Conrad Black's Sinister Agenda


A newspaper proprietor vilifying his staff is one thing; trying to influence world events is another


By Lord Gilmour


Over the last hundred years, Britain has not been lucky in its newspaper proprietors. They have mostly been megalomaniac, mischievous, interfering, and often well to the right of even right-wing Conservatives. There have, of course, been some exceptions. The Canadian Lord Thomson of Fleet was certainly one; the Canadian Conrad Black is certainly not another.

A few months ago, The Independent's Robert Fisk, this country's leading Middle East journalist, complained of being vilified for telling the truth about the Palestinians. But at least he was not vilified by The Independent's owner for doing so. Conrad Black, however, who owns The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator in Britain, and hundreds of papers in Canada, the United States, Israel and other places, has taken to vilifying his staff for daring to criticise Israel's lethal and wholly disproportionate violence in Palestine.

A few weeks ago, Taki, one of The Spectator's columnists, wrote a wholly innocuous column in which, referring to Israel, he talked about "those nice guys who attack rock- throwing youths with armour-piercing missiles". There was, in fact, nothing to complain about in the article, but if Mr Black did not like it, he could have picked up the telephone and conveyed his displeasure or he could have sent Taki a note. Unfortunately, Black fancies himself as a writer - mistakenly, as his writing is ponderous and bombastic - and decided to write an article in The Spectator fatuously accusing Taki of being anti-Semitic, and alleging that what he had written was "almost worthy of Goebbels''. Black also claimed that "most of the relevant sections of the BBC, Independent, Guardian, Evening Standard and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are rabidly anti-Israel".

From all this it can be gathered that Mr Black is not a very good judge of these matters. Both he and his wife are almost fanatical, if under-informed, Zionists, whose credo is "My Israel right or wrong'', and who regard any criticism of that country as a demonstration of fierce anti-Israeli bias.

A decade ago, Black, to the great detriment of Israel, bought The Jerusalem Post and turned what had been a fine liberal Zionist paper into what a distinguished member of the British Jewish community called "one of the most rabid Jewish publications in the English language".

I wrote a letter to The Spectator defending Taki and reminding its readers of what Black had done to The Jerusalem Post. This so enraged Mr Black that he was even more grotesquely abusive and defamatory to me than he had previously been to Taki. For all his editors, and many other people employed by his Group, the sight of Black making such an exhibition of himself must be deeply embarrassing, but there is little they can do about it.

Black's defective grasp of proper proprietorial behaviour was further revealed in his treatment of a letter to The Spectator from three distinguished writers - William Dalrymple, Piers Paul Read and A N Wilson - who pointed out that "under Black's proprietorship, serious, critical reporting of Israel is no longer tolerated in the Telegraph Group". That is certainly true, and it is not the fault of the journalists on the spot or in London.

That letter was eloquent and cogent, but it contained one error. Well before publication, the authors recognised the error and telephoned The Spectator to correct it. They were told that Conrad Black had already written an answer underneath their letter, so it could not be corrected or withdrawn. That was a shameful decision, since Black should not have written anything underneath their letter; he should have sent a letter to the editor the following week. And, much more importantly, for a proprietor to insist on an error appearing in his paper because, proud of having detected it, he wants to point it out, is bizarre, childish and unethical.

Black's behaviour in this controversy clearly has wider implications. As Robert Fisk pointed out in his article in December, no newspaper in America, except for some very small ones, now dares to put the Palestinian side of the case. They are all in thrall to Israel, and the chief reason why they are in such an ignominious position is that the Israeli lobby has succeeded in equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. That, of course, is pernicious nonsense, as well as being what Robert Fisk has called "McCarthyism".

Many decent Israelis are severely critical of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. Indeed, there is more enlightened comment on the Palestinians' plight in the Israeli press than there is in the American. Even so, although the pretence that critics of Israel are anti-Semites is a transparent fraud, it has proved an enormously successful blackmailing tool. Americans are so frightened of being labelled anti-Semitic that they keep quiet and allow the Israeli lobby a free run.

