It's A Bullseye

This but improved

History comes up in the strangest places. Drifting through an episode of Bullseye on Challenge (there was a guy wearing a style of cardigan that must have been briefly in fashion at the time, thoroughly discredited through the 90s, 00s, and now purchasable from any high street shop of your choice), and Jim Bowen asked a contestant  "What important event had caused a big political stir in 1987?" Turns out it was something called the Zircon satellite affair.


"An extremely delicate moment"


The war over possession of the Falkland Islands was a blow for British politicians who believed in the 'special relationship', the political bond shared between America and Britain born of their co-dependence during the Second World War, and subsequently the Cold War. America declined to intervene militarily against the Argentinians, although in private they supported Britain with intelligence, and publicly supplied the sidewinder missiles for Britain's harriers that allowed Britain's air force to massively outperform their Argentine counterparts.

The American's position was however much more ambivalent. The release of secret documents has shown that Alexander Haig, the American Secretary of State, discussed with British Ambassador Sir Nicholas Henderson the possibility of giving early warning to the General Galtieri about the impending invasion of South Georgia, which could have done immense harm to the British invasion force. A request for the use of NSA spy satellites was also turned down as at the time because they were tasked with monitoring El Salvador. The British resolved that, rather than rely on the Americans who were increasingly untrustworthy, they would design a range of satellites of their own: the project was named Zircon.

Building a new range of satellites seemed to call back to an earlier age of British aerospace innovation, when Britain had produced Ariels (launched with the aid of the Americans), or Prosperos (launched by Britain itself from Woomera, Australia). The Zircon was to be built in Portsmouth and shipped to America to be launched into space via NASA's space shuttle programme; the project cost £500 million however, and for this reason was scrapped by the Chancellor Nigel Lawson in 1987. For the government however, there was another problem brewing, in BBC Scotland.

"The Secret Society"

Duncan Campbell was an investigate reporter working for the BBC, hated by some in the government and intelligence community because he had exposed their secrets. Campbell was making a series for BBC Scotland called "The Secret Society", a series examining the channels of power that run beneath Britian's parliamentary democracy that looked at secret cabinet committees, emergency powers, dodgy radar defence, the Data Protection Act, ACPO, and the Zircon programme. The series was already contentious with BBC and government staff expressing their doubts that the series should be broadcast: eventually the series was cut to five episodes and the Zircon episode dropped. The story however, that the Zircon project may have breached a requirement that costly defense projects should be placed before the Public Accounts Committee, and that £500 million of tax payer's money had been wasted, was already out. Campbell wrote an article about the Zircon project in a column in the New Statesmen, causing the Special Branch to launch a raid against Campbell and the New Statesmen. In retaliation, Campbell began making plans to show the Zircon film in parliament.

Shortly after the raid Alisdair Milne, the BBC Director General of the time, who had produced programmes impartial or critical of the Tory government, stepped down on the orders of the Board of Governors. David Wilby, the BBC's parliamentary correspondent, describes the series of events in this article, and highlights the links between the intelligence community and BBC executives.

The programme was eventually in 1988, and the storm passed, but interestingly the programme focusing on secret select committees was never seen. Alastair Darling alleged in 1989 that the Zircon affair was really aimed at putting down the secret committee report, which would have focused on the 1983 election campaign.

The motivations for the government in the Zircon affair are obscure, but it seems sensible to conclude that defense and intelligence elements, as well as BBC staff with links to these, were pushing for the series to be shelved, not for the reasons necessarily that they were trying to lock down secrecy  but to avoid embarrassment  Britain had tried to grasp some of the post-WW2 power that it had briefly enjoyed in aerospace, and was trying to carry on the possible resurgence of imperial fervor sustained by the Falklands. Campbell's documentary was an attack on not only their secrecy, but a long term vision of a resurgence of Britain's techno-imperial leverage with regional powers like Argentina. Being snubbed by the Americans and then barely scraping by in the Falklands must have been very unsettling for the British military, leading to a failed attempt to edge back into space-technology that ended up resembling the debacle of the Skybolt system.

