Alan Moore

The surveillance state is nothing new: From Bentham’s panopticon to McGoohan’s Village to “V for Vendetta’s” streetcams to the NSA’s Prism.

Alan Moore:
"To me, one of the biggest surprises of these recent surveillance revelations is how surprised people are. The level of surveillance we’ve had over here for the past 20 years now is ridiculous — and useless, I would add.

Eerily enough, the security cameras on every street corner of Britain was instigated by the incoming Blair government in 1997, which was when I decided, back in 1982 or so, to set the first episode of “V for Vendetta,” which had cameras on every street corner. So yeah, we’ve had those for awhile; they’ve proliferated and multiplied for decades.

More recently, there have been troops of police who have said that all these things are useful for is alienating the public.

[Laughs] 

They are not actually useful in the prevention of crimes, or even actually apprehending their suspects.

Here’s the thing: If you’re monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it.

[Laughs]

How are you going to process that amount of information? That’s when you get all these wonderful emerging paradoxes.

Recently over here, there was a case where it was suspected that the people who monitor security screens were taking unnecessary toilet breaks and gossiping when they should be watching us. So it was decided that the only sensible thing to do was to put a security camera in the monitor room. 

[Laughs]

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/alan_moore_the_revolution_will_be_crowd_funded/

“I’m remote from most technology to the point that I’m kind of Amish,” admits the legendarily bearded author without an Internet connection, mobile phone or even a functioning television.

But Alan Moore — the soft-spoken sage behind prescient comics like “V for Vendetta,” “From Hell,” “Watchmen” and many more — nevertheless does have a Kickstarter project up for procuring finishing funds for his short-film series, “Jimmy’s End.” It’s his second trip through the crowd-funding concept, having previously signed up alongside “V for Vendetta” artist David Lloyd, “Maus’s” Art Spiegelman and scores of other talents for Black Mask Studios’ sprawling Occupy Comicsseries, which too started life on Kickstarter. The series started as a photo essay about burlesque for Moore’s indie zine Dodgem Logic with artist (and spouse) Melinda Gebbieand fellow Northamptonian photographer Mitch Jenkins. Jenkins came up with the idea of a short film based on the shoot using the same uncanny characters, then investors asked for a series of short films and maybe a television series, and the next thing you know, the productive Moore had written an interlocking narrative for all of them as well as a feature film spinoff called “The Show

Moore spoke with me by phone from Northampton, the ancient riverside British hood where he lives, about film, comics, funding and seeing Patrick McGoohan’s psy-fi classic “The Prisoner” everywhere we turn. Especially now that our openly secret, often ludicrous surveillance state — which he envisioned decades ago in dystopian influentials like “V for Vendetta,” whose strikingGuy Fawkes mask has become an inextricable part of Anonymous and Occupy’s iconography — has thankfully wormed its way back into the news cycle.

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Congratulations, you’re a man of the people, including the people who are now crowd-funding “Jimmy’s End.”

Well, I’m largely unfamiliar with the Internet, and everything connected with it. But Kickstarter was a suggestion that came from Mitch and Lex Records, so I decided to put a toe in the water and see what it was like. We went out to a local medieval abbey to use some of their strange, cavernous chambers for filming the pitch reel. We pretty much made it up and filmed it on the spot, and I hear it’s out there on the Internet now.

It makes sense for you as a way to remain independent.

Certainly, my many years working in the comics industry, creating products that I do not own, has made me rather fierce on the subject of giving up rights. I would much rather that this film did not happen, than happen in a compromised way. Yeah, that approach has obviously ruled out many of the customary ways in which films get funded. In that respect, Kickstarter is a very timely representation of the manner in which projects of this sort can be realized without the necessity of some all-devouring company behind them.

You recently wrote about that history of comics for Occupy Comics, which also began as a Kickstarter project.

While the revolution will be certainly televised, it strikes me that there is a strong possibility that the revolution will also be crowd-funded. If Kickstarter and other enterprises are giving projects like Occupy Comics a chance, then it does suggest there are imaginative ideas out there with incredible use and application across the board. Not just in the arts, but in the sciences as well. It’s an exciting concept, and I look forward to seeing what emerges from it.

Speaking of the revolution, how do you feel it is taking shape, especially given recent exposure of the NSA’s extreme secrecy, whose surveillance state is the opposite of open sourcing and crowd-funding?

There seems to be something going on, even from the briefest appraisal of the news, with the amount of events transpiring. This is such a connected world, it’s useless to isolate any part of it as a discrete phenomenon. You can’t really talk about the problems in Syria, because its problems are global. The waves of discontent and outrage — whether in the Arab countries, or in Brazil, or in America and Europe over the degrees to which its citizens are being monitored — are not separate phenomena. They are phenomena of an emergent world, and the existence of the Internet is one of its major drivers. We have got no idea how it’s going to turn out, because the nature of our society is such that if anything can be invented, then we will invent it. Sooner or later, if it is possible.

