patriotic agenda.
On the reasons for Western victimization, Kupperman sticks to the classic cliches of his industry — "terrorism thrives in democratic society," and the United States is a special victim because of "who we are and what we represent." (41) Kupperman does not discuss the possibility that anti-Western terror could be a response to exploitation, racist violence, and Western support of terrorists and corrupt dictators like the shah, Marcos, Suharto, the juntas and death squads of Latin America, and South Africa.
Kupperman claims that the Soviet Union and its proxies are supporting terrorism as a "low-cost, low-risk" means of "disrupting Western society,"(42) but he boldly concedes that terrorism is based in part on local factors and "is too complex an issue to be easily explained away as an example of Soviet intervention." (43) He also admits that there are other supporters of terrorism besides the Soviet Union, namely Libya. In another display of boldness, Kupperman acknowledges that Libya's terrorist acts are not "planned and directed by the Soviets."(44)
If terrorism increased in the 1980s, could this be because the Reagan administration wanted to use it as a propaganda instrument to mobilize its own population and the West? This is a hypothesis that Kupperman cannot even put on the table to discuss. He mentions the Libyan hit squad episode of 1981, but instead of recognizing it as part of an administration campaign to arouse the public on the menace of Qaddafi and terrorism, Kupperman interprets it as a Libyan strategy to "use the media." "The threat itself forced the President to retreat into a 'steel cocoon' and appeared to paralyze the American government." (45) In terrorism-industry analyses of terrorism, the media are regularly denounced for allowing terrorists to gain publicity and for entering into what Kupperman calls a "de facto partnership with terrorists." (46) Kupperman retreats to this nonsensical claim, in the process falsifying the historical record (the hit squad was a Western concoction); and as a good propagandist for his state, diverting attention from the fact that the Reagan administration was using Libya as a propaganda device for its own purposes.
As we noted earlier, Kupperman chaired the CSIS panel on the Bulgarian plot against the pope, which found the Bulgarians guilty before the trial and expounded the extreme right-wing position that the KGB had penetrated the Western media, with dire consequences. (Paul Henze and Arnaud de Borchgrave were also members of this panel.)
Despite such toeing of the Western line, and his willingness to be part of intellectually contemptible propaganda efforts like this panel, Kupperman, along with Brian jenkins, is one of the "moderates" among the establishment terrorism experts. He appears distinctly uncomfortable in situations where he is pressed to acknowledge Western involvement in terrorism, and even though he cannot admit such involvement, he concedes that the claims of others might have some merit! In addition, his claims of Soviet involvement in terrorism are less strident than those of most of his confreres in the industry; he does not identify all liberation movements as terrorist; and while he does get carried away in times of hysteria, sometimes supporting "surgical strikes" on terrorists,(47) he often argues for restraint. Still, it is important to recognize that this "moderation" is relative, and that Kupperman never departs from Western semantics, the Western model, and apologetics for Western practice.
Michael Ledeen has long been associated with CSIS and was one of the founding organizers of JINSA. During the Reagan years, Ledeen moved into the higher circles of power, serving as Secretary of State Haig's advisor and agent in Italy, as a consultant on terrorism, and playing a role in both the Bulgarian connection case and the Iran-contra affair. With these connections, Ledeen had exceptional media exposure, appearing on ABC's "Nightline" and "This Week with David Brinkley," PBS's "MacNeill Lehrer Newshour," and CNN's "Crossfire." He has also written op ed columns and articles for numerous magazines and newspapers and edited the 'Washington Quarterly' (published by CSIS) prior to going to work for Haig.
