The Book of Lists

15 ACTORS WHO BECAME POLITICIANS

A Broadway star, Gahagan moved to Hollywood after marrying film actor Melvyn Douglas. Her brief movie career was highlighted by her leading role in the cult classic She (1935). After several years’ involvement in Democratic Party politics, she was elected to Congress in 1944 and served three terms. Gahagan Douglas ran for the US Senate in California in 1950, facing up-and-coming right-winger Richard Nixon. Nixon scared voters by calling her ‘red hot’ and ‘pink right down to her underwear’ and by insinuating that she had slept with President Truman. Nixon won the election and went on to further political success. Gahagan Douglas never ran for office again.

In 1986, the star by then of such films as A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Dirty Harry (1971) and Sudden Impact (1983), Eastwood took time off from his film career to serve two years as mayor of Carmel, California (pop. 4,800). Elected on a pro-development platform in 1986, Eastwood nonetheless stopped greedy developers from buying the 22-acre Mission Ranch by buying it himself for $5 million.

Known as the ‘Filipino Ronald Reagan’ because he starred in so many B movies, Estrada built his reputation by playing the role of the common man fighting the system. Elected mayor of San Juan, a suburb of Manila, Estrada moved on to become the only senator without a college degree. In 1992 he was elected vice-president of the Philippines. Estrada was elected president of the Philippines in 1998. In 2000, he was impeached by the Philippine Congress on charges of corruption and bribery. He resigned on January 20, 2001, in the face of a bloodless ‘people’s revolt’. He has since served time in prison for perjury.

Although he has appeared on Broadway and in the movies, Grandy, a Harvard graduate, is best known for his portrayal of Gopher in the TV series The Love Boat (1977–86). In 1986 he returned to his earlier interest in politics, winning election from Sioux City, Iowa, to the US House of Representatives. A Republican, Grandy describes himself as a ‘knee-jerk moderate’.

Jackson won two Academy Awards for her performances in Women in Love (1970) and A Touch of Class (1972). Running as a Labour Party candidate, the bricklayer’s daughter won election to Parliament in 1992 in the Hampstead and Highgate constituencies of north London and has since had a committed career as an MP.

Best known for his portrayal of the mechanic Cooter Davenport in The Dukes of Hazzard, Jones, a Georgia Democrat, won election to the US Congress in 1988. He was re-elected in 1990, but in 1992 he was defeated in the Democratic Party primary.

Kuehl played Zelda Gilroy in the TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis from 1959 to 1963. After the series ended she went to law school and became an attorney specialising in feminist issues. In 1994 she was elected speaker pro tem of the California State Assembly, the first woman to hold that position. In 2000 she was elected to the State Senate. Kuehl was the first openly gay or lesbian politician to be elected to the California legislature.

The star of Never on Sunday (1959), Mercouri entered Greek politics as soon as democracy was restored in 1974. A member of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist movement, she was elected to Parliament in 1977 and has represented the working-class district of Piraeus ever since. She also served as minister of culture from 1981 until 1990. In 1990 she ran for mayor of Athens, but was defeated.

No one was surprised or upset when the beautiful niece of actress Sophia Loren became a film actress herself, appearing in such films as White Sister (1973) and A Special Day (1977). But she did cause a stir when, at the age of 30, she followed in the footsteps of her grandfather, dictator Benito Mussolini, by entering politics. In 1992 she was elected to Parliament as the representative of the neo-Fascist party from Naples.

Known as the ‘Saffron Caesar’ because he usually appeared in an orange costume, Rama Rao, the star of more than 300 Indian films, capitalised on his widespread popularity to enter politics. He rose to become chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state. After leaving office, he remained the leader of the Telegu Desam Party, and in 1991, at the age of 69, he was arrested in the midst of a hunger strike to protest at an attack on his house by supporters of the ruling Congress Party.

Reagan was a movie actor, a president of the Screen Actors’ Guild, and a Democrat-turned-Republican. When he announced that he planned to run for governor of California in 1966, studio head Jack Warner commented, ‘No, no, no! Jimmy Stewart for governor, Ronald Reagan for best friend.’ When he won the election, Reagan was asked what he planned to do when he took office. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘I’ve never played a governor.’ Reagan was re-elected in 1970 and later served two terms as President of the United States (1981–89). Nevertheless, he never lost his basic actor’s mentality. At the 1987 economic summit in Venice, Reagan startled the leaders of the world’s industrial nations by showing up with cue cards, not just for important meetings, but even at an informal cocktail party.

The bodybuilder-turned-actor rose to stardom in such films as Conan the Barbarian (1982) and The Terminator (1984). By the end of the 1980s, he was Hollywood’s top action hero. After he married into the Kennedy clan (his wife, broadcast journalist Maria Shriver, is the daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver), speculation grew about a possible political career. He saw his chance in 2003, when Republicans launched a drive to recall California’s Democratic Governor Gray Davis from office. In true Hollywood fashion, Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on August 7, 2003, to Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. Two months later, California voters chose to oust Davis and replace him with Schwarzenegger.

Hungarian-born pornographic film star Ilona Staller, better known by her stage name, Cicciolina, was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1987. A member of the Radical Party and the Party of Love, Staller represented her Rome constituency until retiring in 1992.

A veteran character actor, Thompson had prominent roles in the movies The Hunt for Red October (1990) and In the Line of Fire (1993). A Republican from Tennessee, he was elected to the US Senate in 1994. In the fall of 2002 Thompson joined the cast of the NBC series Law and Order, becoming the first serving US senator with a regular television acting job. He left the Senate when his term ended in January of 2003.

Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura first emerged as a star in the World Wrestling Federation. He parlayed that fame into a movie career, appearing with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator (1987) and with Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man (1993). In 1998 he was elected Governor of Minnesota as the candidate of the upstart Reform Party. He drew fire from critics for appearing as a TV commentator for the short-lived XFL (Extreme Football League) and being a celebrity referee at a WWF event while still in office. He served one term, choosing not to run for re-election in 2002.

THE 10 WORST LIVING DICTATORS

In power since 1994.

There has been so much discussion about Kim Jong Il’s development of nuclear weapons that it has tended to deflect attention from the fact that Kim’s government represses its own people more completely than any other dictatorship in the world. Each year, the human-rights group Freedom House ranks every country according to its level of political rights and civil liberties. North Korea is the only nation to earn the worst possible score for 31 years in a row. According to the organisation Reporters Without Borders, North Korea also ranks in last place in its international index of press freedom. The US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates that 150,000 Koreans perform forced labour in prison camps created to punish alleged political dissidents and their family members, as well as North Koreans who fled the country to China but were forced back by the Chinese government.

