Sunday, February 24, 1991 - North Shore News - 9

The bigger they are the

harder they deflect

ONE OF the questions most frequently put to any veteran
journalist is, ‘“Who was your most interesting interview?’’

It should be a tough question to
answer. I have likely done over
25,000 interviews.

The list includes six prime
ministers of Canada, several
foreign heads of state, as many as
two dozen different premiers and
hundreds of cabinet ministers.

There have bcen murderers,
rapists, hostage incidents and one
head of the IRA Provos.
Muhammed Ali, Bob Hope, Nana
Mouskouri, Victor Borge, Henry
Mancini, Moishe Dayan and
Norman Vincent Peale have been
among muy guests.

So who was the most interest-
ing?

His name has been running
through my mind frequently as I
have watched our American
friends engage in their peculiar
approach to military conflict: war
as a sporting event.

My most impressive guest was
William Colby, a friend and one-
time associate of George Bush.

For a substantial period of his
life, Colby was the number one
“spook”’ in the world. He was
“DCI” in Washington, letters that
are whispered with a sense of awe.
He was Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency.

On the first visit, Colby was
with me for three hours on air.
We attempted to dissect every
arena of international activity. It
was such a fascinating new depar-
ture for radio, I was able to lure
him back a few years later for
another three-hour session. We’ve
maintained an irregular contact
since.

With Colby as a reference, a
subsequent CIA Director Admiral
Stansfield Turner became my
guest at Expo 86, and we also
were able to do a radio show on
global affairs.

Turner, a military man, was
much different from Colby; more
predictable in response than the
man whose entire life was devoted
to spycraft and analysis.

Bill Colby was a genuine hero
during the Second World War
participating in the Jedburgh Mis-
sions behind enemy lines. He was
decorated by several governments.

After the war, he studied labor
law, before joining his wartime
colleague Wild Bill Donovan in
the formation of the CIA.

“*We were all liberals,’’ he told
me. ‘‘We believed the military
approach was usually thoughtless,
dangerous and wrong.”’

He and his associates pounded a
theme in Washington: ‘‘The
business of intelligence is the word
intelligence.’? They set out to
learn about the dangerous ele-
ments in the world.

Research and analysis became
the cornerstone of it all. Some-
times clandestine means were re-
quired, not necessarily to hurt the
other side, but to assist in the
formulation of informed, sound
government policy.

Freelancers and martinets occa-
sionally went wild under the guise
of representing ‘‘The Company.’’
It was Colby who revealed these
excesses to Congress during the
early 1970s. He called the stories,
**The Family Jewels.’’

He did so proudly. In 25 years

Gary
Bannerman

OPEN LINES

of history, they were able only to
identify a dozen of these
misadventures out of tens of
thousands of initiatives. His face
ianded on the cover of Time.

The most agonizing memory he
has of Vietnam is a program he
founded: Operation Phoenix.

His plan was to win the hearts
and souls of the villages. He
argued that the military was mak-
ing thousands of enemies every
day with napalm and indiscrimi-
nate bombing.

Phoenix started to succeed,
despite the bombs. Villagers began
to side more with South Vietnar:
than with the north.

But military impatience won the
day. After Colby was promoted to
Washington, Phoenix was turned
over to the generals.

The military approach was
gunpoint negotiation: cooperate or
be destroyed. Thousands were tor-
tured or killed. This perversity of
Phoenix is now immortalized by
movies.

ees

Iraq, alone against the world,
does not have a chance to
duplicate the North Vietnamese
story of survival and triumph.

But the Vietnamese style is be-
ing duplicated. The Americans are
dangerous allies and foolish gladi-
ators. They are politically afraid
of war. Pathologically afraid of
blood. They seem to think that
war is a nifty business of expen-
sive machines and warm beds at
night.

They just about missed the First
World War. Only when attacked
in 1941 did they join the second.
The United States refused Douglas
MacArthur’s advice to wield the
final blow in Korea. It could be
argued that this failure doomed
Indo-China to decades of war.

Middle East scholars point out
that well-motivated, but ill-timed,
U.S. peace initiatives during the
four Arab-Israeli wars have en-
couraged perpetual hostility.
Every war stopped one punch
short of the knock-out blow.

The British had their Vietnam
in Malaysia and they fought it to
the finish. They fought in the
bush, not from the skies.

There is one enemy in Iraq. One
man. Unlike Southeast Asia, there
is no ideology at stake and no
U.S.S.R., China or Pan-Arabic
encouragement. The enemy is

PUT ALL
VALUABLES
IN THE

TRUNK

HELP STOP THEFY
FROM AUTOS.
PROTECT YOURSELF.
DKCBC AND YOUR LOCAL POLICE.

Saddam UWussein and his
megalomania.

The merciless bombing of Iraq
and its troops — along with any-
one else who is in the wrong place
at the wrong time — is not an act
of war by the Americans: It is the
Avoidance of War.

No matter how much it costs
and who has to suffer, Americans
can go back to the PX for a hot
meal, a warm bed and perhaps
even a top notch show by a
Hollywood cast.

Will history judge this devasta-
tion kindly? Will anyone really
care about a deluded dictator in
Baghdad? Or is it possible that
learned people will look at the
modern carnage along the Tigres
and Euphrates — the Rivers of
Babylon — and fail to applaud
American achievements in killing
technology?

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