So the Internet is changing everything, but I wouldn’t yet want to say for good or ill. I suspect, as ever, that it will be an admixture of both. But we are all along for the ride, even those people like me who do not have Internet connections, mobile phones or even functioning televisions. I’m slowly disconnecting myself. Basically, it’s a feeling that if we are going to subject our entire culture to what is an unpredictable experiment, then I’d like to try to remain outside the petri dish. [Laughs] It’s only sensible to have somebody as a control.

The surveillance state is nothing new: From Bentham’s panopticon to McGoohan’s Village to “V for Vendetta’s” streetcams to the NSA’s Prism.

To me, one of the biggest surprises of these recent surveillance revelations is how surprised people are. The level of surveillance we’ve had over here for the past 20 years now is ridiculous — and useless, I would add. Eerily enough, the security cameras on every street corner of Britain was instigated by the incoming Blair government in 1997, which was when I decided, back in 1982 or so, to set the first episode of “V for Vendetta,” which had cameras on every street corner. So yeah, we’ve had those for awhile; they’ve proliferated and multiplied for decades. More recently, there have been troops of police who have said that all these things are useful for is alienating the public. [Laughs] They are not actually useful in the prevention of crimes, or even actually apprehending their suspects.

Here’s the thing: If you’re monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. [Laughs] How are you going to process that amount of information? That’s when you get all these wonderful emerging paradoxes. Recently over here, there was a case where it was suspected that the people who monitor security screens were taking unnecessary toilet breaks and gossiping when they should be watching us. So it was decided that the only sensible thing to do was to put a security camera in the monitor room. [Laughs] This is answering the question that Juvenal asked so succinctly all those years ago: Who watches the watchmen? The answer is more watchmen! And yet more watchmen watch them, and of course it will eventually occur to them to ask: Can those people who are watching the people doing the watching really be trusted? Much better if they were under surveillance.

That’s the level of absurdity these Orwellian solutions bring to our increasingly complex world. George Orwell’s vision was 1947. Yes, the world was more complex than it had been, but nowhere near as complex as it was going to get. We currently have in Northampton — and I think we might be the first to have it — security cameras in some places that actually talk to you. “Pick that cigarette end up! Yes, you!” [Laughs] Which is so much like Patrick McGoohan’s vision for the Village in “The Prisoner,” all those years ago.

I still think McGoohan’s most underappreciated point from “The Prisoner” is that we are the tyrants.

I remember watching “Fall Out,” that final episode of “The Prisoner,” on I think a Wednesday night when I was around 13. And I can remember that scene where the whole series seems to break down into an absurdist collage. Where McGoohan’s Number Six finally confronts the mysterious Number One, who has been unseen throughout the series but is now a hooded figure. McGoohan pulls off his hood and there is a crude, rubber ape mask underneath. McGoohan pulls off the ape mask, and there is Patrick McGoohan underneath, laughing maniacally. Even at the age of 13, I dimly remember what that meant, that moment when he reveals that they are the same. It was answering the question, “Who is the one who restricts us and makes us all prisoners?” And I think McGoohan’s answer to that was incredibly liberating. It’s us, isn’t it?

Speaking of visionaries, you’re also talking about “Jimmy’s End” in July with Adam Curtis, whose visually arresting documentaries like “The Century of the Self” and“The Power of Nightmares” flawlessly unlocked the psychosocial power and pitfalls of our consumerism and technocracy.

He’s a marvelous man, and one of my favorite filmmakers. I think that “The Power of Nightmares” is the single best piece of documentary television I have ever seen. He was here in Northampton and me and Mitch went for a meal with him, and we got along like a house on fire. He’s a splendid chap. We were talking about the prevalence of zombies in popular culture and how they’re interpreted as the underclass or enslaved consumers.

But I’m tending to think zombies are the perfect metaphor for culture itself. That it is dead, still shambling around looking for brains, and endlessly repeating the things it did in life. I mean, I’m sure it will only be another few years until the moviegoing public gets to learn the exciting story of how high school student Peter Parker had the transformative accident that changed him into the amazing Spider-Man … again. You know? It’s the same stories and same ideas reiterated over and over again. And if we do it in 3-D, if we do it in enough spectacular digital photography, then perhaps people won’t notice that we haven’t had a new idea in decades. Culture is just a shambling zombie that repeats what it did in life; bits of it drop off, and it doesn’t appear to notice. [Sighs hilariously] I tend to think that a good, clean head shot is the only way to work this problem out. [Laughs]

Ha! Wait, so what are we aiming at, if we’re looking to take out our own zombified pop culture with a good, clean head shot?

Ooh, well that’s the question, isn’t it? Probably our own limitations in thinking, our own timorousness in facing the future and taking responsibility for it. OK yeah, I would like to say, “Aim it at Simon Cowell,” or something like that. And while that would likely be a huge improvement, it wouldn’t solve our underlying problem. We are inside us, as always. It’s our way of thinking. Yeah, the head shot should be aimed at ourselves.

And then there’s zombie culture’s disturbing legitimization of the desensitized extermination of others — with confusion as to just who those others happen to be.

