disruption directives – what a marvellous hunk of hidden history we have here from the curious Matthew Sweet. Sweden was the only country in Europe to extend an amnesty to Vietnam deserters during the USA’s pointless & vile mass slaughter in South Asia.
Radical, organized, productive assemblies of US defectors began various political agitations from the relative haven of their new Scandinavian sanctuary. Predictably, the US Intelligence services became involved, dispatching a slough of spies, agent provocateurs & other operatives intent on division, disruption & discreditation among the dissenting expats (& the odd forceful repatriation when they could get away with it).
Like it’s immediate relative – COINTELPRO – that would be busy infiltrating, besmirching, blackmailing, murdering, intimidating, muddling & misrepresenting the domestic American citizenry under the deranged & dodgy J. Edgar Hoover (using some of the most immoral, illegal & dishonourable tactics & field applications possible we might add), Operation Chaos was specifically crafted for the ex-US-military renegade communities in Sweden & Europe. This of course abuts equally unsavoury & insane machinations such as the School of the Americas, MK-ULTRA, KUBARK, Project ARTICHOKE, or the myriad of sub-factions & para-departments under the pall of the CIA – Fort Detrick, NSA & FBI squirm.
Bad news….s-e-r-i-o-u-s-l-y bad news. So bad, that the Intelligence agencies were almost deactivated in the US after the Church Committee report scandal, with the argument being that intelligence agencies should not operate unless the country is officially at war. The president then had …. a change of mind? & the shadow crept back int the control room.
Operation Choas & the Swedish epoch receive much less attention & study. Sweet has identified, investigated & pursued or interviewed a whole gaggle of key-characters & personnel that were directly involved in the groups & movements.
His funny, sharply deft, acerbic & highly-playful modal of writing soften the poisoned-umbrella of this tremendously complicated, deceptive & shady subject, which he has clearly chased with strenuous devotion, & at times even – personal risk.
Perhaps predictably for such a tricky, fankled, anfractuous & untrustworthy subject matter – the book rather quickly descends into tortuous paranoia, confusion (well, at least for me) & uncertainty, with fevered 360-degree suspicion billowing off the pages.
This is no fault of the author, but the pandemonium of perfidy, masked intentions, entryism, false actors, infiltration, double-crossing & conjecture & the glare of espionage agencies & their super powers that kind of switch the gravity off…….don’t even trust your own reflection.
What’s more, it gets even more mad. The last 40% of the book follows the sculptors to even crazier territory – the LaRouchian cult of Lyndon LaRouche & his Euro National Caucus of Labour Committee & European Workers Group. Like the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the Manson Family, the Jones Town acolytes, & increasingly – the colosto-conspiracy fringe of the Trump base (Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Alex Jones, QAnon etc & the moron minions) – this rabid, freak cabal of garbled pseudo-cultural wet-retch enjoys a bizarre & unexplained chimeric umbilical with select mainstream politics & military/intelligence endeavours & organizations. Is the tail wagging the dog? Or did the dog’s internal organs wander-off from the body entirely on their own accord & form some kind of sub-legal doomsday brethren masquerading as an ice-cream entrepreneur?
As the aforementioned affirm, the truth is equally as unheimlich & implausible.
A fantastic book. & a fantastic, brain-bending expansion of rare research for anybody that is cutting above the piss-poor confected diversions into the historical horror & cataclysmic criminality of US intelligence organizations & their ongoing onslaught against human decency.
Matthew Sweet, 2019, Picador, 313 pages