Although Kim Jong Il, who inherited leadership from his father, Kim Il Sung, is often portrayed as being crazy, he is actually a clever and efficient manipulator of his people. He is also the author of the books On the Art of the Cinema and On the Art of Opera.

In power since 1992.

General Than Shwe has survived a power struggle to emerge as the sole leader of Burma’s military dictatorship. Because Than Shwe represents the hard-line faction, his rise has turned an already awful human rights situation even worse. Burma has more child soldiers than any nation in the world and the Burmese regime continues to kidnap normal citizens and force them to serve as porters for the military in various conflicts against non-Burmese ethnic groups. In 1990 the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi won 80% of the vote in an open election. The military cancelled the results. Suu Kyi has spent most of the ensuing years under house arrest. On May 31, 2003 hired thugs attacked Suu Kyi’s motorcade, killing several of her supporters and arresting dozens of others including Suu Kyi herself. She has since been returned to house arrest. Unlike most dictators, Than Shwe is not a public figure, preferring to work behind the scenes. Consequently, even the Burmese people know little about him. Than Shwe has promised new elections… in four or five years.

In power since 2002.

Trained as a hydraulic engineer, Hu Jintao joined the Communist Party in 1964 and spent the next 38 years slowly moving his way up the Party hierarchy. Along the way he proved himself to be quiet, efficient and willing to do whatever was necessary to promote his own advancement. While serving as Party Secretary of Tibet, he did not hesitate to administer martial law and to oversee the killing of unarmed demonstrators. Now that he is General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Hu, although not all-powerful, is the leader of an unusually repressive regime. Apologists point to China’s economic liberalisation and claim that the Chinese human rights situation is better than it used to be. However, the Communist Party still controls all media and uses 40,000 ‘Internet security agents’ to monitor online use. More than 200,000 Chinese are serving ‘re-education’ sentences in labour camps and China performs 4,000 executions a year, more than all the other nations of the world combined, and many of them for non-violent crimes.

In power since 1980.

Robert Mugabe began his reign with widespread domestic and international support. After leading a successful anti-colonial war of liberation, he was elected independent Zimbabwe’s first president. But over the years he has displayed increasingly dictatorial tendencies. According to Amnesty International, in 2002 alone, Mugabe’s government killed or tortured 70,000 people. Unemployment is above 70% and inflation 500%. Mugabe has been accused of blocking the delivery of food aid to groups and areas that support the main opposition party. He has continued to hold elections, but has restricted the opposition’s ability to campaign and has shut down media that do not support him. When opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won 42% of the vote anyway, Mugabe had him arrested and charged with treason. As his support has slipped, Mugabe has played the race card, confiscating farms owned by white people and turning them over to his supporters.

In power since 1995.

Crown Prince Abdullah has been the acting leader of Saudi Arabia since his half-brother, King Fahd, suffered a stroke in 1995. Saudi Arabia is one of the only nations that holds no elections whatsoever. The royal family has promised municipal elections in the coming year, but has not announced if women will be allowed to vote. In fact, it is forbidden for unrelated Saudis of the opposite sex to appear in public together, even inside a taxi. Women are not allowed to testify on their own behalf in divorce proceedings and, in all court cases, the testimony of one man is equal to that of two women. According to the US State Department, Saudi Arabia continues to engage in arbitrary arrest and torture. During a human rights conference in October ’95, Saudi authorities arrested non-violent protesters who were calling for freedom of expression, and some were later flogged, which is the normal punishment for alleged political and religious offences. Under pressure from world opinion, the government announced that people living in Saudi Arabia may practise religions other than Sunni Islam, as long as they do so privately, inside their homes. In one of the more unusual manifestations of control, the religious police forbade children from playing with Barbie dolls, which they dubbed ‘Jewish dolls’ that are ‘symbols of decadence of the perverted West’.

In power since 1979.

This tiny West African nation (pop. 500,000) was a forgotten dictatorship until major reserves of oil were discovered in 1995. Since then, US oil companies have poured billions of dollars into the country. Although the per capita annual income is $4,472, 60% of Equatoguineans live on less than $1 a day. The bulk of the oil income goes directly to President Obiang, who has declared that ‘there is no poverty in Guinea’. Rather, ‘the people are used to living in a different way’. In July, state radio announced that Obiang is ‘in permanent contact with the Almighty’, and that ‘He can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to Hell.’ There is no public transport, no newspapers and only 1% of government spending goes to health care. Nonetheless, the US government reopened its embassy in October after it had been closed for eight years as a protest against human rights abuses. When asked why so much of his nation’s oil revenue is deposited directly into his personal account at the Riggs Bank in Washington, DC, Obiang explained that he keeps total control of the money in order to ‘avoid corruption’.

In power since 1989.

Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is in the midst of a complex 20-year civil war that has claimed the lives of 2 million people and uprooted another 4 million. Al-Bashir seized power in a military coup and immediately suspended the constitution, abolished the legislature and banned political parties and unions. He has tried to negotiate a peace agreement with the main rebel group, but he insists that the nation be ruled according to Islamic Shari’a law, even in southern Sudan, where the people are Christian and animist. Meanwhile, his army has routinely bombed civilians and tortured and massacred non-Arabs, particularly in the oil-producing areas of the south. Sudanese troops have also kidnapped southerners and subjected them to slavery. Al-Bashir has also been accused of ‘engineering famine’ in regions that oppose him. He has a long history of providing sanctuary for a wide range of terrorists, only to turn against them. He turned over the notorious Carlos the Jackal to France in exchange for financial and military aid and, in 1996, he tried unsuccessfully to sell Osama bin Laden to the US government.

In power since 1990.

Since taking charge of this former Soviet republic in central Asia, Niyazov has developed the world’s most extreme personality cult, challenged only by that of Kim Jong Il. Niyazov’s picture appears on all Turkmen money, there are statues of him everywhere and he renamed the month of January after himself. His book, Rukhnama (Book of the Soul), is required reading in all schools at all levels and all government employees must memorise passages in order to keep their jobs. Niyazov rules without opposition. As he once put it, ‘There are no opposition parties, so how can we grant them freedom?’ In the past year, Niyazov has cracked down on religious and ethnic minorities, including Russians, and has refused to issue exit visas for families or for women under the age of 35. He has imprisoned political dissidents and subjected them to Stalinist-style show trials and public confessions. The Turkmen constitution requires retirement at the age of 70, but in August Niyazov ensured his own rule by creating a 2,507-member People’s Council which unanimously elected him Lifetime Chairman.

In power since 1959.

