Mrs. Thatcher and the CIA

...He seemed, suddenly, to delight in posing as a caricature of what an anti-American propagandist might imagine a CIA propagandist to be...

...But it is no less depressing that the CIA should retain so crude a publicist in charge of one of its information services...

...Color Schemes Ye olde Englishe principle of "No taxation without representation"?which Americans once successfully upheld against an ignorant Anglo-German monarch—does not apply in France...

...The gentlemen in unesco would probably blame Western TV films...

...There has been talk in some Conservative and Right-wing circles of the need to draw up a repatriation scheme that would offer "colored" immigrants a free ticket home and a golden —well, paper—handshake...

...Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party's leader, he was attending the first congress of the Union of the Democratic Center (UCD), the pragmatic liberal-conservative Spanish government party led by Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez...

...in many, the vagina is sewn up with thorns...

...He denounced Picasso as worthless and un-talented...

...But few of Britain's brown and black citizens are eager to return to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh...

...Pressed for an explanation, the British Conservative visitor said: "Well, a little over 18 months ago the question arose: Which Spanish party should we [British Conservatives] give moral support to...

...People do change their political shirts on joining secret agencies, I know, if their new job requires them to...

...I think we've been proved right...

...Politically, he seemed to be in the liberal center...

...When Philby was recruited by Soviet Intelligence he dropped his Communist friends, took up with the Anglo-German fellowship and cultivated a Right-wing image...

...At the unesco conference, Arab delegates were again assailing Israel, and the Soviet Union was again trying to wedge the thin end of its conception of journalism into a fatuous but dangerous "Declaration of Principles" on information media...

...It was a good speech, and Moss may have no CIA ties...

...When Margaret made her tough foreign-policy speech I applauded...

...and Latin America by Chile's post-Allende military junta...

...Those of us who knew a bit about Spain were mostly in favor of Suarez' team...

...While unesco was in spate, the Black Women's Movement (Mouve-ment des Femmes noires) was holding a more important conference in another part of Paris to protest "the mutilation, beating and exploitation, including forcible prostitution" to which women are apt to be subjected in a long list of African and Mideastern countries...

...Rather surprisingly, the move was foiled by the adoption of a compromise declaration after Western countries pledged financial aid and training for Third World journalists...

...During the CIA's $4.3-million propaganda campaign against the Left-wing Allende goverment in Chile, Robert Moss had written much anti-Allende material, including a book—commissioned by FWF—that was distributed free in Britain, the U.S...

...Some Thirdworlders who supported the Soviets complained: "There's too much Western news in our media...

...After initially denying FWF's connection with the CIA, Crozier said in December 1976 that he resented CIA influence in FWF...

...Suarez and Co...

...It was still only a loose alliance but it was respectable, had the King's blessing, and promised to build democracy and keep clear of both extremes...

...But the choice is made by Third World editors, often because governmental and other local pressures discourage them from discussing domestic scandals, crimes and problems...

...It would be depressing to think he felt obliged to go to such an extreme in order to please his paymasters...

...On taking over FWF he set about acquiring ultraconservative credentials...

...And what a laughing stock we should now be if we had backed Fraga, whose party is a flop...

...If it did, the Left might have won this year's French elections, according to social workers and political militants in touch with France's big immigrant communities...

...Still, one doesn't want the party leader—the next prime minister, all being well—exposed to even the slightest suspicion of manipulation by the CI A, the Pinochet lobby or anyone else...

...Black Agony The Kulturkampf season reopened last month in the unesco building in Paris...

...Nor is it Western influence that inhibits free discussion of the discrimination, humiliation and sometimes physical abuse many African and Mideast em societies inflict on women...

...The almost even balance of the Labor and Conservative parties means that the next election could be decided by regional and racial factors—mainly by Labor's success or failure in courting the Welsh nationalists and immigrants...

...Religion and tradition inflict such agonies on incalculable thousands of adolescent girls every year...

