A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 5: 1933-1953

The U.S. War Machine has been bombing Afghanistan for over 8 years in its endless war against the Taliban regime’s Afghan government. Yet over 80 percent of Afghanistan’s territory in early 2010 was apparently still controlled by the Taliban regime and other armed Islamic guerrilla groups in Afghanistan that are apparently now allied with the Taliban. One reason neither the Republican Bush II Administration nor the Democratic Obama Administration has been able to quickly achieve a military victory in its endless war in Afghanistan might be because most members of the Militaristic U.S. Establishment’s foreign policy-making elite apparently still don’t know very much about the history of the people of Afghanistan.

Nadir Shah’s successor as Afghan King, Muhammad Zahir Shah, sat on the Afghan throne, for example, from 1933 to 1973—although he apparently never received as much U.S. mass media coverage in the USA during his 40 year reign in Afghanistan as did either Queen Elizabeth II or Princess Di of England. But in the 1930s, “fascist intelligence agents…succeeded in penetrating the government apparatus and particular branches of the Afghan economy as `consultants,’ `advisers’ and `experts,” according to The Truth About Afghanistan by S. Gevortom. The same book also noted that:

“The German colony in Afghanistan…greatly increased on the eve of the Second World War…Hitler’s agents Schenk, Fischer, Wenger and Knerlein…infiltrated the war ministry and the ministry of public works of Afghanistan…Nazi Germany managed to spread its influence among tribes in the south of Afghanistan and in the north-western border areas.”

And apparently Nazi agents in Afghanistan encouraged increased anti-Semitism in Afghanistan during World War II; so that the economic situation of the remaining Afghans of Jewish background deteriorated when Zahir Shah’s monarchical government restricted their economic activity to local trading only and removed them from the foreign trade positions some had previously held.

But Zahir Shah’s government did not align Afghanistan with Nazi Germany during World War II. Instead, Zahir Shah's government announced in November 1941 that--like the Irish government of Eamon DeValera--it would remain neutral during World War II.

Yet during Zahir Shah’s forty-year reign, demands for more democratization and modernization in Afghanistan began to also be made by some people in Afghanistan.

A secret society of supporters of constitutional reform and democratization, the People of the Afghan Youth (“ Halqa-yi-Jawani-I Afghanistan ”) was formed and then broken up by the monarchical regime. But after Zahir Shah appointed his uncle, Shah Mahmud Khan, to be the Afghan monarchy’s prime minister in 1945, Shah Mahmud ordered the release of all Afghan political prisoners.

The first student union in Afghanistan , the Union of Students, was then founded in 1946 and its political orientation was liberal reformist and anti-imperialist. The following year, the anti-monarchist, Awakened Youth [“Weekh--Zalmayan’] group of Afghan nationalists was started, which openly discussed the ideal of setting up a democratic republic in Afghanistan.

Then, in 1949, a parliamentary election was held and 40 percent of the elected members of the new Afghan parliament favored democratization and modernization reforms. So, not surprisingly, the Afghan parliament next passed a 1949 law which finally legalized freedom of the press in Afghan society.

Predictably, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam, “the enactment of laws permitting freedom of the press led to the appearance of newspapers and other publications whose favorite targets became the” Afghan “ruling family oligarchy and” Afghan “conservative religious leaders.”

At the same time, between 3,500 and 5,000 Afghans of Jewish background still lived in Afghanistan in 1949--with more than 2,000 of them residing in the city of Herat and deriving their family incomes from the Persian carpet trade or from employment as tailors and shoemakers. But aside from a few wealthy families of Jewish background, most of the Afghans of Jewish background were forbidden to leave the country between 1933 and 1950. After 1951, however, they were allowed to emigrate from Afghanistan.

So by 1966, many Afghans of Jewish background had moved to either India or Israel/Palestine and only about 800 people of Jewish background now lived in Afghanistan; and by 1967 nearly 4,000 people of Afghan background now lived in Israel/Palestine.