Along similar lines to this post, check out Phil Knight on the Royal Navy and the shadow Empire.

Archaeology and/or Apocatastasis

In the closing years of this century we are being given the opportunity, under the aegis of pax atomica, to examine in some detail our naive notions of good and evil, of peace and violence, and of life and death. Sentimental notions of peace and love simply will not do. Man is, and forever will be, a microscopic zoo containing snakes and eagles, lions and lambs, fish and frogs. It may be alright for lambs to eat grass, but for a lion - a proper one - grass will not do. Human consciousness is now being presented with new symbols and new meanings. We have not come to terms with the inner animal; therefore, its countenance has become quite fearful, like a charging tiger. This time around we are not confronted with a "babe wrapped in swaddling clothes", which is easy enough to accept, but with a "rough beast, its hour come 'round at last", that slouched to Alamogordo to be born.

Dennis Stillings Meditations on the Atom and Time: An Attempt to Define the Imagery of War and Death in the Late 20th Century. Collected in Apocalypse Culture

Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existences, but they no longer need to impose their speech (or are henceforth unable to); and the post-literacy of the late capitalist world reflects not only the absence of any great collective project but also the unavailability of the older national language itself. In this situation parody finds itself without a vocation; it has lived, and that strange new thing pastiche slowly comes to take its place. Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs: it is to parody what that other interesting and historically original modern thing, the practice of a kind of blank irony, is to what Wayne Booth calls the "stable ironies" of the eighteenth century....This situation evidently determines what the architecture historians call "historicism," namely, the random cannibalization of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusion, and in general what Henri Lefebvre has called the increasing primacy of the "neo." This omnipresence of pastiche is not incompatible with a certain humor, however, nor is it innocent of all passion: it is at the least compatible with addiction - with a whole historically original consumers' appetite for a world transformed into sheer images of itself and for pseudoevents and "spectacles" (the term of the situationists). It is for such objects that we may reserve Plato's conception of the "simulacrum," the identical copy for which no original has ever existed.

Frederic Jameson Postmodernism: Or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 

America in the movies is both mighty and weak, never safe for long. On the one hand, smug triumphs, banal rhetoric and globalising hubris conclude most of these films. But the fears which begin the films are of American weakness in the face of global hostility. America is rarely represented with interests to secure in the third world; this is much less explicit celebration of the benefits of imperialism than, for example, British imperial culture of the late 19th century. The only transnational economies seem to be drugs and guns; America brings rock and roll... and death. Often America is represented only by the 'democratic' military group or super-heroes. Like the ambivalence about the state, the simultaneous reduction of American presence and celebration of its global reach addresses a contradiction in ideology: it tries to square isolationism with the demands of super-power imperialism. It dramatises the extremism of contemporary international inequality, but also shows some hesitation or confusion about its appropriately benign or democratic costume.

Scott  Forsyth Hollywood's War On The World: The New World Order as Movie

Star Balls, Brain Drain

From the outset, Reagan moved against détente and beyond containment, substituting the objective of encouraging “long-term political and military changes within the Soviet empire that will facilitate a more secure and peaceful world order”, according to an early 1981 Pentagon defense guide. Harvard’s Richard Pipes, who joined the National Security Council, advocated a new aggressive policy by which “the United States takes the long-term strategic offensive. This approach therefore contrasts with the essentially reactive and defensive strategy of containment”. Pipes’s report was endorsed in a 1982 National Security Decision Directive that formulated the policy objective of promoting “the process of change in the Soviet Union towards a more pluralistic political and economic system”. [The quotes from Peter Schweizer, Reagan's War.]

A central instrument for putting pressure on the Soviet Union was Reagan’s massive defense build-up, which raised defense spending from $134 billion in 1980 to $253 billion in 1989. This raised American defense spending to 7 percent of GDP, dramatically increasing the federal deficit. Yet in its efforts to keep up with the American defense build-up, the Soviet Union was compelled in the first half of the 1980s to raise the share of its defense spending from 22 percent to 27 percent of GDP, while it froze the production of civilian goods at 1980 levels. 