Ledeen's academic career came to an end when he was denied tenure at Washington University in St. Louis in 1972 for, among other reasons, plagiarism. (57) During the 1970s, he worked as a journalist in Italy with 'II Giornale Nuovo', a right-wing newspaper reputedly controlled by the CIA. (58) During this Italian stint he collaborated regularly with Claire Sterling in anticommunist propaganda closely tied to ongoing U.S. interventionist strategies.(59) In 1980 he entered into a collaboration with Francesco Pazienza, an agent of the Italian secret service (SISMI) and a member of Rome's extreme right-wing Masonic Lodge, P2 (Propaganda Due), headed by the fascist Licio Gelli. In an Italian criminal court in 1985, Pazienza was judged guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of criminals and terrorists, among other offenses. Indeed, according to the findings of the court, Pazienza falsified information about the Bologna bombing in order to divert attention away from the real (right-wing) terrorists who had staged the attack. Ledeen is identified in the court documents as an agent of SISMI, possibly placed on their payroll by Pazienza himself. Ledeen collected money for his services to SISMI, which included "risk assessment," the training of Italian intelligence agents, and providing reports on terrorism to the Italian government.(60) Pazienza and Ledeen worked together in the so-called Billygate affair during the 1980 presidential campaign. luring Jimmy Carter's brother into a compromising relationship with Qaddafi (this according to prosecuting Judge Domenico Sica). During the Reagan transition, to quote Italian police official Umberto d'Amato, "there was an interregnum during which relations between Italy and the United States were carried on in the persons of the duo Pazienza-Ledeen." (61) Later, the pair were important participants in the creation of the Bulgarian plot to kill the pope, a story that succeeded in gulling most of the major media in the West.
Ledeen has moved within the power structure and between Western governments according to opportunity, for personal advantage and perhaps also in pursuit of political ends that are not entirely clear. Although serving as a loyal agent of the U.S. state in Italy in the 1970s, his service in the Billygate affair was to the Republican party. He was on the payroll of the Italian secret service agency SISMI in the early 1980s, but his manipulations in Italy caused the new head of SISMI to declare before Parliament in 1984 that Ledeen was an "intriguer" and unwelcome in Italy. (62) His attachment to Israel, reflected in his JINSA connection, may have influenced his pursuit of the hostage deal with Iran (Israel favored such a transaction), and his former boss in the Pentagon, Noel Koch, asserts that while Ledeen was in Italy the CIA station chief there took him to be "an agent of influence of a foreign government."(63)
In articles written for 'Commentary' and the 'New Republic', Ledeen argued in favor of U.S. support for right-wing terrorists ("resistance forces") such as UNITA and the Nicaraguan contras, and claimed that the Soviets had aligned themselves with the Mafia in order to use drug money to support international terrorism. In the first piece, entitled "Fighting Back;" Ledeen urged the U.S. government to assassinate selected leaders of the Sandinista, Cuban, East German, Libyan and Palestinian armed forces as a "counterterrorism" measure.(64) In "K.G.B. Connections," after repeating the oft-told tae of the Bulgarian plot to kill the pope, Ledeen asserted that the Soviets were working with drug smugglers because they are "alarmingly short of hard cash these days": "Yuri Andropov's old organization, the K.G.B., has apparently become a major backer of drug smugglers, arms runners, and terrorists. . . ."(65) And all of this without a shred of evidence to support his charges.
Ledeen's writings on terrorism, as exemplified by the examples above, are intellectually negligible and entirely opportunistic. (66) His superior in the government, Noel Koch, who hired him as an expert consultant on terrorism at the urging of Reagan officials, described his work on the subject as "transparent crap." Not only did the head of SISMI denounce him as an intriguer. but the authors of the Tower Commission Report concluded that the CIA should permanently terminate its relationship with Ledeen and his associate, Ghorbanifar. All of this, however, has not interfered with his status as a terrorism expert for the U.S. mass media. His connections are still potent, the right-wing and Israeli lobby are fond of him, he is glib and his "transparent crap" is therefore acceptable.
