The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 9

THE GUARDIAN Monday December 20 1976 ANTHONY TUCKER discusses the nuclear implications of the latest, furry discovery DDI PETER CHIPPINDAL.E and MARTIN WALKER uncover the inside workings of the news agency funded by the Central. Intelligence Agency which operated with British cooperation Only the views we want you to read Half life of a dead and views received the maximum exposure. One magazine which received funds, and which strongly promoted the CIA line, was SEPA, a weekly humour and political magazine aimed specifically at Chilean military oflScers. The front cover of issue No. 113, published on March 20, 1973, carried the large headline "Robert Moss.

An English The chairman of FWF and Director of the Institute foe the Study of Conflict, which acquired the library of FWF, was Mr Brian Crozier, who had preceded Mr Robert Moss, author of "Chile's Marxist Experiment," at the Economist. Forum started its operations in the publishing field in the 1960s, through an arrangement with the publishing house of Seeker and Warburg. The arrangement lasted until 1969, when with three books published it lapsed, mainly because the entered into negotiations with the Taiwan government before a synopsis was even -written. The arrangement was that the Government, because of what FWF's managing director described as the objective nature of the work, would wish to purchase a considerable quantity. The Government decision was to be based on their approval of the typescript.

This kind of arrangement was not foreseen when the Chile book was first commissioned. The idea of a book on Chile was first mooted by Forum in 1971 at a time when the Allende government was in power. It would not have been a likely client. After the book had been mooted it was decided to change the author to Robert Moss. Moss was no stranger to Mr Crozier's operations, having already contributed to publications put out by the Institute for the Study of Conflict.

As late as 1974. shortly before Forum's hurried closure, he was still writing for the news agency side. Two articles he wrote in that year both carried his by-line. One. entitled Brussels centre of subversion described him as Brussels FWF correspondent." It was sub-titled Widespread recruiting by Trotskyite 4th In- shortly after the book had been published, directly from the Chilean Ambassador in London, Mr Kaare Olsen.

It stipulated that the government wanted 9,750 books of which 8,500 were to be sent directly to the Chilean Embassy in Washington labelled "Diplomatic pouch." The fuU retail price, of the order would have been 55.000. but the Chileans obtained their copies at substantially reduced price through negotiating the special order. The publication in Spanish, for sales in Latin America, was negotiated through a different publisher. Gabriela Mistral. This publishing house in Santiago, the largest in Latin America, was bought up by the Chilean National Development Agency, CORFO.

after it fell into financial difficulties. Gabriela Mistral. now wholly owned by the Chilean military junta. published 15,000 copies of Moss's book. At the time of that arrangement the new man who was brought in to supervise the company was Mr Thomas P.

McHale. a Chilean citizen who had before the coup run the books department of the Institute for General Studies in Santiago. The Institute, in the course of 1973. received 75 per cent, of its funds from the CIA. according to the US Senate Committee, and was staffed by what the Committee called CIA collaborators." Mr Robert Moss's good relations with right-wing military regimes in South America were further demonstrated at the beginning of September this year when he was invited to the Argentine and gave a speech at the Air Force headquarters.

He told his audience that the military government had the opportunity to construct a national political model that could serve as an example to the rest of Latin America. Mr Moss refused to make any comment to the Guardian when he was asked for an interview. Mr Brian Crozier said No comment. No answers. No conversation." FORUM WORLD Features appeared to be just another news agency service, supplying to newspapers all over the globe articles ranging from fashion to politics, competently written, professionally produced and attractively priced: But in reality its main purpose was different.

Forum was in the propaganda business. An internal CIA memo to the then Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms, noted as part of its progress report In its first two years Forum World Features has provided the US with a significant means to counter Communist propaganda and has become a respected features service well on the way to a position of prestige in the journalism world." It was the publication of that memorandum (with its hand-written note "run with the knowledge and cooperation of British Intelligence which led to the hurried closure of the agency. But the publicity at the time concentrated solely on the news agency side of Forum and its other, long-term operation went unnoticed. This second operation was to commission, promote and organise the publication of books by authors of whom Forum World Features (FWF) approved. Because of the covert nature of the operation, the publishers would be completely unaware of the CIA connection.