Reagan’s most controversial defense initiative was SDI, the visionary project to create an anti-missile defense system that would remove the nuclear sword of Damocles from America’s homeland. Experts still disagree about the long-term feasibility of missile defense, some comparing it in substance to the Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster Star Wars. But the SDI’s main effect was to demonstrate U. S. technological superiority over the Soviet Union and its ability to expand the arms race into space. This helped convince the Soviet leadership under Gorbachev to throw in the towel and bid for a de-escalation of the arms race.

Ashton Carter, a fellow at MIT, assessed SDI for Congress in 1984. He said there were a number of difficulties in creating an adequate missile defense shield, with or without lasers. He said X-rays have a limited scope because they become diffused through the atmosphere, much like the beam of a flash light spreading outward in all directions. This means the X-rays needed to be close to the Soviet Union, especially during the critical few minutes of the booster phase, in order for the Soviet missiles to be both detectable to radar and targeted by the lasers themselves.

Opponents disagreed, saying advances in technology, such as using very strong laser beams, and by "bleaching" the column of air surrounding the laser beam, could increase the distance that the X-ray would reach to successfully hit its target. Physicist Hans Bethe, who worked with Teller on both the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb, both at Los Alamos, claimed a laser defense shield was unfeasible. He said that a defensive system was costly and difficult to build, but simple to destroy, and claimed that the Soviets could easily use thousands of decoys to overwhelm it during a nuclear attack. He believed that the only way to stop the threat of nuclear war was through diplomacy and dismissed the idea of a technical solution to the Cold War, saying that a defense shield could be viewed as threatening because it would limit or destroy Soviet offensive capabilities while leaving the American offense intact.

In March 1984, Bethe coauthored a 106-page report for the Union of Concerned Scientists that concluded "the X-ray laser offers no prospect of being a useful component in a system for ballistic missile defense."

Teller countered that Bethe and the other anti-defense activists could not have it both ways. Teller said Bethe had helped him usher in the nuclear age, had become opposed to nuclear weapons and afraid of nuclear war. But, Bethe was also opposed to stopping the threat of offensive capabilities through massive defensive programs. Teller testified before Congress that Bethe, "instead of objecting on scientific and technical grounds, which he thoroughly understands, he now objects on the grounds of politics, on grounds of military feasibility of military deployment, on other grounds of difficult issues which are quite outside the range of his professional cognizance or mine."

 DOSSIER OF DEATH

AUTO ACCIDENT--Professor Keith Bowden, 45, computer scientist, Essex University. In March 1982 Bowden's car plunged off a bridge, into am abandoned rail yard. His death was listed as an accident. 

MISSING PERSON--Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Godley, 49, defense expert, head of work-study unit at the Royal Military College of Science. Godley disappeared in April 1983. His father bequeathes him more than $60,000, with the proviso that he claim it be 1987. He never showed up and is presumed dead. 

SHOTGUN BLAST--Roger Hill, 49, radar designer and draftsman, Marconi. In March 1985 Hill allegedly killed himself with a shotgun at the family home. 

DEATH LEAP--Jonathan Walsh, 29, digital-communications expert assigned to British Telecom's secret Martlesham Health research facility (and to GEC, Marconi's parent firm). In November 1985 Walsh allegedly fell from his hotel room while working on a British Telecom project in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (Africa). He had expressed a fear for his life. Verdict: Still in question. 

DEATH LEAP--Vimal Dajibhai, 24, computer-software engineer (worked on guidance system for Tigerfish torpedo), Marconi Underwater Systems. In August 1986 Dajibhai's crumpled remains were found 240 feet below the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. The death has not been listed as a suicide. 