By December 1969, only a few dozen Afghans of Jewish background still lived in either Herat or in Kabul; and, in all of Afghanistan, there were now only about 300 Afghans of Jewish background. And by 2005, according to the New York Times, only one Afghan of Jewish religious background apparently still lived in Afghanistan.

At Kabul University, meanwhile, during the early 1950s, the Union of Students “became a forum for free-wheeling debate and attacks on the status quo” in Afghanistan, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History. A Movement of the Enlightened Youth, the TNB (“Tehrik-i-Naujawanan Baidar”), was also started by young students in Afghanistan which, in its manifesto, called for: 1. granting legal rights to Afghan women; 2. a democratic Afghan government which was accountable to an elected Afghan parliament; 3. eradication of official corruption in Afghanistan; 4. the formation of political parties in Afghanistan; and 5. the economic development of Afghanistan’s economy.

After a 1952 demonstration was held by these groups which demanded that people in Afghanistan be allowed to form political parties, however, the monarchical Afghan government prevented any further protest by these dissident political groups. According to Afghanistan: A Modern History, for example, just before a 1953 palace revolution in Afghanistan, the Movement of the Enlightened Youth/TNB group of young political dissidents “was suppressed” by the Afghan monarchical regime and “some of its more vocal leftists were jailed.” The same book also recalled that among the Afghan leftist dissidents imprisoned in 1953 were included Dr. Abdul Rahman Mahmoodi (who was “the doyen of Afghan Marxism”), an Afghan historian named Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghubar and an Afghan Marxist intellectual named Mir Akbar Khyber.

(end of part 5. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 6: 1953-1967)

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 4: 1924-1933

Between January 2009 and late March 2010, nearly 400 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in the Pentagon’s endless war in Afghanistan. Yet the history of people in Afghanistan is still unknown to many people in the USA.

In July 1928, for example, Afghan King Amanullah, for a second time, attempted to enact a series of democratic reforms in Afghanistan by convening a loya jirga—a meeting of Afghanistan’s leading tribal and religious leaders—and urging it to support the following reforms: 1. establishment of a Western-style constitutional monarchy, a cabinet of ministers, an elected lower legislative house of representatives and a nominated upper legislative house; 2. separation of religious and state power; 3. legal emancipation of women and abolition of polygamy; 4. compulsory education for all Afghans; and 5. establishment of co-educational schools.

Most of Amanullah’s July 1928 proposed modernization and democratic reforms were rejected, however, by the members of the loya jirga meeting. So Amanullah then convened a new loya jirga meeting that only included his own political supporters, which then approved all his reform proposals and also banned slavery, declared Afghanistan to be a secular state and legally abolished the use of a chadar or veil by Afghan women. But agents of the UK government in Afghanistan such as T.E. Lawrence (a/k/a “Lawrence of Arabia”) apparently then encouraged the religiously conservative Afghan tribal leaders who opposed Amanullah’s democratic reform program--because it reduced their power, privileges and special influence within Afghan society--to start another uprising against Amanullah’s regime. According to The Truth About Afghanistan book by S. Gevortom:

“In late 1928 by bribery and deception British agents managed to provoke a rebellion among certain tribes in the eastern part of Afghanistan . A British Intelligence agent, Col. T.E. Lawrence, arrived in the north-western province of India. Under the alias of aircraftsman Shaw he became very active in arranging meetings with Afghan opposition leaders and virtually directed anti-government activities in Afghanistan …”

By November 1928 Shinwari Pashtun tribesmen in Afghanistan had burned down Amanullah’s winter palace and were marching on Kabul to overthrow his regime. So after fleeing to Kandahar, Amanullah then abdicated in favor of his brother Inayatullah Khan, before eventually going into exile in Italy. But, ironically, the Shinwari Pashtun tribesman had also burned down the UK government’s consulate in the city of Jalalabad before marching on to Kabul.

