to the TUC. Meakins edited a weekly paper and broadcast a daily radio program by means of which he was able to generate a great deal of anti-Jagan propaganda.17 The Sunday Times study concluded that:

Jagan seems to have thought that the unions could hold out a month. But McCabe was providing the bulk of the strike pay, plus money for distress funds, for the strikers daily 15 minutes on the radio and their propaganda, and considerable travelling expenses. All over the world, it seemed brother unions were clubbing together. The mediator sent from London, Robert Willis, the general secretary or the London Typographical Society and a man not noted for his mercy in bargaining with newspaper managements was shocked. It was rapidly clear to me that the strike was wholly political , he said. Jagan was giving in to everything the strikers wanted, but as soon as he did they erected more demands .18

Financial support for the strike alone, channeled through the PSI and other labour organizations by the CIA, reached the sum of at least one million dollars.

American oil companies provided a further example of the multitude of resources the US can bring to bear upon a given target. The companies co-operated with the strikers by refusing to provide petroleum, forcing Jagan to appeal to Cuba for oil. During Jagans remaining year in office, in the face of a general US economic embargo, he turned increasingly to the Soviet bloc. This practice of course provided ammunition to those critics of Jagan in British Guiana, the United States and Great Britain who insisted that he was a communist and thus fraught with all the dangers that communists are fraught with.

The strike was maintained primarily by black supporters of Forbes Burnham and by employers who locked out many of Jagans Indian supporters. This inevitably exacerbated the already existing racial tensions, although The Sunday Times asserted that the racial split was fairly amicable until the 1963 strike divided the country . Eventually, the tension broke out into bloodshed leaving hundreds dead and wounded and a legacy of racial bitterness .19

Jagan was certainly aware, to some extent at least, of what was transpiring around him during the general strike. After it was over he charged that:

The United States, in spite of protestations to the contrary by some of its leaders, is not prepared to permit a Socialist government or a government committed to drastic and basic reforms to exist in this hemisphere, even when this government has been freely elected ... It is all too clear that the United States will only support a democratic government if it favors a classic private enterprise system.20

In an attempt to surmount the hurdle of US obsession with the Soviet Union and another Cuba in the Western hemisphere , Jagan proposed that British Guiana be neutralized by an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the two powers had done in the case of Austria. Officials in Washington had no comment on the suggestion.21

Cheddi Jagans government managed to survive all the provocations and humiliations. With elections on the agenda for 1964, the British and their American cousins turned once again to the gentlemanly way of the pen.

The British Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, who had been a leading party to the British-CIA agreement concerning Jagan, cited the strike and general unrest as proof that Jagan could not run the country or offer the stability that the British government required for British Guiana to be granted its independence. (Sandys was the founder, in 1948, of The European Movement, a CIA-funded cold-war organization.)22

This was, of course, a contrived position. Syndicated American columnist Drew Pearson, writing about the meeting between President Kennedy and British Prime Minister Macmillan in the summer of 1963, stated that the main thing they agreed on was that the British would refuse to grant independence to Guiana because of a general strike against pro-Communist Prime Minister, Cheddi Jagan. That strike was secretly inspired by a combination of U.S. Central Intelligence money and British intelligence. It gave London the excuse it wanted. 23

The excuse was used further to justify an amendment to the British Guiana constitution providing for a system of proportional representation in the election, a system that appeared certain to convert Jagans majority of legislative seats into a plurality. Subsequently, the British-appointed Governor of British Guiana announced that he would not be bound to call on the leader of the largest party to form a government if it did not have a majority of seats, a procedure in striking contrast to that followed in Great Britain.