Head of the Washington. D.C.-based Institute on Terrorism and Subnational Conflict, Livingstone is the terrorism consultant for ABC-TV's "20/20" and has appeared frequently on "Nightline;' the "MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour;' and other national TV programs as an expert on terrorism. He is also currently a regular contributor (with David Halevy) to the right-wing mercenary magazine 'Soldier of Fortune'. Following the U.S. Navy's destruction of the Iranian civilian airliner IAF -655 on July 3, 1988, Livingstone appeared on local television news in Washington and in interviews reported in the national press, expounding the view that the flight had very possibly been a kamikaze mission to destroy the U.S.S. Vincennes, and that the nude bodies hauled out of the gulf's waters were probably corpses of young men killed in the Iraq-Iran war, planted in the fuselage by the Iranians to heighten the effect and turn world opinion against the United States. (67)
Livingstone also exercised his talent for disinformation in the story of Israel's assassination of the PLO's Abu Jihad. In the June 1988 edition of 'The Washingtonian,' Livingstone and David Halevy, identified as a one-time member of Israel's "special-opentions community," coauthored an article in which they quite literally rewrote the account of the killing of Abu Jihad. They alleged that the PLO commander died in bed rather than in his study, which was found covered with blood after the shooting. As Faris Bouhafa of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee contended in a letter of response published in the July issue, the Livingstone-Halevy article contained serious inaccuracies. "The videotapes [of the aftermath] are available," wrote Bouhafa, "and they constitute the most damaging evidence that 'The Killing of Abu Jihad' is sloppy journalism or an attempt by two individuals with well-known connections to Israeli intelligence to grandstand for Israel at the expense of truth." The authors claimed. in turn, that the version offered by the victim's wife, Um Jihad, was a "fabrication" designed to save her husband "from the dishonor of having died in bed." They failed to address the issue of the bloodied study in Abu Jihad's home or to provide evidence for their charge. Perhaps this should be expected from a man who serves as a technical consultant for the CBS series "The Equalizer;' and who has stated that he hopes someday to write fiction.
Like Michael Ledeen, Livingstone recognized opportunity in the political environment of the 1980s and took advantage of it. In an interview given to the 'Los Angeles Times', Livingstone noted that antiterrorism "is the fastest growing industry in America." It has seemingly proved quite lucrative for him, for he charges what reporter Myra MacPherson describes as "handsome" fees for lectures and seminars provided for "kidnap-fearful corporate executives."(68) Livingstone, oddly enough, had to overcome a background of apparent "softness" on communism before achieving his status as a successful entrepreneur serving the terrorism market. In June 1981 the right-wing newspaper Human Events reported that "knowledgeable anti-Communists" were disturbed at the report that Livingstone was being considered to head the State Department's Office for Combatting Terrorism. Their concern was over his earlier record of opposition to the Vietnam War, and reports that even in the 1970s he had harshly criticized efforts to smear peace groups as dominated by Marxist-Leninists. Livingstone assured these critics that "age and experience" had transformed him into a true-blooded and "relentless opponent of Soviet-inspired terrorism."(69)
Livingstone has struggled hard to overcome this legacy of softness. In an article entitled "Death Squads;' published in Evron Kirkpatrick's journal, 'World Affairs' (Winter, 1983-84), Livingstone chided the Salvadoran paramilitary forces for neglecting to dump the bodies of their victims in the ocean rather than on the streets. He also claimed falsely that Latin American death squads originally emerged as a simple response to left-wing violence. In any case. according to Livingstone, we "should not wring our hands over this problem." He has also made a convenient adjustment on the matter of Soviet responsibility for world terrorism. Despite a December 1980 article in 'Army', in which he dismissed the Soviet network theory as a far-right fabrication with little if any evidence to support it, in his 1982 book, 'The War Against Terrorism', Livingstone claims that the USSR, "by means of its training, indoctrination, and other support activities, has managed slowly, relentlessly to take over-from within-most of the world's major terrorist movements." (70). In support of this thesis, Livingstone cites no less an authority than Ray Cline.