The most sinister feature of Black's recent activity is that he is seeking to reproduce that situation in this country. He is not only stamping out dissent in his own camp, he is also trying to stop the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, and the Evening Standard telling the truth about Palestine, and hoping to force the Foreign and Commonwealth Office into weak compliance with Israeli wishes.

But, strong as it is, the Israeli lobby is much weaker over here than it is in America, and many people in Britain are far better informed about what is actually happening to the Palestinians than they are in the United States.

Fortunately, therefore, Conrad Black will fail. But the attempt does him no credit.

Lord Gilmour is a former editor and proprietor of 'The Spectator' and a former foreign office minister in Margaret Thatcher's government

See also..

Perle, nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness" because of his nuclear Armageddon views during the Cold War, is, more importantly, an asset of Conrad Black's Hollinger International, Inc., which grew out of British Empire Security Coordinator William Stephenson's efforts to secure arms for Britain during World War II. At present, Hollinger owns the British Tory Party-linked Telegraph PLC, whose International Advisory Board is headed by former British Prime Minister, now Lady Margaret Thatcher. Hollinger also owns the Jerusalem Post, another war-mongering press outlet.

The "heavy hitters" on the Defense Policy Board are the worst of the Anglo-American-Israeli geopolitical fanatics from the last several decades, including: former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who is also a member of Hollinger's International Advisory Board; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; former Clinton Administration Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey; former Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. David E. Jeremiah; former Vice President Dan Quayle; former Defense and Energy Secretary James R. Schlesinger; and former President Carter's Defense Secretary Harold Brown.

Though Perle was only recently appointed to head the Defense Policy Board, he and Wolfowitz have been collaborators for more than two decades, as agents-of-influence of the right-wing Israeli war faction. In 1985, when it was clear that Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American convicted that year of spying for Israel, could not have been working alone in stealing such high-level U.S. secrets for Israel to sell to the Soviet Union, top-level intelligence officials told EIR that an entire "X Committee" of high-level U.S. officials, was being investigated. Wolfowitz and Perle were on the list of "X Committee" suspects, and Israeli spying against the United States was so thick that investigators told EIR they had found "not moles, but entire molehills." Pollard and his Israeli defenders later claimed that Pollard "had to" spy against the United States because the Americans were soft on Iraq and other Arab countries.

The "Wolfowitz cabal" is deterimined to push the United States in the direction of the most dangerous Israeli right-wing policy, including a possible Israeli nuclear attack on an Arab state. They are implementers of the very "breakaway ally" scenario about which 2004 Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche warned in his statement of Oct. 12 (see International).

Plan B: Wagging the Dog
The "Wolfowitz cabal" is out to destroy any potential for a Middle East peace, and simultaneously is determined to crush Eurasian economic development centered around cooperation among Europe, Russia, and China. After being rebuffed after the marathon Defense Policy Board meetings, the Wolfowitz cabal set various operations in motion to plant propaganda stories, falsify reports of U.S. policy, and carry out other maneuvers, whereby the tail would "wag the dog." Unapproved statements are made by cabal members, interviews misrepresenting U.S. policy are planted around the globe, and intelligence reports are altered or manufactured to further the policy goals.

The pattern is becoming crystal clear.

In the first such instance, shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, Wolfowitz declared that the United States will "end states harboring terrorism," and insisted that under the principle of self-defense, the United States could act alone, without the United Nations, or cooperation from any other country. He wanted to establish the "doctrine" that the United States would hit a country "anywhere, anytime" based on secret evidence. But, Wolfowitz was forced to retract his statements, in a visible rift with the White House. Some days later, NATO allies at its Brussels headquarters snubbed Wolfowitz, and refused to formalize cooperation with the United States under NATO agreements at a meeting where Wolfowitz represented the Bush Administration.

In the same vein, on Oct. 7, the day the Afghanistan bombings began, the cabal again attempted to provoke a rift between the United States and members of the UN Security Council, especially Russia and China, by altering the text of a letter from U.S. Ambassador to the UN John D. Negroponte. (Not coincidentally, Negroponte was a notorious insider in the Iran-Contra operation, who was accused of collaborating with narcotics-linked military death squads in Honduras in the 1980s.) The changes in the letter were made without notifying Negroponte's boss, Secretary of State Powell............

 http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2001/2841wolfowitz.html