That is certainly a worrying phenomenon. If you conscript a bunch of ordinary men or women, put them in uniform, take them to a distant country and tell them, “I want you to go over there and try your best to kill a bunch of people in different uniforms,” the majority who aren’t psychopaths won’t want to do it. We find that an alien thing to do. But if you ask them to kill a virtual enemy … well, that’s no problem. Nobody cares what happens to all those zombies in the shoot-’em-up games, because they’re not real. If you get humans to kill a thousand or 10,000 virtual enemies, and then put them in a real combat situation, it is quite likely that they will become desensitized to the idea of killing, especially with countless virtual walk-throughs.

Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters. Because of the complexity of our situation, we cannot predict what things will be until they happen. It’s just part of our responsibility as people in the modern world to do our very, very best to deal with them, and think them through, as they occur.  While I’m remote from most technology to the point that I’m kind of Amish, I have played a couple of computer games — until I realized I was being bloodied with adrenalin over something that wasn’t real. At the end of a couple of hours of very addictive play, I may have procured the necessary amount of mushrooms to save a princess, but I also wasted hours of my life that I’ll never be able to get back. This is the reason I am not on the Internet. I am aware of its power as a distraction, and I don’t have the time for that.

Despite the constant clamor for attention from the modern world, I do believe we need to procure a psychological space for ourselves. I apparently know some people who try to achieve this by logging off, or going without their Twitter or Facebook for a limited period. Which I suppose is encouraging, although it doesn’t seem that remarkable from my perspective. I think that people need to establish their own psychological territory in face of the encroaching world.

Zombies, explained. Speaking of which, have you and Adam talked about working together in the future?

Well, who knows what will happen in the future? Well, except for the Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July, where me and Mitch are going to be showing the four completed films in the “Jimmy’s End” cycle, and talking about it onstage with Adam. We were hoping to show the fifth film as well, for which we are raising the money on Kickstarter. But that is almost certainly not going to happen, even if the Kickstarter helps as much as we hoped it would. But we’ll be talking to Adam about all of the films, and the subjects that spin off from them. But all things are possible, including any future projects with Adam as well. I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see. We’re both busy men, but we both have a certain admiration for each other’s work and I had a very nice time hanging out with him.

I asked Mitch if Northampton noir worked well as a description of “Jimmy’s End,” and he was cool with it.

Yeah, our little town is black in every sense. I’ve even described it as a black hole on occasion, just in the way it’s very difficult to escape from. You can’t get sufficient velocity to get out of the town before you’re drawn back. I know people here that, if you asked how they came to live in Northampton, they’d just shrug. [Laughs] It’s a place that people end up. We do have a certain amount of darkness in our history, and I find out something new and enormous every day, some of which I’m saving for my novel “Jerusalem,” which is in the final stages. When Adam was down, we talked about some of the rather surprising aspects of Northampton. I pointed out the rusting Victorian gas holder on the edges of my old neighborhood, which is the site where theIndustrial Revolution started, which is where capitalism started. They sound like bold claims, but I think that “Jerusalem” should resoundingly justify them. But yeah, it is a town that invites a noir reading.

Is “Jimmy’s End” a visual psycho-geography of Northampton in the way that your“Unearthing” was a psycho-geography of Steve Moore’s hometown, Shooter’s Hill?

No, it’s different in that, as unlikely as it sounds, “Unearthing” was all true. While faithful to the existing city and sharing pretty much its same history and unusual quirks, the Northampton that we will be hopefully revealing in “The Show” — the feature film we’re trying to make, based off of the “Jimmy’s End” short films — features different characters, events, products, youth cults and other things. There are some real characters from Northampton — some now dead, but we can resurrect them — who will be in interjected into “Jimmy’s End” in small doses.

The biggest difference between the two is that “Jimmy’s End” is fiction but “Unearthing” was a fabulous version of the truth. It was looking at the life of my oldest and dearest friend Steve Moore, interpreting his life as a modern fable. That’s a different process than “Jimmy’s End,” which is a strange but hopefully striking mirror of culture. One of our agendas written on one of my notepads from way back when we started “Jimmy’s End” says, “Let’s steal culture.” There are all these cultural elements that we can parody, if you like, or come up with our own versions of. Somewhere lost in my notes for “Jimmy’s End” are social networking sites, computer games, models of cars, energy drinks, low-fat margarines, a large array of alcohols …

I saw a bottle of Tunguska in “Act of Faith.”

We have a brand of cigarettes called Social Leper. We’ve basically tried to duplicate the entire culture tailored to our story demands. It perhaps is psycho-geography, but the emphasis is probably much more on the psycho than on the geography.

Have you got “The Show” all sketched out, as well?

Better than that, we’ve got a very complete treatment. We know what’s happening scene by scene in “The Show” — and its television series, if there is to be one. Because I’m withering in my scorn for long-running television series that aren’t written or thought out on an episode-by-episode basis. To me, narrative is the most important thing in the world. I deplore the dwindling narrative values of a lot of contemporary culture, where it doesn’t seem to matter if the plot actually makes sense, or if it resolves itself, or if all of the elements introduced resolve themselves. In some long-running television shows today, it’s obvious the writers can’t be bothered to keep track of all of the wild plot twists to keep the audience’s interest. They are non-stories.