So, not surprisingly, British agents then created “another center of rebellion in northern areas of Afghanistan where their henchman Bacha Saquo was operating,” according to The Truth About Afghanistan. The same book also recalled:

“On the eve of his force’s attack on Kabul his envoys had a secret meeting with British ambassador Humphreys to clarify details of the planned seizure of the Afghan capital. On February 28, 1929, the British Daily Mail wrote that Britain’s representative in Kabul, Humphreys, had helped…Bacha Saquo to come to power…Supporting the rebels…British military aircraft time and again violated the air space…British planes flew over Kabul…”

So only three days after Amanullah’s abdication in January 1929, Saquo--a Tajk bandit from northern Afghanistan--entered Kabul with his followers and “seized Kabul, overthrew the…government and proclaimed himself” the Afghan king, according to The Truth About Afghanistan. But, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam, the UK government-backed Saquo then “subjected the city and its…inhabitants to nine month reign of terror” in which there was much looting, pillage and raping of women by his troops.

Not surprisingly, in response to the 9-month reign of terror in Kabul, armed Afghan opposition to Saquo’s regime soon developed within Afghanistan and though, initially, “strongly supported by the imperialist and internal reactionary forces,” according to The Truth About Afghanistan, Saquo did not remain in power for long. After the UK government apparently ended its support for Saquo--and began to back the Afghan tribal army of General Mohamad Nadir Khan and his Afghan clan—Saquo’s troops were soon defeated.

The Afghan tribal army of Nadir Khan and his Afghan clan then occupied Kabul in October 1929; and Saquo and his leading followers were publicly hanged in November 1929--“despite a pledge to spare Bacha Saquo’s life and a promise of safe passage signed on a copy of the Koran by the victorious general,”when Saquo had agreed to surrender the previous month, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History.

Nadir Khan then was placed on the Afghan throne, himself, by his tribal army; and in September 1930 a jirga was convened which officially proclaimed Nadir Khan as Nadir Shah, the new Afghan king. Nadir Shah then built up a regular Afghan army of 40,000 men, opened up the Afghan economy to privately-owned corporations and promulgated a new Afghan Constitution in 1931--before being assassinated by an Afghan high school student in November 1933.

Under the Afghan Constitution of 1931, an autocratic monarchical political system linked to Afghan religious conservatives was re-established and the religious law of the Hanafi School of Sunni Islam was decreed as the official law of Afghanistan. The imams of Afghan mosques were then put on the Afghan government payroll during Nadir Shah’s brief reign and relatives of influential Afghan religious figures were all appointed by Nadir Shah to lucrative government positions.

It was also during Nadir Shah’s four-year reign that the first Afghan higher educational institution, the Faculty of Medicine, was set up in 1932. But, prior to his assassination in 1933, “there was a perception that Nadir Shah leaned towards” UK imperialism too much, because the UK government had “granted him 170,000 pounds” after his seizure of power in 1929, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History.

Following Nadir Shah’s assassination in 1933, the remaining Afghans of Jewish religious background were only allowed to live in Herat , Balkh or Kabul and were prohibited from living in other towns in Afghanistan. In Herat, Balkh and Kabul, Afghans of Jewish background apparently also only now lived in separate neighborhoods from the neighborhoods in which Afghans of other religious backgrounds lived. In addition, after 1933 they were not allowed to leave Herat, Balkh or Kabul without a permit and were required to pay a special yearly poll tax. Between 1933 and 1950, people of Jewish background in Afghanistan were also not allowed to obtain jobs in the Afghan monarchical government’s civil service; and their children were not allowed to attend Afghan government schools.