The world’s longest-reigning dictator, Fidel Castro took advantage of the world’s preoccupation with the war in Iraq in March and April of 2003 to carry out his biggest round-up of non-violent dissidents in more than a decade. He arrested 75 human rights activists, journalists and academics, and sent them to prison for an average of 19 years. Cuba remains a one-party state with all power in the hands of Castro. The courts are controlled by the executive branch — in other words, Castro, who has traditionally blamed all of his country’s problems, economic and social, on the United States.

In power since 1986.

Swaziland (pop. 1.2 million) is the last remaining absolute monarchy in Africa. Mswati III ascended to the throne when he turned 18, four years after the death of his father. Because Mswati had been educated in England, it was thought that he would modernise his kingdom. However, he has shown a liking for certain Swazi traditions. On September 15, 2002 he watched thousands of girls and young women dance bare-breasted in the annual Reed Dance and then chose one to be his tenth wife (his father had 100 wives). The girl’s mother filed a lawsuit against the king, charging him with abducting her daughter. Mswati, who rules by decree, then announced that the Swazi courts were forbidden from issuing rulings that limited the king’s power. In an attempt to appease international opinion, Mswati approved the drafting of a new constitution to replace the one that his father had suspended 30 years earlier. However, the new constitution bans political parties, allows the death penalty for any criminal offence and provides for the reintroduction of debtors’ prisons.

13 DEPOSED DICTATORS… AFTER THE FALL

Amin seized power in 1971 and launched a reign of terror that led to the deaths of an estimated 300,000 people. Deposed in 1979, Amin was offered asylum in Saudi Arabia, with all living expenses paid. In 1989 he tried to return to Uganda using a false passport. He got as far as the Congo, where he was recognised and arrested and then sent back to Saudi Arabia. Amin died in 2003 at the age of 78. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni vetoed a suggestion to give Amin a state funeral in order to win votes in his home region: ‘I would not bury Amin. I will never touch Amin. Never. Not even with a long spoon.’

Bokassa seized power in 1965. In 1976 he declared himself emperor and a year later staged an elaborate coronation celebration that used up one-fourth of the nation’s annual earnings. He was overthrown in 1979, but not before he had committed a series of horrible outrages, including ordering the massacre of schoolchildren who refused to buy uniforms made in a factory owned by Bokassa’s wife. After he was ousted, he lived lavishly in Paris. Then, incredibly, he returned to the CAR, where he was arrested upon arrival and charged with murder and cannibalism. He was convicted of the former charge and was kept in ‘comfortable confinement’ in the capital city of Bangui. Bokassa was set free in 1993, when General Andre Kolingba, the country’s latest dictator, ordered all the nation’s convicts released. He died in 1996.

When longtime Haitian dictator François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier died in 1971, the mantle of power passed to his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude, better known as ‘Baby Doc’, who also inherited the dreaded Tonton Macoutes secret police. Baby Doc was finally forced out of office in 1986 after widespread protest and flown out of the country on a US Air Force plane. Baby Doc and his wife, Michelle, not content with stuffing an Air Haiti cargo plane with plunder, bumped 11 passengers off their escape flight — including Michelle’s grandparents — to make room for more loot. The Duvaliers settled on the French Riviera and spent millions of dollars a year before divorcing in 1990.

As head of East German security, Honecker supervised the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Ten years later he assumed leadership of the Communist Party. Among his more odious acts was ordering all border area to be mined and equipped with automatic shooting devices. With the fall of Communism in 1989, Honecker was put under house arrest. In 1991 he was flown from a Soviet military hospital near Berlin to Moscow itself. However, on July 29, 1992, the 79-year-old Honecker was expelled from the Chilean embassy where he had sought refuge and was flown back to Berlin to face charges of corruption and manslaughter. Because he was diagnosed as dying from liver cancer, Honecker was allowed to leave for Chile in January 1993. He died on May 29, 1994.

Saddam Hussein took power in 1979. A ruthless dictator, he used poison gas during his eight-year war with neighbouring Iran and to suppress rebellions by his country’s Kurdish minority. He managed to survive despite losing the first Gulf War with a United States-led coalition in 1991. In 2003, the United States led a ‘pre-emptive’ war against Iraq. As Baghdad swiftly fell, Saddam disappeared. He remained elusive until December 13, 2003, when US forces found Saddam in a 6-ft deep hole on a farm outside his hometown of Tikrit. He offered no resistance, telling the American soldiers in English, ‘My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate.’ At the time of writing Saddam is being held in Baghdad, awaiting trial on war crimes and other charges. In February of 2004, French lawyer Jacques Vergez became Saddam’s attorney and declared his intent to call officials from the US and other Western powers to the stand to demonstrate their complicity in Saddam’s acts.

Mengistu was a member of the military junta that ousted Haile Selassie in 1974. By 1977 Mengistu had consolidated his personal power. While the Ethiopian people were suffering through a series of droughts and famines, Mengistu concentrated on brutally suppressing his opponents. Bodies of political prisoners who had been tortured to death were displayed in public and shown on television. Mengistu’s ability to beat back various secessionist armies finally failed, and on May 21, 1991, he resigned and fled the country. He settled in Zimbabwe, where he was welcomed by that country’s dictator, Robert Mugabe.

After taking power in 1965, Mobutu amassed a huge fortune through economic exploitation and corruption, leading some observers to dub the government a ‘kleptocracy’. He stole more than half of the $12 billion in aid that Congo (formerly Zaire) received from the International Money Fund during his 32-year reign, saddling the country with a crippling debt. On May 18, 1997 Mobutu fled the country as rebel forces led by Laurent Kabila seized the capital. For his exile, Mobutu could choose between luxury residences in Morocco, South Africa, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. The wine collection at his castle in Portugal was worth an estimated $23 million. Mobutu didn’t have much time to enjoy his ill-gotten luxuries: he died on September 7, 1997, of prostate cancer.

Noriega was raised in a poor family of Colombian background. Something of an ugly duckling, he found his place in the military. He rose rapidly to become head of Panama’s intelligence service. In 1983 he took command of the national army and, with it, the nation. A devious manipulator who played all sides, Noriega cooperated with the US government and the CIA while at the same time making huge profits from drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. When Noriega refused to abide by the results of a free election, President George Bush Sr ordered the invasion of Panama, and troops seized Noriega and brought him back to Miami to stand trial. He was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison. In December 1992 US District Court Judge William Hoeveler declared Noriega a prisoner of war, entitled to the rights guaranteed by the third Geneva Convention. He will be eligible for parole in 2006, although the Panamanian government has sought his extradition because in 1995 he was tried in absentia and found guilty of murder.