Livingstone also has become an aggressive proponent of the use of preemptive retaliation and attacks against so-called terrorist states, such as Libya. In a press conference held in Boston on January 4, 1986, Livingstone (identified by a 'Boston Globe' reporter as an "antiterrorism adviser to President Reagan") said that governments that supported "anti-American terrorism" should be "targeted for destruction" and that they should be covertly destabilized. (7l) Likewise, he told the 'Los Angeles Times', "We should have killed the ayatollah" and that, while Somoza may have been a "bad guy. . . these guys [the Sandinistas] are worse."(72)
In addition to adjusting his opinions to market demand, Livingstone has built his connections to the political right. For example, he has served as an "unofficial" advisor to Oliver North and proved himself to be one of North's staunchest supporters. (73) This new connection was what may have led the "secret government" to attempt to use Livingstone's Institute on Terrorism and Subnational Conflict as a conduit for contra funding. This institute was identified as one of several front organizations used by Carl Russell "Spitz" Channell and Richard R. Miller to convey money illegally, to the contras, according to an unclassified internal memo from International Business Communications dated February 16, 1987, and included as evidence in the 'Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair'(74) The memorandum disclosed that Livingstone's institute was to have received $75,000 from Channell and Miller on June 13, 1986.(75)
Livingstone once served as an adjunct professor in Georgetown University's National Security Studies Program, which was the institutional academic wing of ASC. In 1977, ASC had contributed $386,000 to Georgetown to establish a Center for International Security Studies, empowered to offer graduate degrees in national security studies. (76) In 1983, however, Georgetown severed its ties at ASC, citing that organization's misuse of its connections to the university for promotional and fund-raising purposes.(77) Livingstone is a member of ASC's national strategy board. He has also been an official of the Washington lobbying firm Gray and Company, and a consultant to several risk assessment and security management firms, including Jaycor, SRI International, McGeorge and Associates, and Joseph A. Capucci Associates. Jaycor's vice-president, Joseph Douglass, coauthored Livingstone's 1987 study, 'America the. Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Warfare'. In addition to his book 'The War Against Terrorism' and the volume coauthored with Douglass, Livingstone has also edited two volumes with Terrell Arnold, former deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism.
Merari has been head of terrorism studies at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University in Israel since 1979 and has written extensively on the subject. In Israel, it is hard to separate the private and governmental sectors of the terrorism industry; even more than in the other Western countries they have a symbiotic relationship, working together on a common enterprise. The head of Merari's center is a former chief of Israeli intelligence, and the conferences staged by the center regularly include a high proportion of government participants. For all of these participants there is only one relevant terrorism — Palestinian — and the issue is how to control it within the political assumptions of Israeli state policy.
Merari shares all of these premises and concerns, and his work is confined within narrow ideological bounds. In writings extending beyond the Palestinian question, terrorists are identified strictly within the Western model and the demands of Western power. Thus, for Merari the ANC and SWAPO are terrorist organizations, but UNITA and RENAMO are not. (78) In his book with Shlomi Elad, 'The International Dimension of Palestinian Terrorism,'(79) and in his introduction to the Jaffee Center volume 'On Terrorism and bombatting Terrorism,' (80) Merari always describes Israeli actions as "responsive" or "retaliatory." He does point out that they often have had an intent of deterrence "through punishment," but this is never "terrorism." The many thousands of victims of this "retaliatory" punishment are not accorded much sympathy by Merari, who goes so far as to describe the punishment as "painful Israeli strikes over several years."(81) Presumably, the pain refers to the condition of the victims, although it may be the pain of the Israelis who are compelled to inflict the punishment that elicits this word.
Despite careful accounts of the calculations and actions of Israeli and PLO strategists, Merari's bias causes him to make statements that are easily refutable from well-known evidence. For example, he states that "the Palestinian hijacking of an EI Al plane to Algiers on July 22, 1968, was the first time hijacking was used for the express purpose of political blackmail".(82) Merari is surely aware of the fact that in December 1954 the Israeli military seized a Syrian civilian airliner to obtain hostages to bargain for Israeli soldiers held by Syria. The diary of former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett mentions that he was told by the U.S. State Department that "our action was without precedent in the history of international practice."(83) Merari also states that the Palestinians "introduced" the practice of "blowing up aircraft" in flight.(84) Again, among other well-known cases, a Communist Chinese aircraft flying from Hong Kong to Bandung, Indonesia, was blown up in April 1955, killing ten Chinese diplomats and a crew. Of course, in Western discourse terrorist acts are not carried out against the Communist powers, so that this incident may be expunged from history. But the quality of Merari's scholarship is evident in these falsifications of history.