(end of part 4. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 5: 1933-1953)

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 3: 1901-1924

Over 2,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the endless war in Afghanistan since Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009. But the U.S. mass media news departments still seem to pay more attention to the individual deaths of Israeli civilians in war than to the individual deaths of Afghan civilians in war. Yet--although many Afghans of Jewish religious background emigrated during the second half of the 19th century--in the early 20th century around 12,000 people of Jewish background still lived in Afghanistan. According to the 2007 edition of Encyclopedia Judaica:

“…The Jewish communities of Afghanistan were largely composed of… Meshed Jews…Economically, their situation in the last century was not unfavorable; they traded in skins, carpets, and antiquities…”

Some of the wealthiest Afghans of Jewish background derived their wealth from having special economic interests in neighboring Czarist Russia. But after their foreign investments in Russia were nationalized by the revolutionary government in Russia following the October Revolution of 1917 and Afghan’s monarchical government began monopolizing the foreign trade which had previously been a source of wealth for Afghans of Jewish background, they became increasingly pauperized. So more of them then emigrated; and only between 3,000 and 4,000 people of Jewish background still lived in Afghanistan by the 1930s.

But after inheriting the Afghan throne in 1901, Abdur Rahman’s son, Habibullah Khan, was (like his father) paid an annual subsidy by the UK government—even after a 1905 treaty between Afghanistan and the UK removed the official right of the UK government to control Afghan foreign policy. And Habibullah controlled the Afghan government from 1901 until he was assassinated in February 1919.

During the reign of Afghan King Habibullah, some intellectual criticism of both UK imperialism and the nature of Afghan’s antiquated feudalist society in the early 1900s began to develop. A then-46-year-old Afghan intellectual named Mahmud Tarzi, for example, began to publish in 1911 a bi-monthly newspaper, Seraji-al-Akhbar, that “became a vehicle for his critical views on imperialism, the need for the modernization of Afghan society, and on the resistance to change of Muslim clerics” in Afghanistan, according to Angelo Rasanayagam's Afghanistan: A Modern History.

Then, when Habibullah was assassinated after about 18 years on the Afghan throne, the son who succeeded him on the Afghan royal throne, Amanullah Khan, began to be advised by the anti-imperialist Seraji-al-Akhbar publisher-journalist Tarzi. Both Tarzi and the top Afghan army generals—whose support following his father’s murder enabled Amanullah to succeed his father as ruler—urged Afghan King Amanullah to proclaim the complete independence of Afghanistan on April 13, 1919. But in response to this declaration of Afghanistan’s independence, UK military forces bombed the Afghan monarchical government’s military encampment at Dakka on May 9, 1919, killing 20 to 30 Afghan soldiers and Afghan tribesmen. The Afghan monarchical government then declared war on UK imperialism on May 13, 1919; and on May 15, 1919 the Afghan War of Independence (a/k/a the Third Anglo-Afghan War) began.

After three columns of Afghan troops marched towards India (which was then still a colony of UK imperialism that also included what is now Pakistan and Bangla Desh), British military planes next began to bomb the Afghan cities of Jalalabad and Kabul. The Afghan War of Independence was then soon ended in August 1919 by the Treaty of Rawalpindi, in which the UK government--despite dictating the terms of the treaty-- again officially agreed to allow the Afghan government to control its own foreign affairs and officially recognized Afghanistan’s independence.

During 1919, Amanullah also established a Council of Ministers and appointed Tarzi to be the Afghan government’s foreign minister. Four years later Amanullah also promulgated a new Afghan constitution that was modeled on the 1906 Persian/Iranian constitution, retained his position as King under the new constitution and attempted to institute some democratic reform and modernization internally in Afghanistan. But Amanullah’s 1923 proposals for the emancipation of Afghan women, compulsory education for all Afghans and co-educational schools in Afghanistan were opposed by Afghan’s religiously conservative tribal leaders. At the same time, the independent foreign policy pursued by Amanullah’s government—which had signed a friendship treaty with the government of the neighboring Soviet Union on February 28, 1921-- displeased the UK government.