As commander-in-chief of Chile’s armed forces, Pinochet led the 1973 coup that overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende. For the next 17 years he ruled Chile with an iron fist, suspending parliament and ordering the abduction and murder of 2,000 political opponents. He did, however, agree to democratic elections in 1988, which he lost. In 1990 he stepped down as president, but retained control of the armed forces, a position that he still holds. Pinochet was arrested in Great Britain in 1998 and held under house arrest while the British government considered extradition requests from four countries. During his house arrest, he lived at Wentworth, an exclusive estate outside London, at a cost of $10,000 per month. In May of 2000 he was returned to Chile on medical grounds. He was then arrested in Chile, with more than 200 charges filed against him. In 2002 all charges were dropped after the Chilean Supreme Court declared Pinochet unfit to stand trial.

Pol Pot was one of the few modern dictators whose genocidal policies were so horrible that they rivalled those of Adolf Hitler. As leader of the notorious Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot launched a four-year reign of terror (1975–79) that turned Cambodia into one large forced-labour camp and led to the deaths of an estimated 1 million people. When Vietnamese forces finally drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, Pol Pot and his followers set up shop in Thailand and northern Cambodia, where, with the encouragement of the government of the United States, he continued to be supported by the governments of China and Thailand. As late as 1996, Pol Pot was still executing Khmer Rouge opponents. He finally died of heart failure on April 15, 1998.

Stroessner seized power in a 1954 military coup and held on for over 34 years, thus setting a record as the longest-ruling head of state in the western hemisphere. He was finally deposed in February 1989. He flew to exile in Brazil with one of his sons, while the rest of his family moved to Miami. In April 2004 the Paraguayan government paid compensation to 34 victims of Stroessner’s repression.

Shortly after seizing the presidency in a 1965 coup, Suharto launched an anti-Communist and anti-Chinese campaign that killed at least 500,000 people. In 1975 the Indonesian army invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor and killed 200,000 people — more than a quarter of the island’s population. Despite these genocides, the US supported Suharto as an anti-Communist throughout the Cold War. The recession that hit East Asia in 1997 sent the Indonesian economy into free-fall. As increasing numbers of demonstrators took to the streets, Suharto was forced out of office in May of 1998. In April of 2000, Suharto was put on trial for misappropriating $571 million from various charities that he controlled. However, in September, a panel of judges dismissed the charges, concluding that Suharto, who had suffered several strokes, was medically unfit to stand trial. They also lifted a house arrest that had been imposed on Suharto. The decisions led to rioting in the streets. Unable to prosecute Suharto himself, Indonesian authorities arrested his son, Tommy, and convicted him of murder.

In 1989 Taylor launched a revolt against the Liberian government, beginning 14 years of near-constant civil war. In 1997 Taylor was elected president, drawing 75% of the vote from a populace hoping his election would end the warfare. Taylor’s regime became increasingly repressive and brutal. He was notorious for using child soldiers, organised into ‘Small Boy Units’. Even as civil war resumed in Liberia, Taylor participated in conflicts in nearby Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone. His soldiers were repeatedly accused by human rights groups of widespread looting, rape, torture, forced labour and summary killings. By 2003 Taylor controlled little but the downtown of the Liberian capital, referred to derisively by rebels as the ‘Federal Republic of Central Monrovia’. On August 11, 2003 Taylor accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria and fled Liberia, taking along $1 billion, emptying the national treasury. As Taylor settled into a luxury villa in the Nigerian city of Calabar, a United Nations tribunal indicted him on charges of committing war crimes in Sierra Leone. Although the Nigerian journalists’ union and bar association have both called for Taylor to be handed over to Sierra Leone, Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo has said he will not extradite the former warlord.

11 COMMANDERS KILLED BY THEIR OWN TROOPS

On the morning of May 10, 1857, in Meerut, India, Colonel Finnis, commander of the 11th Native Regiment of the British Indian Army, was informed that his troops had occupied the parade grounds and were in a state of mutiny. He mounted his horse, rode to the parade ground and began lecturing his troops on insubordination. The inflamed Indian soldiers — known as sepoys — promptly fired a volley at Finnis and killed him. This violent action triggered the Sepoy (or Indian) Mutiny.

On June 13, 1905, the crew of the Russian cruiser Potemkin mutinied after an unsuccessful protest challenging the quality of meat served on the ship. Captain Golikov, the ship’s commander, was seized by the mutineers and flung overboard. This incident was dramatised in the classic film Battleship Potemkin (1925), directed by Sergei Eisenstein.

In 1632, at the Battle of Lützen during the Thirty Years’ War, King Gustavus Adolphus was shot in the back while leading his cavalry in a charge against the Catholic armies of the Holy Roman Empire. Who actually killed him remains an unanswered question. However, many historical authorities insist that Gustavus must have been killed by one of his own men, if not accidentally, then intentionally by a traitor.

In the early morning hours of March 16, 1971, an enlisted man at the US Army base in Bienhoa, Vietnam, cut a hole through the screen covering a window in the officers’ quarters and threw a fragmentation grenade inside. Two lieutenants — Richard Harlan and Thomas Dellwo — were killed. Private Billy Dean Smith was arrested and court-martialled for the crime but was later declared innocent. The real murderer was never found.

On the night of May 2, 1863, at the Battle of Chancellorsville during the American Civil War, Confederate General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson went on a scouting mission ahead of his lines in order to find a way to attack the rear of the Union forces. When he returned, Jackson was fired upon by a North Carolina Confederate regiment that thought he and his staff were Yankee cavalrymen. He died eight days later.

On March 12, 1917, in Petrograd (now St Petersburg), Russian soldiers of the Volynsky Regiment refused to fire on street demonstrators and, instead, shot their commanding officer, Captain Lashkevitch. This marked a major turning point in the Russian Revolution, because after killing Lashkevitch, the Volynsky Regiment — the first Russian unit to mutiny — joined the revolutionary forces.

In 1948, US Army Colonel David Marcus resigned his post at the Pentagon and enlisted in the newly formed Israeli Army. On the night of June 10, 1948, after overseeing the construction of a relief road from Tel Aviv to besieged Jerusalem during the Israeli war for independence, Marcus was shot and killed while urinating in a field. One of his own sentries had mistaken him for an Arab because he had a bed sheet wrapped around him.

A Turkish tribesman who became a Persian general and then head of the Persian Empire, Nadir Shah was a highly successful conqueror who defeated the Afghans, Mongols, Indians and Turks. In 1747 Nadir’s own military bodyguard murdered him. His death met with widespread approval in Persia because of the harshness and cruelty of his rule.

Tillman, a member of the Arizona Cardinals football team, gave up a lucrative contract extension to join the US Army in 2002. On April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed while leading a team of Army Rangers up a hill in southeastern Afghanistan to knock out enemy fire that had pinned down other soldiers. The army posthumously awarded him the Silver Star, its third-highest honour. One month later, the army announced that Tillman had been killed by fellow Americans in a ‘friendly fire’ accident.

