Lashmar, Paul and Oliver, James. Britain's Secret Propaganda War.
United Kingdom: Sutton Publishing, 1998. 223 pages.
The Information Research Department (IRD), a creation of the British
intelligence community, played a major role in Western news and cultural
media from 1948-1977. As late as 1976, when IRD's secret history first
began to unravel due to the persistence of researcher Richard Fletcher,
92 British journalists were still on IRD's distribution list. In earlier
years, IRD's influence was even greater. This is the first book about IRD,
and with it, another piece of the cold war media-manipulation picture is
now in place. (The CIA's manipulation of the media was equally impressive,
but U.S. journalists dropped the issue in 1978 and never looked back.)
The first chapter alone is worth the price of the book. It details
British propaganda efforts against Indonesia's Sukarno in 1965, before and
after the so-called abortive "coup," which became the excuse for Suharto's
genocide against the PKI. IRD and MI6 "black" operations were intense
before and after this alleged coup, as forged documents suggesting PKI
atrocities and Chinese intervention were combined with sophisticated
signals intelligence that monitored Sukarno's every move. This book also
quotes a June 1962 CIA memorandum, which states that President Kennedy and
Prime Minister Macmillan, in April 1962, agreed to "liquidate President
Sukarno, depending on the situation and available opportunities."
ISBN 0-7509-1668-0
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