The publication went far beyond Britain. Editions were printed in Spanish and in Japanese to provide an international network of soft propaganda. The owner of FWF in Britain and in the United States is Kern House Enterprises, which is registered in the US state of Delaware, notorious for its easy company rules and already spotlighted as a regular haven for CIA cover companies. One of Kern House's directors. Robert Gene Gately, has since been assigned to Bangkok as CIA station officer.

The accounts for FWF in 1972 noted that if the Kern House subsidy was withdrawn it would seriously damage our financial stranger to Chile. He was sent there as the Economist's correspondent, and soon made a name for himself as one of the most determined foreign journalistic critics of the Marxist government. Moss, like every other journalist who worked in Chile at that time, walked right into the middle of massive propaganda campaign being conducted by the CIA, later to be revealed in the hearings before US Senate investigations, led by Senator Church. It was an operation which was at the time unknown, except to the full-time agents who were put to work in the media field, but one which was to play an important part in the events which led to the downfall of Allende and his replar -ment by the present military regime. Moss himself was to denote in his latest book The Collapse of Democracy The survival of a powerful opposition press and radio network in Chile was crucial to Allende's final defeat it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that this was the nerve centre of the political opposition to Marxism." The scale of the CIA operation was revealed in the Church committee hearings $4.3 millions spent on propaganda in the decade before the coup in various ways placing full-time CIA officers in media organisations straight subsidies to anti-Allende publications such as the major Santiago daily El Mercurio.

which received $1,665,000 in 1971 and 1972 alone. But the CIA, apart from direct subsidies, was also interested in the articles of independent journalists whose, views met with their approval. The more reputable and respected they were the better it suited the CIA. Particularly important were foreign correspondents who could influence worldwide opinion. The journalists, on the other hand, could be completely unaware of what was going on and therefore not compromised.

One CIA tactic was to ensure that their writings "agency side, or through con- tributing to or writing in "Conflict Studies," put out by the Institute for the Study of Conflict at 3 each for a more informed and influential audience. The arrangement even- tually agreed between David and Charles and FWF in February. 1972, meant that the publishing company in effect acted only as printers and distributors. For the publishers the financial risks were minimal. Forum saw to the selection of authors, the commissioning of the actual books and then sent a synopsis to the publishers.

David and Charles would then decide whether the title would sell or not. If they agreed to pubjish one. Forum then handled all the negotiations with the author and oversaw the book right down to the finished draft. In an extraordinary procedure for the publishing world Forum, which was acting as literary agent, then hired its own literary agent, David Higham Associates, themselves innocent of the motives of FWF, to act for it in negotiations with the publishers. Forum in fact took all the commercial risk.

It handled the payments of advances to authors and their payment from beginning to end. For its part it received from the publishers nothing except the authors' royalties the normal 10 per cent on home sales and 7t per cent on overseas sales. When the amount which had to be paid to David Higham Associates was deducted Forum would then be faced with either making some profit out of taking a share of the royalties, or alternatively conducting the whole exercise fit 3 lOSS But as was to happen, unknown to them, on Mr Moss's book there was occasionally the prospect of making considerably more money than there would be through the normal small print, by obtaining a large special order from an interested party. On a book Forum intended to have published on Taiwan the company had already The Institute received 75 per cent of its funds from the CIA Recipe for Chile military contrc'." Moss was identified as a British sociologist. His articles in the Economist, in accordance with the magazine's practice, are normally not signed.

Mr Raphael Otero, the editor of SEPA. is now the Chilean military junta's official spokesman in Washington where, like his London counterpart, he distributes Mr Moss's book free. Whilst Moss was covering Chile during the Allende period there was considerable anxiety about the delay to his book which had been commissioned by Forum. In March 1972. Mr Brian Crozier told David and Charles that Moss was just back from a special trip he had made to Chile "in connection with his forthcoming World Realities book." There was no explanation of who had p-j for this special trip, nor for a subsequent refresher trip he took that July.

In the event the book was not finally published until the end of 1973, when it went into the shops in a print of 5,000 with a hurriedly rewritten introduction, which sa' that Washington had had nothing to do with the coup. Subsequent articles by Mr Moss, whilst now admitting the proved CIA involvement in Chile, have sought to minimise its effect. The order from the Chilean government came munism) is the slogan which begins and ends all Social Democrat meetings. The ruling Labour Party has been content to campaign on its record and has tried to appeal to all communities. It is true that in the election-free period since 1967, Mauritius has advanced economically at a furious pace.