In 1559 Captain Pedro de Urzúa led an expedition of Spanish soldiers from coastal Peru across the Andes to the Amazon Basin in search of El Dorado. Two years later, while still searching unsuccessfully for gold, de Urzúa was killed by his own men when they mutinied under the leadership of Lope de Aguirre. De Urzúa’s death and the fate of the mutineers was depicted in the 1973 movie Aguirre, Wrath of God.

10 LARGEST ARMS EXPORTERS

$ Millions (US) (1998–2002)

1. USA 37,723

2. Russia 20,741

3. France 8,312

4. Germany 4,954

5. UK 4,811

6. Ukraine 2,673

7. Italy 1,787

8. China 1,561

9. Netherlands 1,520

10. Belarus 1,142

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI Yearbook 2002)

10 LARGEST ARMS IMPORTERS

Millions of US Dollars (1998-2002) Majaor Supplier

1. China 8,818 Russia (93%)

2. Taiwan 6,822 USA (71%)

3. India 4,824 Russia (81%)

4. Turkey 4,688 USA (60%)

5. Saudi Arabia 4,360 USA (66%)

6. Greece 3,958 USA (47%)

7. South Korea 3,445 USA (64%)

8. Egypt 3,251 USA (91%)

9. United Kingdom 3,116 USA (82%)

10. Israel 3,033 USA (74%)

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI Yearbook 2002)

THE 10 MEN WHO CONQUERED THE MOST MILES

From 1206 to 1227 Mongol chieftain, Genghis Khan, conquered approximately 4,860,000 square miles. Stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea, his empire included northern China, Mongolia, southern Siberia and central Asia.

From 334 to 326BC the Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, conquered approximately 2,180,000 square miles. His empire included the southern Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, Egypt and the entire Near East, as far as the Indus River.

From 1370 to 1402 the Islamic Turkicised Mongol chieftain, Tamerlane, conquered approximately 2,145,000 square miles. His empire included most of the Near East, from the Indus River to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the Indian Ocean north to the Aral Sea.

From 559 to 539BC the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, conquered approximately 2,090,000 square miles. He conquered the Median Empire, Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Palestine, the Indus Valley and southern Turkestan.

From 433 to 453 Attila, the king of the Huns and the Scourge of God, conquered approximately 1,450,000 square miles. Although he failed in his attempt to conquer Gaul, Attila ruled an empire encompassing central and eastern Europe and the western Russian plain.

From 1933 to the autumn of 1942 Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler, conquered 1,370,000 square miles, all of which he lost within three years. Hitler’s Third Reich included most of continental Europe and extended from the English Channel to the outskirts of Moscow, and from North Africa to Norway.

From 1796 to the height of his power in 1810 Napoleon Bonaparte conquered approximately 720,000 square miles. Napoleon’s Grand Empire included France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and Spain.

From 997 to 1030 Mahmud, the Muslim sultan and Afghan king of Ghazni, conquered 680,000 square miles. His Near Eastern empire extended from the Indian Ocean north to the Amu Darya River, and from the Tigris River east to the Ganges River in India.

From 1531 to 1541 Spanish adventurer, Francisco Pizarro, conquered 480,000 square miles. Employing treachery and assassination, and taking advantage of internal discord, he subjugated the Inca Empire, which extended from Ecuador south through the Andes to Bolivia.

From 1519 to 1526 Hernando Cortes, commanding a small Spanish military expedition, conquered 315,000 square miles. Defeating the Aztecs, he seized central and southern Mexico and later subjugated Guatemala and Honduras to Spanish rule.

PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN IN 30 NATIONAL LEGISLATURES

The Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organisation that works to foster representative government and world peace, reports that women are appallingly under-represented in their national parliaments. Although women account for more than 50% of the world’s population, in 2004 the number of female legislators stood at only 15.6%. The figures below are for March 2004. (The IPU can be contacted at www.ipu.org or by writing to 5, Chemin du Pommier/ Case postale 330/ CH-1218 Le Grand-Saconnex/ Geneva, Switzerland.)

THE 10 NATIONS WITH THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN IN THEIR LEGISLATURES…

1. Sweden 45.3%

2. Rwanda 45.0

3. Denmark 38.0

4. Finland 37.5

5. Norway 36.4

6. Cuba 36.0

7. Costa Rica 35.1

8. Netherlands 35.1

9. Belgium 33.9

10. Germany 31.4

…COMPARED TO 20 OTHERS

11. Argentina 30.7

12. Spain 30.5

13. Mozambique 30.0

14. New Zealand 28.3

15. Vietnam 27.3

16. Canada 23.6

17. Mexico 21.2

18. Pakistan 20.8

19. Nicaragua 20.7

20. China 20.2

21. United Kingdom 17.3

22. Israel 15.0

23. United States 14.0

24. Syria 12.0

25. France 11.7

26. India 9.3

27. Russia 8.0

28. South Korea 5.5

29. Kuwait 0.0

30. Saudi Arabia 0.0

Source: ‘Women in National Parliaments: World Classification’, Inter-Parliamentary Union.

9 UNUSUAL DISASTERS

Volcanic activity on the ‘bald mountain’ towering over St Pierre, Martinique, was usually so inconsequential that no one took seriously the fresh steaming ventholes and earth tremors during April 1902. By early May, however, ash began to rain down continuously, and the nauseating stench of sulphur filled the air. Their homes on the mountainside made uninhabitable, more than 100 fer-de-lance snakes slithered down and invaded the mulatto quarter of St Pierre. The 6-ft long serpents killed 50 people and innumerable animals before they were finally destroyed by the town’s giant street cats. But the annihilation had only begun. On May 5, a landslide of boiling mud spilled into the sea, followed by a tsunami that killed hundreds and, three days later, May 8, Mt Pelee finally exploded, sending a murderous avalanche of white-hot lava straight toward the town. Within three minutes St Pierre was completely obliterated. Of its 30,000 population, there were only two survivors.

Two thousand people, mostly black, jammed into the Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 19, 1902, to hear an address by Booker T. Washington. The brick church was new. A steep flight of stairs, enclosed in brick, led from the entrance doors to the church proper. After Washington’s speech, there was an altercation over an unoccupied seat, and the word ‘fight’ was misunderstood as ‘fire’. The congregation rose as if on cue and stampeded for the stairs. Those who reached them first were pushed from behind and fell. Others fell on top of them until the entrance was completely blocked by a pile of screaming humanity 10 ft high. Efforts by Washington and the churchmen down in the front to induce calm were fruitless, and they stood by helplessly while their brothers and sisters, mostly the latter, were trampled or suffocated to death. There was neither fire — nor even a real fight — but 115 people died.