Moss has been a major figure in the organization of terrorism think tanks and in the dissemination of the right-wing version of the Western model of terrorism. In fact, as Fred Landis has pointed out, "For a price, Moss would go to Rhodesia, South Africa, Iran, and Nicaragua and tailor his standard KGB plot to local circumstances, thereby justifying repression of the political opposition and denial of human rights."(85)
Moss was associated with Brian Crozier in both the Free World Forum and ISC, CIA-sponsored propaganda operations in Great Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the early 1970s he helped to organize a group of Chilean journalists in the Institute of General Studies, a CIA-controlled think tank in Santiago that, among other functions, served as a conduit for CIA disinformation targeted at the Chilean military.(86) In March 1973, the Chilean weekly magazine 'SEPA' carried a cover story by Moss entitled "An English Recipe for Chile-Military Control" Moss was identified as a "British sociologist."(87) Like Crozier, Moss was also long associated with 'The Economist', the London-based newspaper that has traditionally toadied to American power and provided places as news reporters for CIA and British intelligence agents. (88)
Moss obtained brief notoriety when it was disclosed that a book he wrote in the early 1970s entitled 'Chile's Marxist Experiment', which was subsequently purchased in bulk by Pinochet, had been planned, outlined, and all but written by the CIA itself, which paid for Moss's travel to and from Chile and carefully edited each draft. (89) When it was discovered that 'Chile's Marxist Experiment' had been published in the United States as well, in clear violation of laws prohibiting domestic CIA propaganda operations, an investigation was launched by Representative Don Edwards of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. (90)
During the latter years of his rule, Somoza secretly purchased the Nicaraguan weekly newsmagazine 'Vision' in an effort to enhance his image. The editor selected by Somoza, at £20,000 per year, was Robert Moss. In 1977, Moss extended his service to the beleagered Ian Smith regime of Rhodesia. On February 20, 1977, the London 'Daily Telegraph' featured a Moss article, "Moscow's Next Target in Africa," which claimed that British and American insistence on including the guerrillas in a Rhodesian settlement package was a "prescription for another Marxist dictatorship, which will provide the base for black guerrillas and Soviet proxy troops to attack the ultimate target, South Africa." A few days later a full-page ad sponsored by the South African government, through a front group called the "Club of Ten;' (91) reproduced Moss's article in full-page ads that appeared in major papers in Great Britain and the United States.
Moss extended a similar service to the shah of Iran, who reciprocated this assistance. A former shah aide in the Iranian press office, Siamak Zandt, claimed in 1979 that "substantial gifts" had been given by the shah to friendly reporters. Along with Arnaud de Borchgrave, who Zandt said received a matched pair of rugs worth $10,000 each, Zandt
"named a number of Europeans as recipients of expense money, free plane tickets, lavish hotel accommodations and gifts. Among them, he said, was Robert Moss. Moss is the more controversial, having written a book about Chile that was financed by one of the Central Intelligence Agency's front organizations." (92)
Moss and de Borchgrave have worked closely together, most notably in coauthoring two spy thrillers — 'The Spike' and 'Monimbo'. These books are illustrations of an important and underrated genre of propaganda and disinformation extensively used by the organized right. (William Buckley, Jr., alone, has published six spy thrillers; Crozier has published one, entitled 'The Andropov Deception'.) The genre allows claims that the authors might have difficulty proving by an appeal to evidence to be offered in dramatic form and presented as true-to-life fiction. The main theme of The Spike is that the KGB has penetrated the American media, passing along its lies through naive liberals, who are barely concealed representations of Seymour Hersh, David Halberstam, and others. This is a favorite disinformation theme of the extreme right, made lifelike and validated for true believers through the vehicle of fiction. Meanwhile, it is the KGB that plants the story that the hero of 'The Spike' has received gifts from a nasty dictator — thus the shah's real gifts to de Borchgrave and Moss are transformed into "KGB propaganda," again without the need of evidence. Fred Landis wrote in 1980: "'The Spike' unites into a coherent whole each and every single piece of disinfprmation spread by these [right-wing] think tanks over the last four years." (93) He points out that the book was published simultaneously in five countries, with a major publicity campaign, and with vocal public endorsement from current and former CIA officials. The themes of 'The Spike' describe what the right wing believes and wants to get over to the public. If it has to be done in fictional form, so be it.
