Literary works
In terms of poetry, he is best known for his book-length epic poem Coming to Jakarta (subtitled "a poem about terror"), which describes in measured, prosodically regular verse the 1965 crisis in Indonesia that resulted in the Indonesian Civil War and the deaths of as many as half a million people, in which the CIA played a decisive role. [5]
Scott is far from a stridently political poet, working always to connect the polemical to the personal. In Coming to Jakarta he writes:
- To have learnt from terror
to see oneself
as part of the enemy - can be a reassurance
In the context of this emotional and psychological side of conflict, Scott alternates between descriptions of his own life—"dressed up in polished / gaiters with a buttonhook"—and the massive violence of his principal subject. Somewhere between confessional and scholarly, his poems often contain citations in the margins.
Scott has described the book-length Minding the Darkness (2000) as his most important poetic work, though he concedes that "Like other long poems by older men...it toys dangerously with abstract didactic principles." [6] The work is intended as the culmination of a trilogy (also including Listening to the Candle [1992]) of which Coming to Jakarta was the inception.
His poetry has been translated into Indonesian, Serbo-Croatian, and Hungarian.
Contemporary politics
Scott has written about the role of the deep state (as opposed to the public state). [7] Rejecting the label of "conspiracy theory", he has used the phrase "deep politics" to describe his political concerns. His interest in contemporary history has spilled over into his works of poetry, some of which must contain marginal notes to explain to readers which documents or real-world news events are being referred to. His book, The Road to 9/11 (2007), deals with geopolitical context of events leading to 9/11, and argues "how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11." [8] His books The Road to 9/11 and American War Machine are available in French under the titles La Route vers le Nouveau Désordre Mondial and La Machine de Guerre Américaine. [9] The latter was reviewed in March 2011 by Bernard Norlain, a retired French five-star General of the Air Force. [10] In all, his books have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Indonesian. His articles have been translated into 16 languages, including Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Japanese.
Of Scott's book, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (2010), Daniel Ellsberg commented: "I said of Scott's last brilliant take on this subject, Drugs, Oil and War, that 'It makes most academic and journalistic explanations of our past and current interventions read like government propaganda written for children.' Now Scott has written an even better book. Read it!" [11]
An aspect of Scott's work that combines both his investigating interests and his poetry is illustrated by The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11. [12]
Books
War Conspiracy
In 1972, Bobbs-Merrill Company published Scott's The War Conspiracy. [13] The book describes Scott's theories of why the United States went to war in Vietnam. [14] Kirkus Reviews said War Conspiracy is "undoubtedly one of the most important overviews to date of the subterranean reaches of the U.S. intelligence machine in Southeast Asia." [13]
Deep Politics and the Death of JFK
Scott's Deep Politics and the Death of JFK was published in 1993 by the University of California Press. [15] Promotional reviews of the book were provided by Bruce Cumings, Gaeton Fonzi, and Oliver Stone. [16]
Kirkus Reviews called the book a "[s]taggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy". [17] The Kirkus review also described the book as a "kind of Rosetta stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics." [17] Publishers Weekly said that Scott's "thoughtful, extremely (and sometimes excessively) detailed book promises more than it actually delivers" and that "the 'facts' on which he relies are often the result of other people's not necessarily accurate reporting". [15] According to PW, "[t]he book's most useful feature is a careful discussion of how U.S. Vietnam policy changed abruptly after Kennedy's death." [15]
In a 2004 review for The Wilson Quarterly , Max Holland, recipient of a Studies in Intelligence Award from the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote that "Deep Politics is an unreadable compendium of 'may haves' and 'might haves,' non sequiturs, and McCarthy-style innuendo, with enough documentation to satisfy any paranoid." [18] Shortly thereafter, Holland reiterated similar comments in a second piece written for Reviews in American History and criticized the University of California Press' editorial committee for approving the publication of the book: "This peer approval by a major university press illustrates the boundless and utter disbelief in the Warren Report that exists even in the highest reaches of the academy, and it also reveals the gross inattention given to the subject by serious historians." [19] Scott responded with a letter to the editor stating: "I was disappointed to see those who have published me attacked vigorously for doing so by a major historical journal. I continue to believe that it is the job of the academy to open minds, not to close them." Scott observed that it is "gross intellectual cowardice to allege or imply falsehoods without supporting this accusation", and that "One might have thought in a 19-page attack... there would be at least a paragraph dealing with what I had actually written." Adding that, "Holland demonstrates at the outset that he has done no basic research on Oswald, whom he believes to be the only important person in the case." [20]
In 2013, former Salon editor-in-chief David Talbot included Deep Politics in his list of top seven "best books on the subject", describing the work as a "masterpiece, a meticulously detailed examination of the deep network of power that underlies the events in Dallas.... filled with provocative insights about how the upper circles of U.S. power actually operate." [21]
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within SAC there are two separate groups: SAC/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAC/PAG for covert political action.
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Blowback is the unintended consequences and unwanted side-effects of a covert operation. To the civilians suffering the blowback of covert operations, the effect typically manifests itself as "random" acts of political violence without a discernible, direct cause; because the public—in whose name the intelligence agency acted—are unaware of the effected secret attacks that provoked revenge (counter-attack) against them.
The Inter-Services Intelligence is the largest and best-known component of the Pakistani intelligence community. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant to Pakistan's national security. The ISI reports to its director-general and is primarily focused on providing intelligence to the Pakistani government.
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Alfred William McCoy is an American historian and educator. He is the Fred Harvey Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He specializes in the history of the Philippines, foreign policy of the United States, European colonisation of Southeast Asia, illegal drug trade, and Central Intelligence Agency covert operations.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in the trafficking of illicit drugs. Books and journalistic investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor and diplomat Peter Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Inspector General. The various investigations have generally not led to clear conclusions that the CIA itself has directly conducted drug trafficking operations, although there may have been instances of indirect complicity in the activities of others.
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Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain's MI6, who conducted their own separate covert actions. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups, including groups with jihadist ties, that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Soviet-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan administration since before the Soviet intervention.
The Safari Club was a covert alliance of intelligence services formed in 1976 that ran clandestine operations around Africa at a time when the United States Congress had limited the power of the CIA after years of abuses and when Portugal was dismantling its colonial empire in Africa. Its formal members were pre-revolutionary Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and France. The group maintained informal connections with the United States, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Israel. The group executed a successful military intervention in Zaire in response to an invasion from Angola. It also provided arms to Somalia during the Ogaden War. It organized secret diplomacy relating to anti-communism in Africa, and has been credited with initiating the process resulting in the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty.
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global counterterrorist military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks of 2001, and is the most recent global conflict spanning multiple wars. Some researchers and political scientists have argued that it replaced the Cold War.
Bruce O. Riedel is an American expert on U.S. security, the Middle East, South Asia, and counter-terrorism. He is currently a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and an instructor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.
Several scholars have accused the United States of involvement in state terrorism. They have written about the US and other liberal democracies' use of state terrorism, particularly in relation to the Cold War. According to them, state terrorism is used to protect the interest of capitalist elites, and the U.S. organized a neo-colonial system of client states, co-operating with regional elites to rule through terror.
A deep state is a type of government made up of potentially secret and unauthorized networks of power operating independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals. In popular usage, the term carries overwhelmingly negative connotations and is often associated with conspiracy theories.
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This bibliography of John F. Kennedy is a list of published works about John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.
