Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch

HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

Weekend Edition Jun 29-Jul 01, 2007

The Piccadilly Panic

The London Car Bomb

by JOHN CHUCKMAN

We should all exercise a healthy skepticism regarding the story of the car-bomb just found in London.

There are powerful reasons for this.

The grant of an appeal to the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. There is powerful evidence that key evidence in his trial was tampered with or manufactured by the CIA. The U.S. wanted this matter off its plate, the families of the dead being a constant irritation. And who better to pin it on than the then much-disliked Libyans?

Actually, nothing is easier to fake than an amateur device like this. It takes little sophistication, and there is low risk of discovery.

The CIA has just released papers it terms the ‘family jewels’ which concern many dark matters from decades ago. While these papers are carefully selected to make the CIA look more ineffectual than it is and to give it a public-relations boost in light of its torture and kidnapping activities today, they still document a perfect willingness to engage in the most unethical behavior.

Mr. Brown has just taken office, and expectations are high that he will distance himself from Blair’s foreign policy, a policy many thoughtful people regard as foolish, destructive, and rather servile.

In the United States, paranoid games have been regularly – such as phony terror alerts and ridiculous arrests -played concerning threats to keep fears fired up.

JOHN CHUCKMAN is the author of What’s It All About? The Decline of the American Empire, published by Constable & Robinson Ltd, London. Available from Indigo Books, Canada.