Philip Graham and the Washington Post

"Philip Graham committed suicide by killing himself with a shotgun on 3rd August, 1963."

Michael Hasty, Secret Admirers: The Bushes and the Washington Post (5th February , 2004)

"After Graham committed suicide, and his widow Katherine assumed the role of publisher, she continued her husband's policies of supporting the efforts of the intelligence community in advancing the foreign policy and economic agenda of the nation's ruling elites. In a retrospective column written after her own death last year, FAIR analyst Norman Solomon wrote, "Her newspaper mainly functioned as a helpmate to the war-makers in the White House, State Department and Pentagon." It accomplished this function (and continues to do so) using all the classic propaganda techniques of evasion, confusion, misdirection, targeted emphasis, disinformation, secrecy, omission of important facts, and selective leaks.

Graham herself rationalized this policy in a speech she gave at CIA headquarters in 1988. "We live in a dirty and dangerous world," she said. "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." "

Carl Bernstein, CIA and the Media, Rolling Stone Magazine (20th October, 1977)

"In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services - from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements America’s leading news organizations."

Michael Collins Piper, American Free Press (22nd August, 2001)

Under Philip Graham's stewardship, the Post blossomed and its empire expanded, including the purchase of the then-moribund Newsweek magazine and other media properties.

Following the establishment of the CIA in 1947, Graham also forged close ties to the CIA to the point that he was described by author Deborah Davis, as "one of the architects of what became a widespread practice: the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA"- a CIA project known as Operation Mockingbird.

According to Davis, the CIA link was integral to the Post's rise to power: "Basically the Post grew up by trading information with the intelligence agencies." In short, Graham made the Post into an effective and influential propaganda conduit for the CIA.

Despite all this, there was, by the time of Eugene Meyer's death in 1959, a growing gulf between Graham and his wife and his father-in-law, who was having second thoughts about turning his empire over to Graham.

The Post publisher took a mistress, Robin Webb, whom he set up in a large house in Washington and a farm outside of the city. A heavy drinker who reportedly had manic-depressive tendencies, Graham, in some respects, was his own worst enemy, stridently abusive to his wife, both privately and publicly.

Katharine Graham's biographer, Deborah Davis, has pointed out that Philip Graham had also started rattling the CIA:

He had begun to talk, after his second breakdown, about the CIA's manipulation of journalists. He said it disturbed him. He said it to the CIA... He turned against the newsmen and politicians whose code was mutual trust and, strangely, silence. The word was that Phil Graham could not be trusted. Graham was actually under surveillance by somebody. Davis has noted that one of Graham's assistants "recorded his mutterings on scraps of paper."

There are those, however, who have suggested that Graham's legendary "mental breakdown" that developed over the next several years was more a consequence of the psychiatric treatments to which he was subjected more so than any illness itself. One writer has speculated that Graham may have been the victim of the CIA's now-infamous experiments in the use of mind-altering drugs.

The Graham split was a major social and political upheaval in Washington, considering the immense power of the newspaper and its intimate ties to the CIA-and the plutocratic elite.

In his biography of Graham's friend and Washington Post attorney Edward Bennett Williams, the aforementioned Evan Thomas wrote that: "Georgetown society was quickly split into 'Phil People' and 'Kay People'" and that while "publicly, Williams was a Phil Person.... as [Kay] later discovered, she need not have been fearful."

Graham startled Williams by saying that not only did he plan to divorce Katharine but that he wanted to re-write his own 1957 will and give everything "Kay" stood to inherit to his mistress, Robin Webb-effectively depriving Katharine of her controlling interest in the powerful newspaper.

Although Williams kept putting off Graham's demand for a divorce, the will, as Thomas admitted, "was a trickier matter." Three times in the spring of 1963 Graham re-wrote his original will of 1957. Each of Graham's 1963 revisions reducing his wife's share and expanding the share he intended for his mistress. Ultimately, the last version cut out Katharine Graham altogether.

A nasty fight was looming. Katharine obviously knew something was afoot because, as Deborah Davis reports, Mrs. Graham "told [her own attorney] Clark Clifford that the divorce settlement must assign control of The Washington Post, and all of the Post companies, exclusively to her."

Matters finally came to a head when Philip attended a newspaper publishers convention in Arizona and delivered a blistering speech attacking the CIA and exposing "insider" secrets about official Washington-even to the point of exposing his friend John Kennedy's affair with Mary Meyer, the wife of a top CIA official, Cord Meyer (no relation to Katharine Graham).

At that point, Katharine flew to Phoenix and snatched up her husband who was captured after a struggle, put in a straitjacket and sedated. He was then flown to an exclusive mental clinic in the Washington suburb of Rockville, Md.

On the morning of Aug. 3, 1963, Katharine Graham reportedly told friends that Philip was "better" and coming home.

She drove to the clinic and picked up her husband and drove him to their country home in Virginia. Later that day, while "Kay" was reportedly napping in her second floor room, her husband died of a shotgun blast in a bathtub downstairs.