...Many bright Tories now argue (1) that small businessmen in the immigrant communities are instinctive Conservatives, and (2) that the family-centered loyalties of the majority of Indian and Pakistani workers—who tend to aspire to set up a family business—would incline them toward Conservative rather than Socialist principles if only someone would take the trouble to explain Conservatism to them...

...In most cases the clitoris is excised...

...He joined the council of the Right-wing National Association whose director is Robert Moss and which alleges that Britain is being "So-vietized" by its Labor government and trade unions...

...Still, I want to believe that Crozier was sincere in his Right-wing role...

...If they have to choose between a scandal in the West and a disaster nearer home, our press and TV will play up the Western story...

...In Britain, the right to vote is acquired by residence, and the immigrant vote is already so important that some Labor candidates publish leaflets in Hindustani, Urdu and other exotic languages...

...Fraga, as you know, had been Spanish ambassador in London and had put on a great act, pretending to be a frustrated liberal although he'd spent most of his adult life seving the dictatorship...

...What worried thoughtful people most, though, was the fact that the articles in the two Telegraphs urging us to support Fraga were signed by Brian Crozier and Robert Moss...

...Much of the dirty and heavy work in France is done by Algerians, black Africans and Portuguese...

...He repeated the Nazi allegation that Guernica had been destroyed not by German aircraft but by its Basque defenders—and he did so at a time when even Franco's officials were beginning to admit the truth...

...The British Conservative I have quoted concluded: "Even those of us who agree with the Americans on most things don't like to feel the CIA considers us coolies...

...But while we were still thinking about it the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph [the leading Tory papers] suddenly went off their heads and published articles on their editorial pages proclaiming that 'for Margaret Thatcher's Tories the party to support can only be the Popular Alliance,' led by Fraga Iribarne...

...In the past most of Britain's Indians, Pakistanis and Jamaicans voted for Labor candidates because they seemed more concerned about the immigrants' welfare than conservatives...

...Having it both ways is Crozier's stock in trade," wrote Joseph Lelyveld of the New York Times the same month...

...Crozier's lurch to the right was almost ostentatious...

...Conservative attitudes are changing, however...

...The Soviets hoped to weaken news services like Associated Press and Reuter and replace them with regional agencies in the Third World that would be easily intimidated by governments and easily infiltrated by Moscow's friends...

...The only people antics of that kind can serve are the enemies of the United States...

...Brian Crozier had for 10 years been the president of Forum World Features (FWF), a "British" press agency revealed by the Washington Post, the New York Times and the London Guardian to have been largely financed and controlled by the CIA...

...Voting is a matter of nationality in France, not of residence or taxpaying...

...This suits many Portuguese, Algerians and Spaniards whose aim in France is to build up capital in order to buy a house or business back home...

...It is not Western influence that prevents Third World journalists from writing about, say, the vast amounts of money their rulers are salting away in European banks and real estate...

...His Popular Alliance was a museum of nostalgic ex-Francoists...

...He contributed articles to the neofascist Spanish weekly Fuerza Nueva...

...One would have expected the men ultimately responsible for subsidiaries such as FWF to have enough common sense to realize that the kind of man who would revive a Nazi lie and help a magazine dedicated to the destruction of Spain's democratic regime was bound to damage the "company" and delight the extreme Left...

...Although they pay taxes, they are not allowed to vote...

...Until his involvement with FWF, Crozier worked for the London Economist where he won respect as a talented, reliable, hardworking journalist...

...But when I learned it had been drafted by that fellow Moss I sniffed a bit...

...Thatcher assured immigrants that a Tory government would not send them home...

...Particularly horrifying were the reports the conference heard of the hideous practice misleadingly described as female circumcision...

...A scheme of this kind has been adopted in France, where immigrants are encouraged to become emigrants by a repatriation grant of $2,500...

...and at the Conservative Party's congress in October Mrs...

...There's no proof that the pup they were trying to sell us came from a CIA kennel, but who wants to take that kind of risk in politics...

...The Times reported that FWF was designed as a conduit for secret payments to foreign journalists...

...have guided Spain from dictatorship to democracy, and kept the country contented and peaceful: There's less political violence in Suarez' Spain than in Callaghan's UK...