FLEET STREET

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000700580023-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2004
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: July 19, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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7 Approved For Relea
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continued from page 9o
ineptitude. "Unfortunately," the archa
ologists of 2100 AD will be writing, "Sir
Mortimer Wheeler in his head-strong
way ... Red herrings strewn in the path
c!'C exact interpretation by the blundering
Italian Moretti . . . The rape of Ur, less
than two hundred years ago, by the well-
meaning Leonard Woolley . . ." This
self-evident truth is ignored by . the
professionals of our time. Did Carl
W. Blegen, when he came upon the site
of Nestor's Palace at Pylos, say to
i,imsclf "No, no. I must not touch!
Advanced as arc my techniques compared
ith those of poor old Schlicmann, they
;annot but be hopelessly amateurish and
i.cpt when set against those that will be
':usable to the archaeologist of NOV?
I)id he put up a.notice "Not to be opened
for one hundred and fifty years" and go
right away? He did not. He drove in his
spade. With infinite delicacy, tact and
forethought, yes; still, he drove it in.
There rings in my cars, across the genera-
`nns yet to come, the Incredulous cry
n those days, of course, they worked
ltiith spades!"
Not that I blame Carl W. Blegen or
anyone else for getting on with it.
Somebody has to make a start some time.
Only, if it should cross my mind to put
my goggles on and go for a swim round
the ruins of HMS Association, let me have
:ho hoity-toity bubbles blown at me by
those bungling frogmen from Naval
:fir Command.
flow remarkable, my dear. Slowly
rt - unmistakabl t,, you are turning into
. Sophia Loren."
UU5/01/05 7 00149 5 OOZ3-U
FLEET
STREET
by Francis Williams
were fill equally uninterested. There was
not a single thrilling instalment in any
of them. It was the quality press that
showed just how closely it is now
necessary for news to follow fiction if
you want to get the right kind of readers.
All adopted the tough, cinematic, docu-
mentary style, heavily loaded with not
always obviously relevant detail and a
IT USED to be the case that if it was plentiful helping of violence that now,
appears thrills you were after you had to go to such a matters be s for the dishing up
newspapers of big circulation. Their comfortably off e tables s ve
crime reporters, armed with large ex- breathlessly It was, the Observer
explained under the gripping
pensc accounts, a nodding acquaintance headline "Sabotage, Mutiny-And A
with a few middlemen of crime and an D
"
ouble At
"lil
gen,a mut-ayered inter-
infinite capacity for standing rounds of national mystery . . . There are three
drinks, could be expected to come up distinct but related episodes,. each dense
with the fascinating details. with its own complex and conflicting
Those days are over. They have been motives: how, where and to what
swept aside by the tides of social change. extent they are connected is the heart
Crime and conspiracy have gone posh. of the mystery." From then on it
If you want the real low-down today it is plunged happily into the task of weaving .
to the quality papers you must turn. The together in the best spy story traditions
reporter with contacts and a pint of beer "the blowing up of a railway bridge at
in his hand has been replaced by a Lubudi near the Angolian frontier,"
combined operations which link agents mutiny in the Congolese army at
in a dozen world capitals with a central Bukava, the hi-jacking of Tshombe's
task force under the command of a news plane, a secret visit to Algiers by the
executive with all the intellectual arro- then Congolese Ambassador in Brussels
gance and tactical talent of General and '"the Congo's sudden switch last
Dayan. Crime has become respectable week to support the pro-Arab resolution
and paying, in the UN Assembly.'.' This exercise
Consider, for example, the case of the fortunately provided adequate scope for
Tshombe Kidnapping. In the olden bringing.in those deadpan descriptions
days one would have turned to the of violence and torture that give such
popular papers for the detective work, flavour to the after lunch coffee and
to the qualities for discussions about the cigarette: "Vandersteen, who denies
political implications and thunders against being involved in the sabotage, was
the Government for its craven inability beaten in the stomach with hot torches
to secure the immediate release of all and had four fingers and an ear cut off.
Britishers involved. On this occasion, I-Ic was then thrown naked into a railway
however, the roles have been almost truck and sent to Lubumbashi." The
exactly reversed. The thunder has come Observer story also had the intriguing
from the popular side of the street, with suggestion admirably designed to please
thpsDaily Sketch leading the roars; the its readers that the Tshombe kidnapping
fictionalised drama from the papers was the work of the CIA 'thus stimulat-
catering for readers with bowler hats and ing both their taste for spy thrillers and
rolled umbrellas. "Tshombe's Kidnap. their moral anti-Americanism.
ping: The News Team Investigates The " Insight" in the Sunday Times (head.
Facts Behind The Mystery. Mystery line "Tshombe: The Big Double-
Man In Tshombe Kidnapping," said Cross"). had a photograph for some
The Times in a story across six columns reason of Tshombe shaving himself and
all over its centre page with photo
r
h
g
ap
s of twthh i
o oer caractersn the story, Bob
of the main characters and a torn piece of Denard "veteran m-.rcenary, "the
a telex message "confirming the charter charismatic Basque," and , Francis
of the aircraft." The opening of the story Bodenan . "not suspect..' It also had a
hit exactly the correct paper-back thriller large chart with explanatory text. "The
note. "A mysterious company in accumulating evidence suggests," it re-
Liechtenstein, a Parisian underworld ported in just the right style of thrillerese,
figure, visits by a Congolese emissary to "that when the aircraft carrying the
Geneva and Algiers . . ." So too did the former Congolese Premier was hi-jacked
second paragraph: "It is now clear that nine days ago, it was the culmination of
when Mr. Tshombe took off from an elaborately prepared double-cross."
Ibiza he flew into a trap that had been set According to Close-Up in the Sunday
with a careful audacity that is hardly in Telegraph (it scooped the others with a
character with the heady impetuosity of photograph of the visiting card of
African politics." SEDEFI, the company registered in
What The Times had begun, , the Liechtenstein which was involved in
"heavy" Sundays followed up. Although hiring the hi-jacked plane)- "the plot .. .
the mass circulation Sundays could not was a well endowed enterprise, perfectly
have cared less about it all. The News of and finely calculated which nevertheless
the World, the People the Su td
a
Mirror and the Sunda Ex teas exce t was scarred with muddle, confusion and
Y A ( P haste in its
Barashort newsatorVnn rt, n,;9.h -:1-1 ..,, _ . executian. It summed ue:
1/QS:: CIA-RDP.75-OOI49ROOD70058aO23-0'*"