Although the police report of the incident was never made public, the death was ruled a suicide. Deborah Davis described the aftermath:

During probate, Katharine's lawyer challenged the legality of the last will, and Edward Bennett Williams, wishing to retain the Post account, now testified that Phil had not been of sound mind when he had drawn up Phil's final will for him. As a result, the judge ruled that Phil had died intestate. Williams helped Katharine take control of the Post with no significant legal problems and ensured that the final will, which left The Washington Post to another woman, never entered the public record.

In her critical biography of Mrs. Graham, Davis never once suggested that Philip had been murdered but has said in interviews that "there's some speculation that either [Katharine] arranged for him to be killed or somebody said to her, 'don't worry, we'll take care of it' " and that "there's some speculation that it might have even been Edward Bennett Williams."

Under Katharine Graham's rule, The Washington Post grew more powerful than ever, and in 1974 played the pivotal role in the destruction of Richard Nixon who was evidently perceived as a danger to the CIA and to the plutocratic elite.

In her book, Katharine the Great-which Mrs. Graham worked hard to suppress-Deborah Davis perhaps provided the real key to Watergate, charging that the Post's famed Watergate source-"Deep Throat"-was almost certainly Richard Ober, the right-hand man of James Angleton, the CIA's counterintelligence chief and longtime liaison to Israel's Mossad.

Miss Davis revealed that Ober was in charge of a joint CIA-Israeli counterintelligence desk established by Angleton inside the White House. From this listening post, Ober (at Angleton's direction) provided inside information to the Post about Watergate that helped bring down the Nixon administration.

All told, considering the record of Katharine Graham and her Washington Post empire, Washington humorist Art Buchwald probably wasn't far off from the truth when he told the Washington elite who gathered for Mrs. Graham's 70th birthday: "There's one word that brings us all together here tonight. And that word is fear."

Doug Henwood, The Washington Post: The Establishment's Paper(January, 1990)

When the manic-depressive Graham shot himself in 1963, the paper passed to his widow, Katharine. Though out of her depth at first, her instincts were safely establishmentarian. According to Deborah Davis' biography, Katharine the Great, Mrs. Graham was scandalized by the cultural and political revolutions of the 1960s, and wept when LBJ fused to run for reelection in 1968. (After Graham asserted that the book as "fantasy," Harcourt Brace Jovanovich pulled 20,000 copies of Katharine the Great in 1979. The book as re-issued by National Press in 87.)

The Post was one of the last major papers to turn against the Vietnam War. Even today, it hews to a hard foreign policy line--usually to the right of The New York Times, a paper not known or having transcended the Cold War.

There was Watergate, of course, that model of aggressive reporting ed by the Post. But even here, Graham's Post was doing the establishment's work. As Graham herself said, the investigation couldn't have succeeded without the cooperation of people inside the government willing to talk to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

These talkers may well have included the CIA; it's widely suspected that Deep Throat was an Agency man (or men). Davis argues that Post editor Ben Bradlee knew Deep Throat, and may even have set him up with Woodward. She produces evidence that in the early 1950s, Bradlee crafted propaganda for the CIA on the Rosenberg case for European consumption. Bradlee denies working "for" the CIA, though he admits having worked for the U.S. Information Agency - perhaps distinction without a difference.

In any case, it's clear that a major portion of the establishment wanted Nixon out. Having accomplished this, there was little taste for further crusading. Nixon had denounced the Post as "Communist" during the 1950s. Graham offered her support to Nixon upon his election in 1968, but he snubbed her, even directing his allies to challenge the Post Co.'s TV license in Florida a few ears later. The Reagans were a different story - for one thing, Ron's crowd knew that seduction was a better way to get good press than hostility. According to Nancy Reagan's memoirs, Graham welcomed Ron and Nancy to her Georgetown house in 1981 with a kiss. During the darkest days of Iran-Contra, Graham and Post editorial page editor Meg GreenfieId - lunch and phone companions to Nancy throughout the Reagan years - offered the First Lady frequent expressions of sympathy. Graham and the establishment never got far from the Gipper.

Deborah Davis, interviewed by Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press (1992)

Kenn Thomas: Before we get too far from Phil Graham, I'd like to talk a little bit more about his suicide. Getting back to the article that Leary wrote, he seemed to suggest that there was a reason to believe that it could have been something more than suicide, that there's no indication or public record that Graham wasn't done in. And that the "suicide" happened shortly after this public event where Graham was talking about the JFK/Mary Meyer liaison. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Deborah Davis: Phil died in 1963 and it's now 1992. There's still continuing speculation, 29 years later that he was murdered. In my book, I wrote it as a suicide because that's the way it's been represented and I didn't have any independent knowledge of anything else. If I were doing it today, or if I ever do another edition, I will probably expand on that and spend some time investigating it and finding out whether there is any evidence that it was murder. There were a couple of reasons why it could have been murder. One is the one you mentioned. The people that were protecting Kennedy might have done it because of he was a manic depressive. He was in and out of institutions and he was very mentally unstable. A lot of that probably had to do with the fact that he married into a wealthy family. He married the boss' daughter and they gave him the newspaper, but they were watching every move he made. So he did not react well to the fact that Katharine Graham's father had owned the Washington Post. He may have been killed for that reason, if he was killed.