On January 15, 1919 the workers and residents of Boston’s North End, mostly Irish and Italian, were out enjoying the noontime sun of an unseasonably warm day. Suddenly, with only a low rumble of warning, the huge cast-iron tank of the Purity Distilling Company burst open and a great wave of raw black molasses, two storeys high, poured down Commercial Street and oozed into the adjacent waterfront area. Neither pedestrians nor horse-drawn wagons could outrun it. Two million gallons of molasses, originally destined for rum, engulfed scores of people — 21 men, women and children died of drowning or suffocation, while another 150 were injured. Buildings crumbled, and an elevated train track collapsed. Those horses not completely swallowed up were so trapped in the goo they had to be shot by the police. Sightseers who came to see the chaos couldn’t help but walk in the molasses. On their way home they spread the sticky substance throughout the city. Boston smelled of molasses for a week, and the harbour ran brown until summer.

A huge cylindrical gasometer — the largest in the world at that time — located in the heart of the industrial centre of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed a leak. On the morning of November 14, 1927 repairmen set out to look for it — with an open-flame blowlamp. At about 10 o’clock they apparently found the leak. The tank, containing 5 million cu. ft of natural gas, rose in the air like a balloon and exploded. Chunks of metal, some weighing more than 100 lb, were scattered great distances, and the combined effects of air pressure and fire left a square mile of devastation. Twenty-eight people were killed and hundreds were injured.

Every year the firemen of Gillingham, Kent, would construct a makeshift ‘house’ out of wood and canvas for the popular fire-fighting demonstration at the annual Gillingham Park fête. Every year, too, a few local boys were selected from many aspirants to take part in the charade. On July 11, 1929 nine boys — aged 10 to 14 — and six firemen costumed as if for a wedding party climbed to the third floor of the ‘house’. The plan was to light a smoke fire on the first floor, rescue the ‘wedding party’ with ropes and ladders, and then set the empty house ablaze to demonstrate the use of the fire hoses. By some error, the real fire was lit first. The spectators, assuming the bodies they saw burning were dummies, cheered and clapped, while the firemen outside directed streams of water on what they knew to be a real catastrophe. All 15 people inside the house died.

On Saturday morning, July 28, 1945, a veteran Army pilot took off in a B-25 light bomber from Bedford, Massachusetts, headed for Newark, New Jersey, the co-pilot and a young sailor hitching a ride were also aboard. Fog made visibility poor. About an hour later, people on the streets of midtown Manhattan became aware of the rapidly increasing roar of a plane and watched with horror as a bomber suddenly appeared out of the clouds, dodged between skyscrapers, and then plunged into the side of the Empire State Building. Pieces of plane and building fell like hail. A gaping hole was gouged in the 78th floor, one of the plane’s two engines hurtled through seven walls and came out the opposite side of the building, and the other engine shot through an elevator shaft, severing the cables and sending the car plummeting to the basement. When the plane’s fuel tank exploded, six floors were engulfed in flame, and burning gasoline streamed down the sides of the building. Fortunately, few offices were open on a Saturday and only 11 people — plus the three occupants of the plane — died.

On April 15, 1947 the French freighter Grandcamp docked at Texas City, Texas, and took on some 1,400 tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser. That night a fire broke out in the hold of the ship. By dawn, thick black smoke had port authorities worried because the Monsanto chemical plant was only 700 ft away. As men stood on the dock watching, tugboats prepared to tow the freighter out to sea. Suddenly a ball of fire enveloped the ship. For many it was the last thing they ever saw. A great wall of flame radiated outward from the wreckage, and within minutes the Monsanto plant exploded, killing and maiming hundreds of workers and any spectators who had survived the initial blast. Most of the business district was devastated, and fires raged along the waterfront, where huge tanks of butane gas stood imperilled. Shortly after midnight, a second freighter — also carrying nitrates — exploded, and the whole sequence began again. More than 500 people died, and another 1,000 were badly injured.

In September 1971 a shipment of 90,000 metric tons of seed grain arrived in the Iraqi port of Basra. The American barley and Mexican wheat — which had been chemically treated with methylmercury to prevent rot — were sprayed a bright pink to indicate their lethal coating, and clear warnings were printed on the bags — but only in English and Spanish. Before they could be distributed to the farmers, the bags were stolen from the docks and the grain was sold as food to the starving populace. The Iraqi government, embarrassed at its criminal negligence or for other reasons, hushed up the story, and it was not until two years later that an American newsman came up with evidence that 6,530 hospital cases of mercury poisoning were attributable to the unsavoury affair. Officials would admit to only 459 deaths, but total fatalities were probably more like 6,000, with another 100,000 suffering such permanent effects as blindness, deafness and brain damage.

In the spring of 1972 the Chandka Forest area in India — already suffering from drought — was hit by a searing heat wave as well. The local elephants, who normally were no problem, became so crazed by the high temperatures and lack of water that the villagers told authorities they were afraid to venture out and to farm their land. By summer the situation had worsened. On July 10, the elephant herds went berserk and stampeded through five villages, leaving general devastation and 24 deaths in their wake.

11 ALTERNATIVE GUNMEN IN THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY

According to the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin in the killing of President Kennedy. However, a large majority of the public believes that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy. The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, the military, pro-Castro Cubans and anti-Castro Cubans have all been cited as possible forces behind the scenes. Among the people accused of doing the actual shooting are the following:

According to jailed French mobster Christian David, Kennedy was shot by three Corsican assassins. David named the deceased Sarti as one of the gunmen and offered to reveal the identities of the others if he was given his freedom. According to David, the two unnamed assassins were in buildings to the rear of the President, while Sarti fired from the grassy knoll in front of the motorcade. The British television documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy identified Sarti as the man in a police uniform apparently firing a rifle on the grassy knoll visible in a computer-enhanced enlargement of a photo taken by Mary Moorman at the moment of the fatal shot.

Harrelson — the father of actor Woody Harrelson — has been serving a life sentence since 1979 for murdering federal judge John H. Wood Jr. During a six-hour stand-off before his arrest, Harrelson held a gun to his head and confessed to shooting Kennedy. He later retracted the statement, saying he had been high on cocaine at the time.

Minister Raymond Broshears reported that David Ferrie — a bizarre individual often suspected of involvement in the assassination who had ties to Oswald, the CIA and the Mafia — would, after getting drunk, often talk about his role in the conspiracy. Ferrie reportedly said his job was to wait in Houston for two gunmen, one of them a Cuban exile Ferrie referred to as Carlos, and then fly them on the second leg of an escape route that was to take the assassins to South Africa via South America. Ferrie told Broshears the plan fell apart when the assassins, flying in a light plane, decided to skip the stop in Houston and press on to Mexico. They allegedly died when their plane crashed near Corpus Christi, Texas.