When, in October 1964, the Labour Party succeeded the Conservative Party to power in Great Britain, Jagan had hopes that the conspiracy directed against him would be squashed, for several high-ranking Labour leaders had stated publicly, and to Jagan personally, their opposition to the underhanded and anti-democratic policy of their Conservative Party foes. Within days of taking office, however, the Labour Party dashed these hopes.24

Bowing to United States wishes, the New York Times disclosed, the Labour Party ruled out early independence for British Guiana and was going ahead with the proportional representation elections. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, it was reported, had left the new British Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon-Walker, in no doubt that the United States would resist a rise of British Guiana as an independent Castro-type state .25 On a previous occasion, Rusk had urged Gordon-Walkers Conservative predecessor, Lord Home, to suspend the British Guiana constitution again and revert to direct colonial government .26

The intensive American lobbying effort against British Guiana (the actual campaign of subversion aside), led Conservative MP and former Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod, to observe in the House of Commons: There is an irony which we all recognize in the fact of America urging us all over the world towards colonial freedom except when it approaches her own doorstep. 27

The day before the election of 7 December, a letter appeared in a British Guiana newspaper-a bogus pro-Communist letter, a tactic the CIA has used successfully the world over. The letter was purportedly written by Jagans wife Janet to Communist Party members, in which she stated: We can take comfort in the thought that the PNC [Burnhams party] will not be able to stay in power long ... our communist comrades abroad will continue to help us win eventual total victory.

Ms. Jagan quickly retorted that she would not be so stupid as to write a letter like that, but, as in all such cases, the disclaimer trailed weakly and too late behind the accusation.28

As expected, Jagan won only a plurality of the legislative seats, 24 of 53. The governor then called upon Forbes Burnham, who had come in second, to form a new government. Burnham had also been named as a terrorist in the British police report referred to earlier, as had several of his new government ministers.

Jagan refused to resign. British Army troops were put on full alert in the capital city of Georgetown. A week later, Her Majestys Government waved its hand over a piece of paper, thereby enacting another amendment to the British Guiana constitution

and dosing a loophole which was allowing Jagan to stall for time. He finally surrendered to the inevitable.29

In 1990, at a conference in New York City, Arthur Schlesinger publicly apologized to Cheddi Jagan, who was also present. Schlesinger said that it was his recommendation to the British that led to the proportional representation tactic. I felt badly about my role thirty years ago, the former Kennedy aide admitted. I think a great injustice was done to Cheddi Jagan. 30

Four years later, with Jagan again president-having won, in 1992, the countrys first free election since he had been ousted-the Clinton administration prepared to nominate a new ambassador to Guyana: William Doherty, Jr. Jagan was flabbergasted and made his feelings known, such that Doherty was dropped from consideration.31

When it was time, in 1994, for the US government to declassify its British Guiana documents under the 30-year rule, the State Department and CIA refused to do so, reported the New York Times, because it is not worth the embarassment . The newspaper added:

Still-classified documents depict in unusual detail a direct order from the President to unseat Dr. Jagan, say Government officials familiar with the secret papers. Though many Presidents have ordered the CIA to undermine foreign leaders, they say the Jagan papers are a smoking gun: a clear written record, without veiled words or plausible denials, of a Presidents command to depose a Prime Minister.32

They made a mistake putting Burnham in, said Janet Jagan looking back at it all. The regrettable part is that the country went backwards. And so it had. One of the better-off countries in the region 30 years ago, Guyana in 1994 was among the poorest. Its principal export was people.33

17. Soviet Union late 1940s to 1960s

From spy planes to book publishing

Information ... hundreds of young Americans and emigre Russians gave their lives so that the United States could amass as much information as possible about the Soviet Union ... almost any information at all about the land Churchill had described as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma .

There is no evidence, however, that any of the information collected ever saved any lives, or served any other useful purpose for the world. Today, tons of files stuffed with reports, volumes of computer printouts, tapes, photographs, etc., lie in filing cabinets, gathering dust in warehouses in the United States and West Germany. Probably a good part of the material has already been shredded. Much of it has never been looked at, and never will be.

Beginning in the late 1940s, the US military, the CIA and the National Security Agency regularly sent aircraft along the borders of the Soviet Union to collect visual, photographic and electronic data of a military or industrial nature, particularly to do with Soviet missile and nuclear capability. The increasingly sophisticated planes and equipment, as well as satellites, submarines, and electronic listening posts in Turkey and Iran, produced vast amounts of computer input. At times, the planes would unintentionally drift over Soviet territory. At other times, they would do so intentionally in order to photograph a particular target, or to activate radar installations so as to capture their signals, or to evaluate the reaction of Soviet ground defenses against an