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fbi tagged graham greene as anti-american

brian | 02.12.2002 06:03

i get a hearty laugh out of any us president publically saying they are defenders of freedom and democracy. US has always been a closet tyranny


LONDON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Renowned English novelist Graham Greene, the remake of whose deeply critical tale of the Vietnam War The Quiet American is currently getting rave reviews, was closely watched by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Guardian newspaper, citing documents released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, said on Monday the religion-driven Greene had been tagged as anti-American for his meetings with people such as Cuba's Fidel Castro.

He was also targeted for his friendship with Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega -- another thorn in Washington's side.

"Unsurprisingly, Greene's views on the United States government policies and actions are not flattering," the Guardian quoted one secret U.S. cable as saying.

The newspaper said the declassified documents showed the FBI opened and read Greene's letters at the height of the Cold War when he was refused entry to the United States for having briefly been a member of the Communist Party.

Greene, who died in 1991, was accused by American reviewers of having turned on Britain's transatlantic ally in his 1955 novel the Quiet American, which recounts the duels between a British reporter and an American official in Vietnam who turns out to be planting bombs in Saigon.

The first film fudged the ending to make it acceptable to American audiences. The new version, starring Michael Caine, is more faithful to the book.

Greene himself, who said the novel had more original reporting than any of his other books, questioned how it was that an American photographer happened to be on hand to capture the exact moment of the explosion of one of the bombs.

 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L02235310

brian