A rchive Date
[ 16-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Thou doth protest too much
By PAUL JACKSON
Calgary Sun
May 6, 2000
The riff-raff, flotsam, jetsam and termites of what remains of the radical left and the zealots of the world protest movement are up-in-arms over my May 2 column "Mystery lurks behind protest."
In it, I questioned just who might be behind the financing and organization of the rabble that descended on Seattle to disrupt the World Trade Organization (WTO) conferences, Washington to try and derail the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings and now have their eyes on holding Calgary hostage during the World Petroleum Congress in June.
My answer: Just as, after the Soviet Union fell, we discovered Moscow and its Eastern European puppet-governments had directed everything from anti-nuclear protests to racial demonstrations, so would we eventually find rogue nations such as Libya, Iraq and North Korea and dictators and terrorists like Cuba's Fidel Castro and Afghanistan's 'elusive billionaire' Osama bin Laden are behind the latest rampages.
That's even though many of those involved in the protests may be well-meaning individuals who don't realize that shadowy figures are manipulating them and using them as, as Leon Trotsky said, as "useful idiots" and naive dupes.
Well, that these 'peace-loving and idealistic' people are well-organized was demonstrated when in one morning alone I received 148 e-mails denouncing me. That many of them believe in neither democracy nor free speech was also aptly demonstrated.
Talk about thin skins. Or guilty consciences, by at least some of them. Aside from insisting I was a fool, many contended I
didn't know what I was talking about. Ah, but I do.
Back in 1972, while in Ottawa, a Soviet diplomat tried to co-opt me, but I reported it all to the "authorities" and played along.
Over a number of years, using my Parliamentary Press Gallery credentials, I cannily "ingratiated" myself to other Communist bloc diplomats - Cuban, Romanian, Polish, Czechoslovakian and whatever - and reported all of what I learned back to our authorities, too.
It all culminated in 1978 when I revealed that, while the RCMP had caught 13 Soviet diplomats in a spy ring, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had both refused to expel them or make their activities public. That expose hit Page One of just about every newspaper in Canada and many around the world.
The very same afternoon the ruse was exposed, External Affairs Minister Don Jamieson stood up in the Commons and announced my allegations were all true - and then expelled the Soviets.
After that, I spent four years basically writing exposes about subversion and espionage in Canada, including revealing that a former Canadian ambassador to Moscow had been blackmailed after being set-up in a homosexual liaison, and had become a spy for the Kremlin.
Over the years I spent more time at the Berlin Wall and at Checkpoint Charlie than I did at rock concerts.
Individuals I have interviewed - who know all about subversion and espionage - include Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Yitshak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu. I've kept up all my contacts in the "wilderness of mirrors" and even today routinely file anything I get to the authorities.
On my walls are commendations and medals from the likes of the RCMP, various city police forces, and even Queen Elizabeth, for my services to Canada. I've been made an Honourary Life Member of organizations ranging from the Royal Canadian Legion and the Ex-Air Gunners Association of Canada to B'nai Brith, the latter for my work on behalf of Israel.
I'd say my credentials rate higher than those of my detractors.
Wouldn't you?
Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at conradjackson@home.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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