Moss has other connections of interest. Together with de Borchgrave and Birchite John Rees, who headed Mid-Atlantic Research Associates, a risk assessment and advisory firm, Moss coedited a publication entitled 'Early Warning' [...]. He also once helped operate an "independent news service" in Washington, D.C., called Capitol Information Service. His colleague at Capitol was Victor Fediay of the Hale Foundation, with whom Moss worked in a plan to destabilize the Azores [...].
A featured speaker at the 1979 Jonathan Institute conference, Moss delivered the desired message and more. The Soviet Union was everywhere trying to undermine the West, and the PLO was its favorite agent. As Khomeini was in the news in July 1979, Moss suggested that his success was a result of Soviet, Libyan, and PLO subversion of the shah. He also claimed that "a special PLO unit — whose members were selected by the KGB residencies in Baghdad and Beirut for specialist training in security techniques in the USSR — now functions as the nucleus of a new secret police, a revolutionary SAVAK."(94) As the conference aim was to show that the PLO and Soviets were everywhere, Moss found them even in Iran. This was too much even for the friendly reporters present in Jerusalem. Several of them challenged Moss, demanded evidence, and requested a special press conference with Moss the following day. Moss refused, citing the confidentiality of his sources and the sensitivity of intelligence data.(95)
In spite of Moss's reputation as an intellectual mercenary and disinformationist, and the fact that the 'New York Times's' own London news service had exposed Moss's hidden service to both the CIA and the shah just one year earlier, the Times featured his article "Terror: A Soviet Export" in their Sunday 'Magazine' for November 2, 1980. The essay, which reproduced information culled from the Jonathan Institute conference, was little more than a string of unsubstantiated allegations. But the propaganda value of the message overrode the compromised character of the source and the absence of any supporting evidence for the claims, as was true of the Times's use of Claire Sterling.(96)
Sterling is a veteran journalist based in Italy, who worked for the 'The Reporter' magazine, and after its demise, for other publications. The 'Reporter' was a committed Cold War journal, and Sterling fitted in well during her years there and in the cold war struggles of the 1970s, as we indicated earlier. In fact, in testimony before the Italian Parliamentary Commission looking into the P-2 scandal, the conservative Italian academician Franco Ferracuti stated that in the course of soliciting him for research service in 1979, Michael Ledeen told him that Sterling functioned as a "courier" between the Italian intelligence agency SISDE and CSIS (which, as we have seen, has had extensive links to the CIA and other branches of the U.S. government).(97) Sterling rose to fame and a new outreach in the 1980s, first with the publication of 'The Terror Network' in 1981, and then with a 'Reader's Digest' article, "The Plot to Kill the Pope" (September 1982), and a book, The 'Time of the Assassins' (1983), the last two of which proclaimed Soviet-Bulgarian responsibility for the May 1981 assassination attempt against the pope.
'The Terror Network' pursued in detail the central theme of the Jonathan Institute conference of 1979 and the official Israeli line. It also fitted extremely well the new Reagan administration effort to portray the Soviet Union as a villain and backer of "international terrorism." Important high officials of the new administration loved Sterling; Alexander Haig had copies distributed within the State Department, and William Casey flaunted Sterling's achievement before his subordinates. [B]oth Haig and Casey were perturbed to discover that the State Department and CIA experts found Sterling's book not only highly unreliable but based in large part on CIA disinformation "blown back" via Sterling.