He may have been killed because he had a mistress named Robin Webb. By that time he had moved out of Katharine's house and he was living with Robin Webb in another house and he was actually behaving as if they were married. He had dinner parties over there with her and invited various members of the Washington elite over there for dinner parties and making it very clear that this was the woman he preferred to Katharine. And at the same time, he was re-writing his will. He re-wrote his will three times. Edward Bennet Williams was his attorney. Edward Bennet Williams, who is very well-known as a Washington power broker. He recently died, but he was very much involved in this. Each time, he willingly, at Phil's request, wrote a will that gave Katharine less and less of a share of the Washington Post and gave more and more of it to Robin Webb. By the third rewrite she had nothing and Robin Webb had everything. And this was at a time when Katharine had pretty much given up on the marriage and realized that in order to save the newspaper, which she thought of as her family newspaper--her father built that newspaper and she didn't want to let it go to some mistress of her husband's--and she had come to the conclusion that she either had to divorce him and win the paper in a divorce settlement, or she had to have him declared mentally incompetent. Each of these alternatives was very unattractive to her. And so there's some speculation that either she arranged for him to be killed or somebody said to her, "don't worry, we'll take care of it" and there's some speculation that it might have even been Edward Bennet Williams.

She took him out of the sanitarium one weekend and took him out to their farm in Virginia and this was where he blew his brains out with a shotgun. And the police report was never really made public. After my paperback edition was published this fall, I got a call from some woman who claims that she knew for a fact that it was murder. And if I ever do publish another edition, I intend to look into that.

COINTELPRO

October 11, 1919.

MEMORANDUM FOR MR. RIDGELY.


I am transmitting herewith a communication which has come to my attention from the Panama Canal, Washington office, relative to the activities of MARCUS GARVEY. Garvey is a West-Indian negro and in addition to his activities in endeavoring to establish the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation he has also been particularly active among the radical elements in New York City in agitating the negro movement. Unfortunately, however, he has not as yet violated any federal law whereby he could be proceeded against on the grounds of being an undesirable alien, from the point of view of deportation. It occurs to me, however, from the attached clipping that there might be some proceeding against him for fraud in connection with his Black Star Line propaganda and for this reason I am transmitting the communication to you for your appropriate attention.


The following is a brief statement of Marcus Garvey and his activities:

Subject a native of the West Indies and one of the most prominent negro agitators in New York;

He is a founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League;

He is the promulgator of the Black Star Line and is the managing editor of the Negro World;

He is an exceptionally fine orator, creating much excitement among the negroes through his steamship proposition;

In his paper the "Negro World" the Soviet Russian Rule is upheld and there is open advocation of Bolshevism.

Respectfully,


J.E. Hoover

DATE: 1/22/69

TO: DIRECTOR, FBI (100-448006)

FROM: SAC, CHICAGO (157-2209) (P)

SUBJECT: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
BLACK NATIONALIST - HATE GROUPS
RACIAL INTELLIGENCE
(NATION OF ISLAM)

Reurlet, 1/7/69; Chicago letters 12/24/68 and 1/14/69

ReBulet has been thoroughly studied and discussed by the SAC, the Supervisor, and Agents familiar with facets of the NOI which might indicate trends and possible future direction of the organization. The Bureau's concern is most understandable and suggestions appreciated.

Over the years considerable thought has been given and action taken with Bureau approval, relating to methods through which factionalism among the leadership could be created. Serious consideration has also been given towards developing ways and means of changing NOI philosophy to one whereby the members could be developed into useful citizens and the organization developed into one emphasizing religion - the brotherhood of mankind - and self improvement. Factional disputes have been developed - the most notable being MALCOLM X LITTLE. Prominent black personages have publicly and nationally spoken out against the group - U.S. District Court Judge JAMES BENTON PARSONS being one example. The media of the press has played down the NOI. This appears to be a most effective tool as individuals such as MUHAMMAD assuredly seek any and all publicity be it good or bad; however, if the press is utilized it would appear it should not concentrate on such aspects as the alleged strength of the NOI, immoral activities of the leadership, misuse of funders by these officials, etc. It is the opinion of this office that such exposure is ineffective, possibly creates interest and maybe envy among the lesser educated black man causing them out of curiosity to attend meetings and maybe join, and encourage the opportunist to seek personal gain - physical or monetary - through alignment with the group. At any rate it is felt such publicity in the case of the NOI is not overly effective.

[REDACTED]

May 15, 1968

SAC, Chicago

[REDACTED]

PERSONAL ATTENTION

DIRECTOR, FBI (100-448006)

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
BLACK NATIONALIST - HATE GROUPS
RACIAL INTELLIGENCE
(RICHARD CLAXTON GREGORY)

ReBulet 4/23/68

Chicago airtel and LBH dated 5/2/68 and captioned "Richard Claxton Gregory" concern a speech by Gregory on 4/28/68 where he noted that "Syndicate hoods are living all over. They are the filthiest snakes that exist on this earth." Referenced Bulet instructed you to develop counterintelligence action concerning militant black nationalist Dick Gregory.