According to assassination researcher Penn Jones, Castillo has stated under hypnosis that ‘he was on the parade route with a rifle that day… [with] instructions to shoot at a man in a car with red roses’. Jackie Kennedy was the only person in the motorcade with red roses; all the other women had been given yellow Texas roses.

According to ‘Harry Dean’ (the ‘war name’ of a man who claims to be a former CIA agent), as quoted by W.B. Morris and R.B. Cutler in Alias Oswald, the assassins were anti-Castro activists Hall and del Valle, who were hired by the John Birch Society. Although Hall says he was at his home in California on November 22, 1963, he allegedly told the Dallas Morning News in 1978 that, a month before the assassination, right-wing activists working with the CIA tried to recruit him for a plot to kill Kennedy. As for del Valle, he died under suspicious circumstances in 1967. Del Valle, who was being searched for as a possible witness in the Clay Shaw conspiracy trial, was discovered shot through the heart and with his head split open by a machete.

In 1992 Kerry Thornley appeared on the television show A Current Affair and said he had been part of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. His co-conspirators were two men he called ‘Brother-in-Law’ and ‘Slim’. Thornley also denied having been responsible for framing Oswald, whom Thornley had befriended in the Marines: ‘I would gladly have killed Kennedy, but I would never have betrayed Oswald.’ He added, ‘I wanted [Kennedy] dead. I would have shot him myself.’ Thornley has also claimed that he and Oswald were the products of a genetic engineering experiment carried out by a secret neo-Nazi sect of eugenicists called the Vril Society, and that the two of them had been manipulated since childhood by Vril overlords.

Soutre, a terrorist in the French Secret Army Organisation, is believed by some researchers to have been recruited by the CIA to serve as an assassin. According to CIA documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by researcher Mary Ferrell, French intelligence reported that Soutre was in Fort Worth on the morning of November 22, 1963, and in Dallas that afternoon. Soutre was picked up by US authorities in Texas within 48 hours of the assassination and expelled from the country.

In 1990 Ricky White claimed his father Roscoe, a Dallas police officer, had been one of President Kennedy’s assassins. According to Ricky, a detailed description of the conspiracy could be found in Roscoe’s diary, which had disappeared after it was taken by the FBI for inspection. Two other gunmen, referred to in the diary only by the code names ‘Saul’ and ‘Lebanon’, were also involved. In addition, Roscoe’s widow, Geneva, told journalist Ron Laytner that she had overheard Roscoe and Jack Ruby plotting to kill Kennedy, adding, ‘We at first thought the assassination was more Mob [but later realised] it was more CIA.’ Fifteen years before Ricky and Geneva White went public, Hugh McDonald, in Appointment in Dallas, identified one of the killers as a professional assassin known as Saul. McDonald claimed to have tracked down Saul, who admitted to having been paid $50,000 to shoot the President. Saul claimed to have fired from the Dallas County Records Building — which was also described in Roscoe White’s diary as one of the locations the assassins had shot from. Despite these similarities, there are some inconsistencies in the plots described by McDonald and Ricky White. Most notably, Roscoe White in his diary and Saul in his meeting with McDonald each allegedly claimed to have fired the fatal shot.

According to Bonar Menninger’s book Mortal Error — based on 25 years of research by ballistics expert Howard Donahue — Kennedy was accidentally killed by Hickey, a secret service agent in the car behind the presidential limo. According to this theory, when Oswald began shooting, Hickey reached for his rifle and slipped off the safety. As he tried to stand in the backseat of the car to return fire, he lost his balance and accidentally pulled the trigger, firing the shot that killed the President. Hickey himself had told the Warren Commission that he did not even pick up his rifle until after the fatal shot.

Marita Lorenz, a CIA operative who had been Fidel Castro’s mistress, told the New York Daily News in 1977 that she had accompanied Lee Harvey Oswald and an assassination squad to Dallas a few days before Kennedy was killed. She identified her companions on the trip as CIA operative (and future Watergate burglar) Frank Sturgis and four Cuban exiles: Orlando Bosch, Pedro Diaz Lang and two brothers named Novis. The men were members of ‘Operation 40’, a group of about 30 anti-Castro Cubans and their American advisors originally formed by the CIA in 1960 for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Lorenz later stated that Sturgis had been one of the actual gunmen and that he told her after the assassination, ‘You could have been part of it — you know, part of history. You should have stayed. It was safe. Everything was covered in advance. No arrests, no real newspaper investigation. It was all covered, very professional.’ Sturgis denies that there is any truth to Lorenz’s story. However, he once said that the FBI questioned him about the assassination right after it happened, because, the agents said, ‘Frank, if there’s anybody capable of killing the President of the United States, you’re the guy who can do it.’

In 1996 Files claimed that he and Nicoletti, a Mafia hitman, had been on the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza and that they had both shot President Kennedy at the same time. Files said that he was paid $30,000 and had orders not to hit Jacqueline Kennedy. He added that Nicoletti took his order from Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana, who in turn answered to Anthony ‘Big Tuna’ Accardo. Since all three mobsters were murdered between 1975 and 1977, there was no one to corroborate Files’s story. The FBI dismissed the story, noting that Files is now serving a 50-year sentence in Illinois for murdering a policeman and thus had little to lose by ‘confessing’ while gaining his 15 minutes of fame.

18 SECRET ARMIES OF THE CIA

From 1945 to 1952 the CIA trained and aerially supplied Ukrainian partisan units which had originally been organised by the Germans to fight the Soviets during WWII. For seven years, the partisans, operating in the Carpathian Mountains, made sporadic attacks. Finally, in 1952, a massive Soviet military force wiped them out.

After the Communist victory in China, Nationalist Chinese soldiers fled into northern Burma. During the early 1950s, the CIA used these soldiers to create a 12,000-man brigade which made raids into Red China. However, the Nationalist soldiers found it more profitable to monopolise the local opium trade.

After Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz legalised that country’s Communist party and expropriated 400,000 acres of United Fruit banana plantations, the CIA decided to overthrow his government. Guatemalan rebels were trained in Honduras and backed up with a CIA air contingent of bombers and fighter planes. This army invaded Guatemala in 1954, promptly toppling Arbenz’s regime.

In an attempt to overthrow Indonesian president Sukarno in 1958, the CIA sent paramilitary experts and radio operators to the island of Sumatra to organise a revolt. With CIA air support, the rebel army attacked but was quickly defeated. The American government denied involvement even after a CIA B-26 was shot down and its CIA pilot, Allen Pope, was captured.

