Hitchens: War Criminal?

Dennis dperrin13 at mediaone.net
Tue May 15 21:28:27 PDT 2001


COUNTERPUNCH EXCLUSIVE!

THE WAR CRIMES OF CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

The criminal saga of Christopher Hitchens continues. A source close to CounterPunch says that Hitchens was in Thanh Phong the night Bob Kerrey and his squad killed women and children at pointblank range. The source, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that Hitchens was part of a short-lived CIA program called FOC -- Friends Of Charlie (also known as Fucking Over Charlie) -- in which Western students posing as Marxist sympathizers of the NLF were flown to Hanoi and sent southward to mix with those forces resisting US aggression. The idea was to locate key NLF staging areas so that Phoenix Program operatives could better do their jobs.

Hitchens, then 20 years old, was apparently one of the better spies. Like the Beltway snitch he would later become, Hitchens used his considerable charm and supposed "revolutionary" fervor to win the trust of NLF regulars. He would then rat them out to undercover US hit squads and collect a sizable fee for his efforts. According our source, Hitchens sat back as Kerrey and his men performed their grisly actions, smoking cigarettes and looking at his watch. He later told US intelligence of other NLF outposts, then left the country to return to England, not knowing and not caring how many Vietnamese civilians were killed in his wake.

FOC didn't last long, but those who served in it are well known. Serving alongside Hitchens were David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh, both of whom came out of the closet years before Hitchens partially dropped his cover. Indeed, during Clinton's impeachment drama, Hitchens reunited with his old buddy Horowitz by speaking before a crowd of Horowitz's friends and followers, urging them on with pre-scripted anti-Clinton rants. That he now has a book out criticizing Kissinger for his war crimes is part of the ongoing cover. Let a little out here, as with the Clinton book, then dodge back a little there, as with Kissinger. His dance of deceit continues with his supposed mea culpa regarding Kerrey in the Nation.

None of this fools CounterPunch. And after our first reports citing Hitchens's apologia on behalf of Kerrey (which now makes perfect sense), CounterPunch has been deluged with testimony of those who say that Hitchens was also involved with the Kwangju and El Mozote massacres. Then there is the report of Hitchens at a KLA roadblock last November, when the snitch looked on as a KLA soldier beat to death an elderly Serb woman with the butt of his rifle. According to this eyewitness (an employee of CNN), Hitchens leaned against a jeep and applauded, cigarette dangling from his rouged lips. "Put your shoulder into it, dear boy," he allegedly said, encouraging the soldier. Hitchens then rewarded the KLA squad with cartons of Rothman Blues, his personal brand.

As days go by it becomes ever so clear that the days of Christopher Hitchens, "truth-teller," are numbered. CP

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