Jackal - John Follain

A while ago, I wrote a blog post on a book about Carlos the Jackal, "To The Ends Of The Earth", by David Yallop.

I have read one or two other books about Carlos.  John Follain's "Jackal - The Secret Wars of Carlos The Jackal", and Colin Smith's "Carlos - Portrait of a Terrorist".  Follain's book has been re-issued under another name, and remains the most credible and coherent book which I have come across on this particular subject.

Follain refuses to be blinded by the mythology, and doesn't pad the book out with idle speculation and hypothetical or "alternative" scenarios. He simply tries to document what is credible and widely accepted, but at the same time not simply regurgitating verbatim what others have written in the past. The approach here is unvarnished and methodical, and the language used is largely calm and measured, devoid of some of the moral self-righteousness of some books in this sphere. Lean, dispassionate, and structured and argued in a such a way as to make it quite plausible..

There is some good material about the the man's upbringing in Venezuela, and the years which he spent in London and Moscow, tracing his personal and political growth and development.

This work deviates slightly from the normal Carlos "scholarship" with its relative brevity regarding the 1973-75 period, and its dwelling on the aftermath of the OPEC operation. In that respect, more valuable and "original" than other works in telling the whole story in all its facets, and not just the headline-grabbing episodes which are the staple of documentaries and newspaper articles.

We are given extensive accounts of complicated and tense relationships with Eastern bloc countries and various Middle Eastern rulers. In addition, Follain shines a torch on the French political scene of the early 80s, and the boiling cauldron of Beirut. The whole Carlos v France saga is told at some length, as is the process by which France engineered the "arrest" in Khartoum in 1994.

The 1990s was a bit of a "twilight zone" for me concerning world affairs, and the latter chapters shed some light on some of the pressures and dislocations, as the world changed after the collapse of Communism, and new allegiances had to be forged. The version which I have read ends with an account of the first trial in Paris.

A fine read, not just for those interested in the story of Carlos, but for its coverage of the Middle East landscape of the time and the murky worlds of espionage and power politics.

Puppetmasters - Philip Willan

Having recently finished reading Daniele Ganser's book about Gladio , my appetite for additional knowledge and information on this and related subjects was aroused.  I came across Philip Willan's book, Puppetmasters, subtitled "The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy".

This is a riveting but at times chilling exploration of Italian terrorism from the late 1960s through to the early 80s, the period generally referred to as "the years of lead", and how this was directed, influenced and manipulated by sinister conspiratorial forces.

The book features a particularly thorough and intensive look at the kidnapping and murder in 1978 of the former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who at the time was on the verge of securing an agreement for Communists to enter the government in Rome.  These enquiries bring together many of the strands associated with the Gladio phenomenon, and the "strategy of tension".  Many of the deceptions, ambiguities and irregularities arising from the case are probed. The author does not just pose the banal question "who benefited from Moro's demise?". Instead he puts forward evidence that the affair was much more complicated than was portayed at the time, mostly pointing to the behaviour of the Italian security services and police, and the fate of some of those people who may have had knowledge of what went on.

Studying this particular subject requires the reader to take each quote, assertion and allegation with a pinch of salt, as the whole structure seems to have been founded on a game of multiple, mutual blackmail. Everybody seems to have possessed knowledge of where some of the bodies were buried.  It may be possible to construct an organic mental picture of what the true story was, the bricks being those fragments of the tale which appear most plausible, and which make sense in the big picture.

The most pertinent conclusion which I drew from this book was how acutely the boundaries between "goodies" and "baddies" were blurred.  It is strongly alleged and suspected that the so-called "guardians of democracy", and their associates in other organizations, infiltrated left-wing groups and orchestrated some of their blood-soaked actions, as part of their campaign to induce the public to retreat to the secure bosom of the "security" provided by the Right. The thorough and methodical way in which the author sifts through the evidence and the labyrinthine grid of connecting players makes the case compelling and disconcerting. Who in the final analysis had the more honest, noble and selfless aims and values?

A well-structured and unvarnished telling of one of the more sordid and cruel chapters in post-war European history....