So, according to the book The Truth About Afghanistan by S. Gevortom, the UK government then “hatched plots,” “resorted to such tried and tested means as bribing” Afghan “tribal chiefs and religious leaders and supplying arms and ammunition to” Afghan “tribes,” and "actively supported the extreme right of the Moslem clergy which was in opposition to Amanullah.” British agents, in the spring of 1924, then “succeeded in organizing a major tribal uprising in Khosta, a region of Afghanistan bordering” on UK imperialism’s then-colony of India. The same book also noted:

“The uprising spread to some other regions of Afghanistan. The insurgents demanded the repeal of progressive laws and reforms adopted by Amanullah’s government and insisted on a pro-British line in Afghan policy.”

Amanullah’s supporters within the Afghan army, however, were able to suppress this UK government-backed Afghan uprising of 1924. But Amanullah still lacked as strong an army or as strong a government bureaucracy as the Turkish leader Ataturk had at his disposal, when Ataturk was able to introduce some secular democratic reforms in Turkey ( during this same historical period). So Amanullah was unable to immediately move forward with his democratic reform program, even after the 1924 revolt in Afghanistan was suppressed by his Afghan army supporters.

(end of part 3. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 4: 1924-1933")

This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog.

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 2: 1876-1901

(This article was previously posted on the Austin-based Rag Blog alternative news blog earlier in the year).

The Democratic Obama Administration’s Pentagon spent nearly a billion dollars in 2009 on the Afghan War contracts it awarded for construction projects that were mostly on U.S. military bases across Afghanistan. Yet most U.S. taxpayers still probably know little about the 19th-century history of people in Afghanistan or about the wars that were fought in Afghanistan during the 19th century.

After occupying Quetta in Baluchistan in 1876 and converting it into a military base, UK imperialism, for example, launched the Second Anglo-Afghan War by again invading Afghanistan. The UK government then replaced Sher Ali Khan as Afghanistan’s king by putting Sher Ali’s son, Yaqub Khan, on the Afghan throne. Yaqub Khan was then forced by the UK government to sign the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879.

As a result of the 1879 Treaty of Gandamak, the feudalist monarchical regime agreed to let the UK government control Afghanistan’s foreign affairs and establish UK diplomatic missions in Kabul and other Afghan cities. It also gave the British control of large areas of Afghanistan west of the Indus River in exchange for the UK government agreeing to now pay the new Afghan king, Yaqub Khan, an annual subsidy of 60,000 British pounds per year.

But, naturally, most Afghans who lived in Kabul did not support the terms of the May 1879 Treaty of Gandamak and were against giving the UK government so much special influence in Afghanistan. So in September 1879 the UK government’s diplomatic representative in Kabul was murdered “by mutinous Afghan soldiers who had been assigned to protect him,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam. In retaliation, a British general named Roberts moved his troops into Kabul on October 12, 1879 and forced Yaqub Khan to abdicate. Then General Roberts “became the virtual ruler of Kabul , instigating a rule of terror that was bitterly resisted” until “the British forces found themselves under siege,” by Afghan resistance fighters, according to the same book.

But after being defeated in open battle by Afghan resistance fighters on July 27, 1880 at Maiwand, near the Afghan city of Kandahar, UK troops were finally withdrawn from Afghanistan in April 1881, thus ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Yet before withdrawing its troops, the UK government began supporting an Afghan feudal warlord, Abdur Rahman Khan, after Rahman had marched on Kabul and declared himself the new Afghan king in Charikar on July 20, 1880. In this way, the UK government insured that Afghanistan would continue to be a British protectorate whose foreign policy would be controlled by the UK government, instead of being a fully independent state.

Known as the “Iron Amir,” Afghan King Abdur Rahman ruled over people in Afghanistan in a repressive way. Afghanistan: A Modern History described how this British imperialist-backed monarch governed Afghanistan:

“In almost continuous warfare during his 20-year reign, rebellions were punished by mass executions, or deportations, such as the forced resettlement of thousands of Ghilzai Pashtun tribesmen…He established a ruthless police force to subjugate suspected opponents and uncooperative officials.”