Consider the use of this statement in developing a counterintelligence operation to alert La Cosa Nostra (LCN) to Gregory's attack on LCN. It is noted that other speeches by Gregory also contain attacks on LCN. No counterintelligence action should be taken without Bureau authority.

TJD: pag/mrm

NOTE:

Teletype from New Orleans to Director, [UNREADABLE]/30/68, captioned "Richard Claxton Gregory" reported speech by Gregory referring to the Director and FBI Agents in derogatory terms. The Director noted, on the informative note of [UNREADABLE] teletype which said we would recommend counterintelligence against Gregory when indicated, "Right."

To: SAC, Baltimore
From: Director, FBI
Subject: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
BLACK NATIONALIST HATE GROUPS
RACIAL INTELLIGENCE (BLACK PANTHER PARTY)

For the information of recipient offices a serious struggle is taking place between the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the US organization. The struggle has reached reached such [illegible] that it is taking on the aura of gang warfare with attendant threats of murder and reprisals.

In order to fully capitalize upon BPP and US differences as well as to exploit all avenues of creating further dissension in the ranks of the BPP, recipient offices are instructed to submit imaginative and hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP.

Commencing December 2, 1968, and every two-week period thereafter, each office is instructed to submit a letter under this caption containing counterintelligence measures aimed against the BPP. The bi-weekly letter should also contain accomplishments obtained during the previous two-week period [illegible] captioned program.

All counterintelligence actions must be approved at the Bureau prior to taking steps to implement them.

Airtel
To: SACs
From: Director, FBI (100-448006)

COINTELPRO - BLACK PANTHER PARTY
9/16/70

Concerning the first proposal submitted by Detroit, counterintelligence action by San Francisco to capitalize on Huey P. Newton's favorable stand toward homosexuals has already been authorized by the Bureau. The second Detroit proposal to consider directing an anonymous communication to Newton accusing David Hilliard of stealing BPP funds and depositing them in foreign banks does have merit and the Bureau does not concur with San Francisco's observation that this would have little effect since there is no record that Hilliard is skimming large amounts of money. Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge. If facts are present it aids in the sucess of the proposal but the Bureau feels that the skimming of money of money is such a sensitive issue that disruption can be accomplished without facts to back it up.

[...]

With respect to two anonymous letters proposed by Los Angeles, Bureau concurs with San Francisco that to include the card of a member of a rival black extremist group in a letter to Hilliard indicating Newton is marked for assassination could place the Bureau in the position of aiding or initiating a murder by the BPP. Accordingly, Los Angeles' proposal identified as "Letter A" is not approved. Los Angeles should reword this letter to convey the same thought without directly indicating that it is from a specific member of a rival group. The letter could imply that the writer would soon get in touch with Hilliard to see what he would pay to have Newton eliminated. Resubmit the revised letter to the Bureau for approval.

SAC, May 15, 1969

PERSONAL ATTENTION TO ALL OFFICES

Director, FBI

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
BLACK NATIONALIST - HATE GROUPS

The Breakfast for Children Program (BCP) has been instituted by the BPP in several cities to provide a stable breakfast for ghetto children. ... The program has met with some success and has resulted in considerable favorable publicity for the BPP. ... The resulting publicity tends to portray the BPP in a favorable light and clouds the violent nature of the group and its ultimate aim of insurrection. The BCP promotes at least tacit support for the BPP among naive individuals ... and, what is more distressing, provides the BPP with a ready audience composed of highly impressionable youths. ... Consequently, the BCP represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities ... to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.

SAnnotateAC, Albany August 25, 1967

PERSONAL ATTENTION TO ALL OFFICES

Director, FBI

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
BLACK NATIONALIST - HATE GROUPS
INTERNAL SECURITY

...The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder. The activities of all such groups of intelligence interest to the Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant. The pernicious background of such groups, their duplicity, and devious maneuvers must be exposed to public scrutiny where such publicity will have a neautralizing effect. Efforts of the various groups to consolidate their forces or to recruit new or youthful adherents must be frustrated. No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups and where possible an effort should be made the capitalize upon existing conflicts between competing black nationalist organizations. When an opportunity is apparent to disrupt or neutralize black nationalist, hate-type organizations through the cooperation of established local news media contacts or through such contact with sources available to the Seat of Government, in every instance careful attention must be given to the proposal to insure the targetted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited through the publicity and not merely publicized...

You are also cautioned that the nature of this new endeavor is such
that under no circumstances should the existence of the program be made known outside of the Bureau and appropriate within-office security should be afforded to sensitive operations and techniques considered under the program.

No counterintelligence action under this program may be initiated by the field without specific prior Bureau authorization.

April 25, 1972

BY LIASON

Honorable H.R. Haldeman
Assistant to the President
The White House
Washington, D.C.