DECAPITATION--Ashaad Sharif, 26, computer analyst, Marconi Defense Systems. In October 1986, in Bristol, Sharif allegedly tied one end of a rope around a tree and the other end around his neck, then drove off in his car at high speed. Verdict: Suicide. 

SUFFOCATION--Richard Pugh, computer consultant for the Ministry of Defense. In January 1987 Pugh was found dead, wrapped head-to- toe in rope that was tied four times around his neck. The coroner listed his death as an accident due to a sexual experiment gone awry. 

ASPHYXIATION--John Brittan, Ministry of Defense tank batteries expert, Royal Military College of Science. In January 1987 Brittan was found dead in a parked car in his garage. The engine was still running. Verdict: Accidental death. 

DRUG OVERDOSE--Victor Moore, 46, design engineer, Marconi Space Systems. In February 1987 Moore was found dead of a drug overdose. His death is listed as a suicide. 

ASPHYXIATION--Peter Peapell, 46, scientist, Royal Military College of Science. In February 1987 Peapell was found dead beneath his car, his face near the tail pipe, in the garage of his Oxfordshire home. Death was due to carbon-monoxide poisoning, although test showed that the engine had been running only a short time. Foul play has not been ruled out. 

ASPHYXIATION--Edwin Skeels, 43, engineer, Marconi. In February 1987 Skeels was found dead in his car, a victim of carbon-monoxide poisoning. A hose led from the exhaust pipe. His death is listed as a suicide. 

AUTO ACCIDENT--David Sands, satellite projects manager, Eassams (a Marconi sister company). Although up for a promotion, in March 1987 Sands drove a car filled with gasoline cans into the brick wall of an abandoned cafe. He was killed instantly. Foul play has not been ruled out. 

AUTO ACCIDENT--Stuart Gooding, 23, postgraduate research student, Royal Military College of Science. In April 1987 Gooding died in a mysterious car wreck in Cyprus while the College was holding military exercises on the island. Verdict: Accidental death. 

AUTO ACCIDENT--George Kountis, experienced systems analyst at British Polytechnic. In April 1987 Kountis drowned after his BMW plunged into the Mersey River in Liverpool. His death is listed as a misadventure. 

SUFFOCATION--Mark Wisner, 24, software engineer at Ministry of Defense experimental station for combat aircraft. In April 1987 Wisner was found dead in his home with a plastic bag over his head. At the inqust, his death was rules an accident due to a sexual experiment gone awry. 

AUTO ACCIDENT--Michael Baker, 22, digital-communications expert, Plessey Defense Systems. In May 1987 Baker's BMW crashed through a road barrier, killing the driver. Verdict: Misadventure.

HEART ATTACK--Frank Jennings, 60, electronic-weapons engineer for Plessey. In June 1987 Jennings allegedly dropped dead of a heart attack. No inquest was held. 

DEATH LEAP--Russel Smith, 23, lab technician at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. In January 1988 Smith's mangled body was found halfway down a cliff in Cornwall. Verdict: Suicide. 

ASPHYXIATION--Trevor Knight, 52, computer engineer, Marconi Space and Defense Systems. In March 1988 Knight was found dead in his car, asphyxiated by fume from a hose attached to the tail pipe. The death was ruled a suicide. 

ELECTROCUTION--John Ferry, 60, assistant marketing director for Marconi. In August 1988 Ferry was found dead in a company-owned apartment, the stripped leads of an electrical cord in his mouth. Foul play has not been ruled out. 

ELECTROCUTION--Alistair Beckham, 50, software engineer, Plessey. In August 1988 Beckham's lifeless body was found in the garden shed behind his house. Bare wires, which ran to a live main, were wrapped around his chest. No suicide note was found, and police have not ruled out foul play. 

ASPHYXIATION--Andrew Hall, 33, engineering manager, British Aero- space. In September 1988 Hall was found dead in his car, asphyxiated by fumes from a hose that was attached to the tail pipe. Friends said he was well liked, had everything to live for. Verdict: Suicide.