After the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, the CIA began recruiting Khamba horsemen — fierce warriors who supported Tibet’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama — as they escaped into India in 1959. These Khambas were trained in modern warfare at Camp Hale, high in the Rocky Mountains near Leadville, Colorado. Transported back to Tibet by the CIA-operated Air America, the Khambas organised an army numbering at its peak some 14,000. By the mid-1960s the Khambas had been abandoned by the CIA but they fought on alone until 1970.

In 1960 CIA operatives recruited 1,500 Cuban refugees living in Miami and staged a surprise attack on Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Trained at a base in Guatemala, this small army — complete with an air force consisting of B-26 bombers — landed at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961. The ill-conceived, poorly planned operation ended in disaster, since all but 150 men of the force were either killed or captured within three days.

In 1962 CIA agents recruited Meo tribesmen living in the mountains of Laos to fight as guerrillas against Communist Pathet Lao forces. Called l’Armée Clandestine, this unit — paid, trained and supplied by the CIA — grew into a 30,000-man force. By 1975 the Meos — who had numbered a quarter million in 1962 — had been reduced to 10,000 refugees fleeing into Thailand.

A Chinese hill people living in Vietnam, the Nungs were hired and organised by the CIA as a mercenary force, during the Vietnam War. Fearsome and brutal fighters, the Nungs were employed throughout Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Nungs proved costly since they refused to fight unless constantly supplied with beer and prostitutes.

Unable to quell guerrilla forces in its eastern Amazonian provinces, Peru called on the US for help in the mid-1960s. The CIA responded by establishing a fortified camp in the area and hiring local Peruvians who were trained by Green Beret personnel on loan from the US Army. After crushing the guerillas, the elite unit was disbanded because of fears it might stage a coup against the government.

In 1964, during the Congolese Civil War, the CIA established an army in the Congo to back pro-Western leaders Cyril Adoula and Joseph Mobutu. The CIA imported European mercenaries and Cuban pilots — exiles from Cuba — to pilot the CIA air force, composed of transports and B-26 bombers.

For over 15 years the CIA had tried various unsuccessful means of deposing Cambodia’s left-leaning Prince Norodom Sihanouk, including assassination attempts. However, in March 1970 a CIA-backed coup finally did the job. Funded by US tax dollars, armed with US weapons and trained by American Green Berets, anti-Sihanouk forces called Kampuchea Khmer Krom (KKK) overran the capital of Phnom Penh and took control of the government. With the blessing of the CIA and the Nixon administration, control of Cambodia was placed in the hands of Lon Nol, who would later distinguish himself by dispatching soldiers to butcher tens of thousands of civilians.

During the early 1970s the CIA moved into eastern Iraq to organise and supply the Kurds of that area, who were rebelling against the pro-Soviet Iraqi government. The real purpose behind this action was to help the Shah of Iran settle a border dispute with Iraq favourably. After an Iran–Iraq settlement was reached, the CIA withdrew its support from the Kurds, who were then crushed by the Iraqi Army.

In 1975, after years of bloody fighting and civil unrest in Angola, Portugal resolved to relinquish its hold on the last of its African colonies. The transition was to take place on November 11, with control of the country going to whichever political faction controlled the capital city of Luanda on that date. In the months preceding the change, three groups vied for power: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). By July 1975 the Marxist MPLA had ousted the moderate FNLA and UNITA from Luanda, so the CIA decided to intervene covertly. Over $30 million was spent on the Angolan operation, the bulk of the money going to buy arms and pay French and South African mercenaries, who aided the FNLA and UNITA in their fight. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, US officials categorically denied any involvement in the Angolan conflict. In the end, it was a fruitless military adventure, for the MPLA assumed power and controls Angola to this day.

Covert support for the groups fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began under President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was stepped up during the administration of Ronald Reagan. The operation succeeded in its initial goal, as the Soviets were forced to begin withdrawing their forces in 1987. Unfortunately, once the Soviets left, the US essentially ignored Afghanistan as it collapsed into a five-year civil war followed by the rise of the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban. The Taliban provided a haven for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

As far back as 1964 the CIA helped form ORDEN and ANSESAL, two paramilitary intelligence networks that developed into the Salvadoran death squads. The CIA trained ORDEN leaders in the use of automatic weapons and surveillance techniques, and placed several leaders on the CIA payroll. The CIA also provided detailed intelligence on Salvadoran individuals later murdered by the death squads. During the civil war in El Salvador from 1980 to 1992, the death squads were responsible for 40,000 killings. Even after a public outcry forced President Reagan to denounce the death squads in 1984, CIA support continued.

On November 23, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a top secret National Security Directive authorising the CIA to spend $19 million to recruit and support the Contras, opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. In supporting the Contras, the CIA carried out several acts of sabotage without the Congressional intelligence committees giving consent — or even being informed beforehand. In response, Congress passed the Boland Amendment, prohibiting the CIA from providing aid to the Contras. Attempts to find alternate sources of funds led to the Iran-Contra scandal. It may also have led the CIA and the Contras to become actively involved in drug smuggling. In 1988 the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism, and International Operations concluded that individuals in the Contra movement engaged in drug trafficking; that known drug traffickers provided assistance to the Contras; and that ‘there are some serious questions as to whether or not US officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war effort against Nicaragua’.

In 1988 the CIA attempted to intervene in Haiti’s elections with a ‘covert action program’ to undermine the campaign of the eventual winner, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Three years later, Aristide was overthrown in a bloody coup that killed more than 4,000 civilians. Many of the leaders of the coup had been on the CIA payroll since the mid-1980s. For example, Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant, the head of FRAPH, a brutal gang of thugs known for murder, torture and beatings, admitted to being a paid agent of the CIA. Similarly, the CIA-created Haitian National Intelligence Service (NIS), supposedly created to combat drugs, functioned during the coup as a ‘political intimidation and assassination squad.’ In 1994 an American force of 20,000 was sent to Haiti to allow Aristide to return. Ironically, even after this, the CIA continued working with FRAPH and the NIS. In 2004 Aristide was overthrown once again, with Aristide claiming that US forces had kidnapped him.

On April 11, 2002 Venezuelan military leaders attempted to overthrow the country’s democratically-elected left-wing president, Hugo Chavez. The coup collapsed after two days, as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and as units of the military joined with the protestors. The administration of George W. Bush was the only democracy in the western hemisphere not to condemn the coup attempt. According to intelligence analyst Wayne Madsen, the CIA had actively organised the coup: ‘The CIA provided Special Operations Group personnel, headed by a lieutenant colonel on loan from the US Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help organise the coup against Chavez.’