It secured a privileged treatment under the Lome Convention for its exports of sugar. island's main crop and currency earner, and now has an assured long-term market for 500,000 tons of sugar at a price well above the current market price. The Export Processing Zones, started in 1971. have attracted much investment from overseas, and a wide range of manufactures, especially textiles, are now sent to the EEC. Tourism is booming and new hotels are mushrooming all over the As Mauritius votes, ALFRED LATHAM-KOENIG assesses the political prospects A sugar coating on the electoral poll beautiful casuarina lined beaches of the island.

Politically, the Prime Minister has had to tread carefully between East and West, and" has successfully pursued a policy of non-alignment. As the current President of the Organisation of African Unity, he must lead the attack against South Africa while very conscious of the commercial importance of his powerful neighbour as a customer for Mauritian tea and tourism. The balance between Russia and China has also been held. The most likely outcome of the elections is that the Labour Party will be returned with a reduced majority, and will be forced into another coalition with the Social Democrats. That might be the best possible solution, guaranteeing Mauritius another period of peaceful tions last week, has been happily free from violence.

This is a tribute to the extraordinary racial harmony which has been actively fostered especially by the benign Prime Min-ister Sir Seewosagur. The political scene has, of course, greatly changed in the last 10 years. With 60 per cent of the population under 25, the voice of youth will be a significant factor now that 18-year-olds have the vote. These are the voters the Marxists hope to attract with their sophisticated programme of partial nationalisation of estates, banks and big companies as a first step towards true socialism. Its Marxist creed has been an easy target for the fiery oratory of Gaetan Duval who has always championed Maur-itius's links with the West.

Nous allons barrer la route au Communisme (we will progress of com cat NOW WHAT ABOUT that radioactive cat at Traws-fynydd, you wicked nuclear people? And if you think things are going from bad to hysterical you should try calming down distant news-hounds who are gibbering with fear because they have just discovered that a curie is defined in terms of disintegrations per second. Yes, indeed, there is cause for concern; but it seems to point in two directions: at the concealers and at the misin-terpreters. Since the establishment argument has always been that technical information should be edited for public consumption lest it be misinterpreted, the crescendo of irrelevant protest is probably just what authority needs to justify doing what the hell it likes. And that cat. locked in death in a culvert in a part of a nuclear power station where cats should not venture, is to manipulate metaphors a dead red herring.

For all cats, like all humans and all other living and ex-living things, are distinctly radioactive wherever they live or die. We have enough potassium-40 in our long-suffering tissues to give ourselves an internal radiation dose of around 20 mil-lirads a year about' one fifth of the total external dose we receive each year from other natural sources. There was even a scientific paper the other year which demonstrated that the additional dose men accrued by sleeping with women (and, of course, vice versa) from the potassium-40 decay in the partner considerably exceeded the additional amount of radiation either were receiving from the nuclear power programme. Well, those people will say anything, especially if it is true and telling, as the potassium-40 double-bed dose happens to be. But they will go on and say things like nuclear waste presents the least of our problems, and one realises that this is to do with lying, not laying.

But out of the jumble someone has to make some sense, and one of the certainties is that it makes no sense to give trivial issues the greatest emphasis. The great nuclear row is about the inadequacy of the public inquiry system and about the need to make a more complete public investigation than has so far been possible into the most controversial of the three projects for which approval is being sought at Windscale. The plan that needs to be called in. as everyone now knows, is to do with the reprocessing of oxide fuels. The other two are desperately needed and uncontroversial.

But before the additional inquiry and even if there is no further inquiry- the Government needs to take some of the Royal Commission's advice and integrate all it knows about the discharges to air, land, and sea from Windscale, and present the information coherently for all to see. All the signs are that things will get worse rather than better. Although there is an argument which runs that in future especially with enriched oxide fuels the environmental impact of each extra unit of nuclear electricity generated will fall, the total impact in localities like Windscale and in the plumes it discharges will undoubtedly increase. To pretend otherwise and those pro-nuclear experts keep pretending otherwise is to compound a cunning con. Still, we are all being conned the time.

