Document:Terrorism Research Centre, extract from The "Terrorism" Industry
book extract by Edward S. Herman dated 1990Subjects: Terrorism Research Centre
Source: The "Terrorism" Industry
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Cape Town's Terrorism Research Centre is run by Michael Morris, the author of several articles and two books on terrorism in South Africa. [1] In December 1963, Morris was recruited into the intelligence service of South Africa and was charged with the task of infiltrating and disrupting Alan Paton's Liberal party. In 1966, Morris served as an informer for the secret police on the campus of Cape Town University, later becoming a key state witness in various cases against student demonstrators.[2]
By 1973, Morris had been placed by BOSS in an intelligence position in London. As he was spying on a group of South African exiles, demonstrating in front of the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square, a photographer for the 'Guardian' took his picture, which appeared in its pages the next day. Once identified, Morris was finished as a spy in Britain. James Wellbeloved, a Labour MP, petitioned then Home Secretary Robert Carr to investigate the doings of Morris, who was immediately returned to Pretoria by BOSS. He was soon reassigned to head the Terrorism Research Centre, which former BOSS agent Gordon Winter has called a "propaganda front organization" and "a direct copy of the British 'Institute for the Study of Conflict' but not half as good."[3]
The Cape Town Centre is one of the most glaring and extreme examples of the use of seemingly independent think tanks to further the propaganda causes of a terrorist government. [4] Another example of BOSS's hand in the terrorism industry is the 'Aida Parker Newsletter', edited by Aida Parker, identified by Gordon Winter as "the finest intelligence operative and propagandist South Africa ever had."[5]
Parker, in her capacity as a reporter with the South African newspaper 'The Citizen', worked with P. W. Botha in 1977 to manufacture a disinformation campaign designed to discredit � and ultimately unseat � then Premier John Vorster. Parker's newsletter is a favorite "inside source" for right-wing journalists seeking to "expose" alleged ties between the Soviet Union and the African National Congress, always described by Parker as a terrorist organization. Parker's newsletter is distributed in the United States by the ultra right-wing RAMBOC (Restore A More Benevolent Order Coalition) run by David Balsiger. RAMBOC counts among its advisors General John Singlaub of WACL.
Notes
- ^ 1. Michael Morris, Armed Conflict in Southern Africa: A Survey of Regional Terrorisms from Their Beginnings to the Present (Cape Town: jeremy Spence, 1974); Terrorism: The First Full Account in Detail of Terrorism and Insurgency in South Africa (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1971).
- ^ 2. Winter, Inside BOSS, pp. 320-21.
- ^ 3. Ibid.
- ^ 4. Alex P. Schmid refers to the Terrorism Research Centre as "independent;' although he goes on to note � without comment � that the Centre has published "a series of Special Reports on political violence and sabotage perpetrated by the African National Congress" (Political Terrorism, p. 266).
- ^ 5. Winter, Inside BOSS, p. 556.