Not surprisingly, the UK government whose special interests he served provided Rahman’s repressive regime in Afghanistan with “substantial supplies of arms and ammunition,” according to the same book. And, like the previous 19th-century Afghan kings, Abdur Rahman also was paid an annual subsidy by the UK government during his reign of nearly 20 years. Between 1.2 million and 1.85 million Indian rupees per year were paid to Rahman between 1882 and 1901 by the UK government; and Rahman used a portion of his annual subsidy from the British imperialists to fund his recruitment of the Afghan troops he required to continue to rule people in Afghanistan in an undemocratic way.

(end of part 2. To be followed by “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 3: 1901-1924))

A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 1: 1838 to 1876

(This article was previously posted on the Austin-based Rag Blog alternative news blog earlier this year)

The number of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan has increased from 51,000 to between 70,000 and 100,000 since Barack Obama’s inauguration as U.S. president in January 2009. And there are still between 60,000 and 101,000 armed private contractors--as well as 38,000 combat troops in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force [ISAF] from countries other than the USA-- in Afghanistan in 2010. Yet if you grew up in the USA, your high school social studies teacher was likely to know more about the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict than about the history of Afghanistan.

But although no people of Jewish religious background lived in Afghanistan prior to the 19th century, by the end of the 1840s (after the Anglo-Indian army of UK imperialism which had invaded Afghanistan in 1838 was driven out by the Afghan people in the early 1840s) about the same number of people of Jewish background then lived in Afghanistan as then lived in the United States. As Raphael Patai noted in her book Tents of Jacob, “the number of Jews in Afghanistan in the mid-nineteenth century was estimated at 40,000.”

Yet the aim of the UK government’s military occupation of Kabul between 1839 and 1842, during the First Anglo-Afghan War, was just mainly to prop up an ineffectual and unpopular leader named Shah Shuja, whom the UK government had put in power, in place of Afghan King Dost Mohammad Khan, as Afghanistan ’s ruler.

UK troops in Afghanistan, however, found the Afghan people to be opposed to their presence in Afghanistan; and, between 1839 and 1842, there were “increasingly effective armed attacks on the British garrison” in Kabul, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam. The UK troops were soon forced to retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad, “through narrow mountain defiles and passes in the harshest wintry conditions, with the long columns of soldiers” and their civilian camp followers “being continuously shot at and ambushed by ferocious Ghilzai tribesmen from the surrounding hills,” according to the same book. As a result, around 9,500 (including 600 English officers and their families) of the primarily Indian troops of UK imperialism and 12,000 Indian civilian camp followers lost their lives when they were defeated militarily by people in Afghanistan during the 1839-1842 Anglo-Afghan War.

In revenge for being defeated in the First Anglo-Afghan War, however, UK troops returned to Kabul in 1843 and sacked Kabul . But because of its defeat in the 1839-1842 war, the UK government agreed to invite Dost Mohammad Khan to return to Kabul and resume his position as Afghan King. Twelve years later, on March 30, 1855, a treaty of friendship was signed between the UK government and Dost Mohammad’s feudalist government.

The UK government then started to pay King Dost Mohammad an annual subsidy of 10,000 British pounds to help protect its strategic interests in that area of the world. Dost Mohammad remained on the Afghan throne until 1863; and between 1863 and 1878, Dost Mohammad’s son, Sher Ali Khan, was Afghanistan’s ruling monarch.

After the UK army again intervened in Afghanistan in October 1856 to force the Persian/Iranian government troops that had occupied the city of Herat in western Afghanistan to withdraw, the UK government did not openly intervene in Afghanistan’s internal affairs again until 1876. But as the book Afghanistan: A Modern History noted, “when Disraeli became [ UK ] prime minister, the tacit policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan ended, and was replaced by the `forward policy’…”

(end of part 1. "A People's History of Afghanistan--Part 2: 1876 to 1901" to soon follow).