In books and interviews, Sterling castigated the U.S. government and especially the CIA for its cowardice in rejecting the Soviet network theory and its expressions of doubt about Soviet involvement in the assassination attempt against the pope. Despite these denunciations, the CIA went to special pains to help her out when she was sued under French law for slander.(98) Her denunciations of the CIA made it appear "moderate,' so that debates on these issues could be limited to the balanced offering of the slightly exuberant Sterling and the CIA (or other "moderates" like Jenkins or Kupperman).
Sterling's message had several components. Fundamental was the view that the West is under attack and is the victim of something called terrorism, which she does not define. The attacker is the Soviet Union, aiming to "destabilize" the "democracies." While the Soviet Union does not absolutely control all of the terrorist movements, it supports and encourages them, and they all "come to see themselves as elite battalions in a worldwide Army of Communist Combat."(99) Claire Sterling does not talk much about the underlying conditions that make for guerrilla movements, nor does she ever refer to South African actions as terrorist. Any brutalities that might be designated state terrorism are explained away as reactions to retail and guerrilla terrorists who have brought state violence (never "terror") on themselves. Right-wing terror is entirely outside her province, and guerrilla movements like the ANC are transformed into antagonists of the West by exclusive attention to Soviet support, no matter how marginal, belated, and irrelevant to any real issue.
In brief, Sterling expounds the right-wing version of the Western establishment model of terrorism. Her policy pronouncements have tended to be on the moderate side, in contrast with those of Alexander, Cline, Livingstone, and Moss, but this may be to give her more credibility in getting over her hard-line views on the terrorist threat and its clear locus in the Soviet Union. She has left it to others to draw the appropriately "forward" policy conclusions.
Sterling's book 'The Terror Network' failed to provide definitions of or quantitative evidence on terrorism, relying instead upon selective and highly dramatized stories, and its claims are, for the most part, supported by citations to unverifiable intelligence sources. (100) Many of these claims are ludicrous and reflect a gullibility and willingness to believe anything that supports strongly held preconceptions. Sterling accepts stories from the South African police, the military regime of Argentina, and Israeli intelligence at face value. (101) She also selects and suppresses evidence to the convenience of her argument.(102) The heart of her proof of a Soviet conspiracy in 'The Terror Network' is the testimony of Jan Sejna, a Czech defector, who left "a jump ahead of the invading Soviet army" in 1968.(103) In fact, Sejna was a Stalinist, closely associated with the pre-Czech "spring" dictator Novotny, and he fled long before the Soviet army came to Czechoslovakia. His evidence of a Soviet network was taken from a document prepared by the CIA years before to test Sejna's honesty; he failed the test, but the "evidence" in the forged test document turned up as the heart of Sterling's work. (104)
The underlying lack of judgment and the fanatical quality of Sterling's world-view may also be seen in her claims that Western intelligence had erected a "Western intelligence" shield to conceal from its public the actual extent of Soviet involvement in terrorism. The reason for this was that it would disturb "detente," which the Reagan administration was allegedly pursuing in 1983-84. (105) She also contended that it was hard to get over the truth in the West on the shooting of the pope because of the force of Soviet propaganda, most notably in their issuance of a pamphlet on the case by Iona Andronov. To our knowledge, this pamphlet has never been cited in the Western media except in derogatory references by Sterling and Henze, and its claims have never been acknowledged as worthy of discussion.
Sterling's dependence on Sejna and its significance, and the vast array of other evidence of her deficiencies as an analyst of terrorism, are not discussed in the Western mass media and have absolutely no impact on her perceived qualifications and credibility. She is authenticated by her message and the approval of the terrorism establishment. Even the industry "scholar," Walter Laqueur, reviewing her 'Terror Network' in the 'Wall Street Journal', explains that while she perhaps overrates the importance of terrorism and its inexorable advance, her book is "enlightening," presents a "mind boggling mass of details" (which Laqueur does not question in any way), and "should be warmly welcomed."(106)