1 - Mr. A. Rosen
1 - Mr. T. E. Bishop
1 - Mr. E. S. Miller
1 - Mr. R. L. Shackelford
1 - Mr. T. J. Smith (Horner)
1 - Mr. R. L. Pence

Dear Mr. Haldeman:

John Winston Lennon is a British citizen and former member of the Beatles singing group. [REDACTED] Lennon has taken an interest in "extreme left-wing activities in Britain" and is known to be a sympathizer of Trotskyite communists in England.

Despite his apparent ineligibility for a United States visa due to a conviction in London in 1968 for possession of dangerous drugs, Lennon obtained a visa and entered the United States in 1971. During February, 1972, a confidential source, who has furnished reliable information in the past, advised that Lennon had contributed $75,000 to a newly organized New Left group formed to disrupt the Republican National Convention. The visas of Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, expired on February 29, 1972, and since that time Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has been attempting to deport them. During the Lennons' most recent deportation hearing at INS, New York, New York, on April 18, 1972, their attorney stated that Lennon felt he was being deported due to his outspoken remarks concerning United States policy in Southeast Asia. The attorney request a delay in order that character witnesses could testify for Lennon, and then he read into the court record that Lennon had been appointed to the President's Council for Drug Abuse (National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse) and to the faculty of New York University, New York, New York.

KING,

In view of your low grade... I will not dignify your name with either a Mr. or a Reverend or a Dr. And, your last name calls to mind only the type of King such as King Henry the VIII...

King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes. White people in this country have enough frauds of their own but I am sure they don't have one at this time anywhere near your equal. You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. You could not believe in God... Clearly you don't believe in any personal moral principles.

King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader. You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile. We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins, a man of character and thank God we have others like him. But you are done. Your "honorary" degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done.

No person can overcome facts, not even a fraud like yourself... I repeat — no person can argue successfully against facts... Satan could not do more. What incredible evilness... King you are done.

The American public, the church organizations that have been helping — Protestant, Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are — an evil, abnormal beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done.

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

Date: 4/2Annotate7/70

TO: DIRECTOR, FBI (100-448006)

FROM: SAC, LOS ANGELES (157-4054) (P)

SUBJECT: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
BLACK NATIONALIST HATE GROUPS
RACIAL INTELLIGENCE - BLACK PANTHER PARTY

Re San Francisco airtel to the Bureau date 4/23/70,
entitled, "BLACK PANTHER PARTY (BPP), LOS ANGELES DIVISION,
RM-BPP."

Bureau permission is requested to publicize the pregnancy of Jean
Seberg, well-known movie actress by (name deleted) Black Panther (BPP)
(deleted) by advising Hollywood "Gossip-Columnists" in the Los Angeles
area of the situation. It is felt that the possible publication of
Seberg's plight could cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her
image with the general public.

It is proposed that the following letter from a fictitious person
be sent to local columinists:

"I was just thinking about you and remembered I still owe you a favor.
So ---- I was in Paris last week and ran into Jean Seberg, who was
heavy with baby. I thought she and Romaine [sic] had gotten together
again, but she confided the child belonged to (deleted) of the Black
Panthers, one (deleted). The dear girl is getting around!

"Anyway, I thought you might get a scoop on the others. Be good and
I'll see you soon.

Love,
Sol"

Usual precautions would be taken by the Los Angeles Division to
preclude identification of the Bureau as the source of the letter if
approval is granted.

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM
BLACK NATIONALIST - HATE GROUPS
RACIAL INTELLIGENCE 3/4/68

[...]

GOALS
~~~~~
For maximum effectiveness of the Counterintelligence Program, and to prevent wasted effort, long-range goals are being set.

1. Prevent the COALITION of militant black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength; a truism that is no less valid for all its triteness. An effective coalition of black nationalist groups might be the first step toward a real "Mau Mau" [Black revolutionary army] in America, the beginning of a true black revolution.

2. Prevent the RISE OF A "MESSIAH" who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a "messiah;" he is the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Muhammed is less of a threat because of his age. King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed "obedience" to "white, liberal doctrines" (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism. Carmichael has the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way.

3. Prevent VIOLENCE on the part of black nationalist groups. This is of primary importance, and is, of course, a goal of our investigative activity; it should also be a goal of the Counterintelligence Program to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence.

4. Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community. The goal of discrediting black nationalists must be handled tactically in three ways. You must discredit those groups and individuals to, first, the responsible Negro community. Second, they must be discredited to the white community, both the responsible community and to "liberals" who have vestiges of sympathy for militant black nationalist simply because they are Negroes. Third, these groups must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different tactics from the first two. Publicity about violent tendencies and radical statements merely enhances black nationalists to the last group; it adds "respectability" in a different way.

5. A final goal should be to prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed. [...]

TARGETS
~~~~~~~

Primary targets of the Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist-Hate Groups, should be the most violent and radical groups and their leaders. We should emphasize those leaders and organizations that are nationwide in scope and are most capable of disrupting this country. These targets, members, and followers of the:

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM)
Nation of Islam (NOI)

Offices handling these cases and those of Stokely Carmichael of SNCC, H. Rap Brown of SNCC, Martin Luther King of SCLC, Maxwell Stanford of RAM, and Elijah Muhammed of NOI, should be alert for counterintelligence
suggestions. [...]