Remembering 40th Anniversary of Kent State Massacre

May 4th marked the 40th anniversary of the 1970 killing of four students at Kent State University by members of Ohio's National Guard. Barry Levine was the boyfriend of Allison Krause, one of the slain students. In his eulogy for her, Levine described what happened on May 4, 1970 in Kent, Ohio:

"...We stood for a few seconds watching the soldiers move out behind a screen of gas, before deciding to retreat with the crowd of students.

"...A gas cannister landed at our feet, exploding in our faces...

"After a few seconds of recovery, Allison turned in her tracks and froze. She stood in the path of the pursuing troops screaming at the top of her lungs...The hand drawn to her face, holds a wet rag used to protect herself from the gas, and her other hand holds mine, with which I pulled her over the hill and into the parking lot, a safe distance from the troops.

"For several minutes we stood in the parking lot watching these men threaten us with their rifles...And then they turned..."

In his 1981 book Mayday: Kent State, J. Gregroy Payne also noted the following:

"In the fall of 1980, additional information from the FBI investigation on Kent State housed at the National Archives was released to the public. This information revealed that President Nixon instructed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover--who thought the four victims `got what they deserved'--to find information in the fall of 1970 to substantiate the Guardsmen's claims about the incident. Nixon's directive was issued during the FBI's investigation of the incident. Despite the recent shocking revelations, thousands of pages of the FBI report remain classified, therefore, unavailable for public scrutiny..."

(Downtown 4/27/94)

Exxon Mobil & The U.S. Mass Media Historically

In the early 1990s, before Exxon was allowed to merge with Mobil (despite U.S. anti-trust laws which are supposed to prevent corporate monopolies from being created within the U.S. economic system), Mobil was then the U.S. corporation with the largest direct investment in Saudi Arabia. It was then involved in two huge joint ventures with the Saudi Government: a refinery and a petrochemical complex. Each Mobil-Saudi business project cost more than $1 billion to construct.

In addition, 12 percent of Mobil's imported crude oil came from Iraq before Saddam Hussein decided to annex Kuwait's oilfields in August 1990, in his failed attempt to increase his bargaining power with Mobil and the other transnational oil companies at that time.

Coincidentally, in 1990 a member of Mobil's board of directors, J.Richard Munro, was also the then-chairman of the Executive Committee of Time Warner's corporate board.

Mobil had long been represented on the corporate board of Time magazine's parent company. As early as 1967, for example, Mobil's president at that time, Rawleigh Warner, also sat on Time Inc.'s board of directors.

Despite its historic ties to Time magazine, Mobil was not reluctant during the 1980s to take legal action against U.S. mass media institutions over which it had no control. According to a 1988 book by former Time-Life Broadcast Chairman Richard Clurman, entitled Beyond Malice: The Media's Years of Reckoning, in the 1980s Mobil created a new $10 million insurance policy for its top 100 executives "to cover their costs should any of them find a reason to sue for libel" any U.S. mass media institutions that print articles about them which the Mobil executives don't like.

Newsweek magazine's parent company, The Washington Post, was sued for $100 million by then-Mobil President William Tavoulareas in the 1980s, for example, after the newspaper printed a front-page article which, according to Clurman's Beyond Malice book, charged Mobil's then-president "with setting up his 24-year-old son in a multimillion dollar oil shipping business, which profited mightily from its special relationship with Mobil."

In 1987, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. found the Washington Post story on Mobil's then-president "substantially true" and ruled that "an adversarial stance"--even in relation to Mobil--"is fully consistent with professional investigative reporting." When the then-Mobil president appealed this court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to even consider reviewing the anti-Mobil, pro-freedom-of-the-press verdict.

(Downtown 10/24/90)