Take this think-tank proposal that the poor old Central Electricity Generating Board, groaning under a burden of giant power stations it does not want, should build another splendid giant power station to save the boilermakers their jobs. What do they actually think about in that think-tank If you build that power station, the entire ground will fall from below the nuclear industry for about a decade, and what will we all do then But there are better plans. Instead of looking back through blinkers narrowly, as the think-tank appears to do (perhaps its leaks come out through chinks, darkly, like those at Windscale), let us treat the crisis creatively and in a forward-looking way. Britain's energy boss, Dr Walter Marshall, is at this very moment assessing the future of combined-cycle generating systems which, whether nuclear, coal or oil, offer dramatic improvements in. the energy economy by making use of the steam wasted in conventional power stations.

Would it be too. much to marry the need for combined-cycle prototypes and distribution systems to the depression in the boiler-making world and thus produce something which, in the end. everyone might want It might not cost auite as much as a power station nobody wants, which might even please the Chancellor. The authors who were to write the books were carefully chosen books were not very successful. One by Sir Robert Thompson, the noted guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency expert, who is also on the council of the National Association for Freedom, sold only 1,800 copies and after that both sides appeared to lose interest.

But in 1971 Forum, through its managing Mr Iain Hamilton, and Mr Brian Crozier, who ran the agency on a day-to-day basis, reviewed the operation in a big way. Negotiations were started with the publishing company of David and Charles, in Newton Abbot," Devon, to publish more books in the lapsed title series which had been started with Seeker and Warburg the World Realities series. Like the Institute for the Study of Conflict, which had grown out of Forum, the title sounds authoritative and dispassionate. The authors who were to write the books were carefully chosen. Many, like Robert Moss, who was commissioned to write the book on Chile, had already got close links with Forum either through working as correspondents for the- news sweet basis Sot economic growth modern industrial estates of Basildon in Essex, where for the past two weeks 25 school-leavers without jobs have been taken on.

During their six months, the trainees clock in at 7.45 a.m. and spend their time gaining experience in each department, from maintenance to packaging, in stints of about three weeks at a time. As Mr Gerry Brown, the Manpower Services Commission South-east Area Manager for Work Experience, sees it, the scheme allows youngsters to escape from the disillusion of unemployment, and he introduced to the world of work. They will get into the discipline of getting up and getting to work and gaining experience," he says. And at the end of the day the youngsters will probably be given a certificate and recommendation which may help them find a job.

At worst it is a way of passing the time, means more pocket-money, and staves off unemployment for six months. Mr Brown hopes that perhaps half those on the schemes may eventually be offered jobs where they have worked, and he is fond of quoting the chairman of a public meeting in East London who said that youngsters today are the same as they have always been, and that if they were to be written off because they were unemployed, so should he be, as he had signed for the dole in the 1930s. The Basildon experience suggests that the scheme is already bringing that home. Mr Jim Sawyer, the management man at the factory most closely inyolved with the programme, has no doubts that although a number of rough were chosen for Sugar cane the The scale of the CIA operation was revealed in the Church committee hearings ternational." The second, -again naming Moss as "FWF Correspondent was an exclusive interview with Enoch Powell. By 1974 he had also written five ISC "Conflict Studies," two on Chile, two on Uruguay, and one, co-authored with Forum's managing director, Iain Hamilton, on Ireland, Nor was he, by the time of the Allende government's fall in September 1973 and the eventual publication of his book shortly afterwards, any Independence Party: the Parti Mauricien Social De-mocrate (PMSD), led by the flamboyant Gaetan Duval, the former Foreign Minister; and the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), under the leadership of Paul Berenger, a Marxist who was trained in France in the heady days of 1968.

Three other parties have some significance; the Union Democratique Mauricienne (UDM), which splintered from the PMSD because of personality clashes; the Mouvement Militant Mauricien Social Progressiste (MMMSP), a Maoist party well to the left of the MMM. and the Independent Forward Block, a small Hindu nationalist party. In'the multiracial island of 850,000 inhabitants, the runup to the elections, in stark contrast to Jamaica's elec trainees I spoke to at Basildon last week. For Ian Byne, who is 17 and left school at Easter with no formal qualifications, the idea of not joining the scheme because a job might come up was rejected with amusement. He had been going to the job centre about three times a week since leaving school and had found no jobs at all.

