An anti-Soviet fairy tale

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novelist who can boast a former CIA director amongst admirers on the book cover.

But then Robert Moss, founder member of NAFF and author of a highly authoritative weekly intelligence column in the Daily Telegraph is no ordinary author.

His Telegraph column presents the world through the eyes of Western intelligence sources with whom his contacts are many and good.

But the weekly spine chilling stories of nefarious deeds by dastardly Cubans and scheming Bulgars lacks mass appeal. • So Moss has turned for collaboration on a more popular venture to Armand de Borchgrave, chief foreign correspondent of Newsweek and a political soul mate.

Their novel, Spike, is formula written. There are paragraphs of perfunctory sex every ten pages in which men do things to women; baffling 'action' passages in which great and sudden violence is done to men; and a large number of tense psychological' moments in which good old Americans confront their destinies.

But if the package is different, the pararoia is the same. The world is divided into two partsthose (diminishing) areas lovingly protected by the CIA/FBI-and that (growing) expanse Where nothing moves except through the machinery of the KGB.

KGB plot

It follows from this that every setback for US imperialism since the war has been a KGB plot and every wet liberal, anti-war student or radical journalist a fool or (more likely) a knave.

It is journalists who are the main targets for Moss and Borchgrave in Spike.

It is the story of a young radical reporter, Bob Hockney, who writes America out of the Vietnam war almost single handedly and then-horrified at finding he has been a KGB dupe -sets out to blow the lid off American liberalism.

To put it another waythe book cover puts it-The Story So Explosive it Can Only Be Told as Fiction!

Dastardly

Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, puts it still another way. According to Helms it poses the questions Can the Soviets destroy the West without firing a shot?' With message SO dastardly as this there is little scope for character. The figures who flit across the pages of their book are so flat and uninteresting that cardboard is an inadequate description: cardboard has more dimensions.

Nevertheless Moss and Borchgrave plagiarise liberally from life. Their fictional traitors are made to serve not just as symbols but to suggest living people.

One of the most despised characters is a man called Phil Kreps-a CIA agent who blows the whistle on US involvement in the Chilean tions. coup. He has Cuban connec He is a ringer for the CIA's real whistle blower Philip Agee, right down to the Cuban connection and the Amsterdam refuge.

Why such a crude smear? It stems no doubt from a kind of desperation.

History has not been kind to Moss and Borchgrave. It has not unfolded a picture they want. Someone must be responsible, and writing their book has made it so. The whole ghastly mess can be blamed on someone's plot.

Neat trick But such an approach has problems, since it would be possible for the book to attract legal attention. The dynamic duo have therefore adopted a neat trick. Agee actually appears as a one line reference in the book. And if Agee appears as himself, then Kreps cannot be representing him.

This itself leads to problems. Originally the plot has two KGB agents discuss a secret plan to persuade a CIA agent to denounce US intelligence-a move supposed to have unique benefits for anti-American feeling. Later the real life Agee is mentioned as one of many CIA whistle-blowersas if they were two-a-penny.

Look-alikes

Other well known look. alikes are a radical American actress (Fonda?) who joins a Red Brigade type group (Patty Hurst?) and a postCarter weak President who is clearly modelled on Carter himself (to say nothing of a beer-swilling aide closely modelled on Carter's brother).

The central character, reporter Hockney, is about as credible as J.R. Ewing. A brief appearance as a college radical sets him up for a scoop story, which in turn sets him up as a Vietnam reporter. PETER reviews published by Futur:

McINTYRE The Spike, in paperback The world's press is just waiting for wet-behind-the ears campus radicals to turn into superstars.

There he reports massacre at Can Lai' (which never took place) and becomes the scourge of Conservative America.

His counter conversion by a discredited CIA chief and his help in unmasking the whole of liberal America as KGB agents must have seemed the culmination of a life-work to Moss and Borchgrave.

Their story could be the bar room fantasy of two frustrated right wing journalists. But even De Borchgrave and Moss cannot believe their own conspiracy theories.

That is what makes the publication so pernicious. Moss and Borchgrave are not innocents and they do not believe their own propaganda. Spike is a production of malice and duplicity. It is redeemed only by its own unreadability. As for this review? Well, probably the Cubans did it!

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INDUSTRIAL NEWS SOCIALIST PRESS 1 8 17. Thursday !! June 19,81