His friends with better qualifications were in exactly the same position, he said. Basildon has an unhappy unemployment rate, and Marconi's next door to Rothmans, where Ian's mother works, is at present laying off workers. What jobs are on offer in the area, according to Ian, go to those with family connections. Both Gillian Scott and Max-Ine Benstead, two 17-year-olds who left school in July, took a similar line. Like Ian, they were prepared to do any job although Maxine expressed a preference for clerical work, and both were obviously finding the experience programme interesting though they confessed to periods of boredom (as did Ian who had been working in the packaging department).

They joked that their 16-a-week was better than social security and were clearly enjoying the special attention more special than an ordinary new employee they are receiving. As for the bump, which is five and a half months off, they said they were prepared for it, while Ian insisted that that magic certificate would probably be a valuable asset. In due course, we shall see whether that is the case or whether the scheme represents little more than misery staved off. For the moment the trainees seem happy. MARTIN ADENEY questions the ultimate usefulness of a 19 Government job creation scheme for unemployed youngsters Working their way to the dole? MAURITIUS, which goes to the polls today, has not had a general election since it became independent in 1967.

The Labour Party took power under the leadership of Sir Seewosagur Ramgoolam, but because of strikes and the declaration of a state of emergency, the 1972 elections were postponed. Indeed, today's elections might have been jeopardised if the ban on public meetings had not been lifted within the past month. In an island the size of Surrey, some 25 political parties are fieldi- about 400 candidates for 70 seats in the 20 constituencies of the island. Only three rank as major parties; the Labour Party and its associate the Comite d'Action Musulman (CAM) campaigning together as the the scheme (an indication of the firm's enlightened personnel policies), they are doing well and have been warmly received and appreciated by the workers and that goes not only for the girls placed in the engineering department. Every new employee undergoes a full-day induction course on their first day at work, and this was applied also to the work experience trainees, with the five unions at the factory (which has 2.500 employees) involved in the explanation.

The firm has clearly gone-out of its way to make the best of the scheme it has a. detailed rota and organisation, and is providing some extras for example, free lunches up to 35p a day but even union backing and enlightened management cannot cut through one major difficulty, that in certain departments there is little for the trainees to do. They cannot by and large operate machines for safety and other reasons, and in the maintenance department with skilled engineers overhauling machinery, their role can be little more than spectators. In the office, things are much better; elaborate accounting and purchasing procedures are explained, and one girl has been doing what is close to a very temporary job. The big bump will undoubtedly come at the end of the scheme.

The firm has a waiting list off some hundreds and will not be able to offer anv of the 25 youngsters regular jobs, though they are free to leave for interviews or real jobs at any time. It is then that the value of the scheme will be discovered. To be fair, this appeared to put off none of the three No CUP )r. 6OZ(75c ffffitf ONE OF THE most imaginative, if probably the most desperate, of the schemes the Government has undertaken to alleviate unemployment is what it calls the Work Experience Programme. Something like 5,000 places for young people have now been approved in the which provides for unemployed youngsters to be taken on by firms for six months or longer to gain experience of work without actually being emploved or taking someone else's job.

For this the firm gets some willing hands, and is reimbursed the 16 a week it pavs to the trainee by the Government. This year the scheme will cost about 19.5 millions, although about 9 millions would otherwise have had to have been paid out in social security payments. The programme has been going since the end of Sep-. tember. but few schemes have so far survived "more than a few weeks, and the lessons of the endeavour, which is now being studied by the Common Market with a view to paying out money from the Social Fund, have still to be absorbed.

Some of the schemes involved just one person working in a tiny firm or agency. Others are much larger. Marks and Spencer, for example, is taking 100 people EC-Marconi in Chelmsford has offered eo places and in the South-east, the promoters of the scheme are delighted that two of their trainees are spending their time in a zoo. The strengths and some of the difficulties of the programme are being shown up in a scheme operated by the Carreras Rothmans cigarette factory on the sprawling YOU'VE HEARD OF CHRISTMAS. ISN'T IT TIME TO DRINK PIMM'S? Pimiris tastes every bit as thirst-quenchingly good around Christmas as it did last Summer.

So, with the label on the back of the bottle reminding you what it takes to mix an authentic Pimms3 have a splendid Christmas..