Originally published in S1 (1983). Collected in The Shape of Things to Come: Selected Writings & Interviews (Kersplebedeb, 2023).
On September 28, 1978, Jay Mallin, the "Latin America/Terrorism Editor" of Soldier of Fortune magazine, was in Puerto Rico at a secret imperialist counter-insurgency conference. That conference was hosted by the Puerto Rican Attorney General's office, under the supervision of the U.S. Dept. of Justice. For three days puppet police and government officials were given intensive instruction by counter-insurgency experts from different countries on how to repress the Puerto Rican Independence Movement. And one of the main lecturers was Mr. Jay Mallin.
What is this hidden connection between police in Puerto Rico and Soldier of Fortune, the main recruiting and news magazine for right-wing white mercenaries? For that matter, who is Jay Mallin? These questions help to bring to light more about how U.S. imperialism really operates.
Both the U.S. Government and the press have always pictured the white mercenaries as a disapproved-of "extremist fringe." The mercenaries are pictured as a few gun-crazy private "adventurers," colorful but unimportant. Now we find out that an editor for Soldier of Fortune, which was the No. 1 instrument of mercenary recruitment for the defeated settler regime of "Rhodesia," has been giving secret indoctrination to officers of the Puerto Rican puppet police.
Mr. Jay Mallin's career, once brought into the daylight, is not that of any "extremist fringe" or "adventurer." Mallin lives in Coral Gables, Florida, and is a researcher at the Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami. This university has also cooperated in his academic cover by publishing several of Mallin's books on guerrilla warfare. Before that Mallin was Havana correspondent for Time magazine for ten years before being expelled in 1962. He still handles special Latin Amerikan assignments for Time.
It is important to clearly understand that Mr. Jay Mallin is himself not a mercenary, not a soldier, and not an "adventurer." He is a right-wing political propagandist. And his work stretches everywhere U.S. imperialism goes into battle. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson had 15,000 U.S. troops invading the Dominican Republic in his bloody warm-up for Vietnam. Naturally U.S imperialism had touched off much world-wide criticism and anger by this Grenada-like invasion. Afterwards Doubleday & Co., a major New York publisher, came right out with a book on how international communist takeover conspiracies about the Dominican Republic completely justified the U.S. invasion. The book was called The Truth About the Dominican Republic—written by none other than our Mr. Jay Mallin. How convenient for U.S. imperialism then that an "independent" book was being widely sold backing up its repressive crimes.
It will be no surprise to learn that the book was a U.S. Government propaganda project. Jay Mallin had been secretly approached by the U.S. Government and signed to a contract under which he agreed to write that book for them. Mallin received the usual author's royalties on book sales from Doubleday & Co., plus an extra payment from the Government of $2,368.
U.S. State Department officials gave Mallin classified documents to work from, and even edited his manuscript. The Truth About the Dominican Republic was 100% imperialist propaganda, secretly initiated, paid for, supervised, approved, and distributed by Washington. The U.S. Information Agency purchased 25,000 copies from Doubleday to give out to students in other nations. Jay Mallin was undoubtedly expressing his own right-wing opinions, but, more fundamentally, he was a minor employee of the U.S. Government counter-insurgency machinery.
Mallin has a great many "respectable" connections. When kidnappings of U.S. executives became common in Latin Amerika and Europe in 1973, Burns International Security Services brought in Mallin to give lectures on guerrilla movements to departing businessmen. His main connection, however, has been to the front-line forces in counter-insurgency.
While Washington denies any relationship to the armed white right, to "extremist" groups such as the Minutemen, to mercenaries and Soldier of Fortune magazine, S.O.F. editor Jay Mallin has been welcome everywhere within the U.S. military. And welcome on an official basis. He has written on terrorism for the Marine Corps. At Fort Bragg's U.S. Army Institute for Military Assistance (where the CIA and U.S. Special Forces give Latin Amerikan puppet soldiers counter-insurgency training), Mallin has been an invited lecturer. He has even taken part in seminars at the Pentagon.
Perhaps Mallin's closest connection had been to the U.S. Air Force. He has been a "regular contributor" (as that journal says) to Air University Review, "The Professional Journal of the United States Air Force."
Although it has attracted little public attention, the U.S.A.F. maintains a permanent counter-insurgency force, a small elite trained both as aircrew and assault commandos. This force is headquartered at the Special Operations School, Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Elements of this hand-picked counter-insurgency force have operated in many nations in Afrika, in El Salvador, Guatemala, Iran, and dozens of other countries. In fact these "Special Operations" Air Force commandos took part in the Government raid on the Republic of New Afrika's children's school outside Jackson, Mississippi in 1981. Jay Mallin has been a political lecturer for the Eglin AFB counter-insurgency school and has often been a guest there since the early days of the 1960s (when it was named the Special Air Warfare Center).
We should not look upon Jay Mallin himself as personally important or special in some mysterious way. He is just one of thousands of voices orchestrated by Washington. His job has been to give out imperialist indoctrination. His words are the same worn, anti-communist tirade we are well aware of, painting every popular struggle as a tentacle of the Soviet international conspiracy, painting freedom fighters as "terrorists." Mallin always insists on more military action, more invasions, more repression as the thing for Amerika to do.
As a typical example of his right-wing indoctrination, one of his raps on Cuba calls on White Amerika to recover its misplaced manhood: "All that is required from America is a genuine determination to get rid of Castro. Once the decision is made Castro will be overthrown, but the decision had not been forthcoming. Throughout these critical years, United States policy towards Cuba has been a reflection of overall policy towards the hemisphere, a policy characterized by hesitation, indecision, and lack of understanding of Latinos and their countries. Too often America has acted as if it had a guilty conscience, and therefore had to keep turning its cheek. Latinos respect machismo in a man and in a nation."
This swaggering, reactionary nonsense should not be confused with U.S. imperialism's actual strategy. Mallin's writings on Cuba, for example, express nothing of the strategy used by the CIA's "Operation Mongoose" in its attempt to turn back the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s. In an identical way, Mallin's ranting against what he portrays as the perverse evil of today's guerrilla warfare is also obvious nonsense! "Terrorism is a disease of modern society, a virus growing in an ill body … The actions of terrorists, however, cannot be measured in the way other acts of war or revolution are appraised. Urban guerrillas do not march to the same drumner as regular soldiers, or even rural guerrillas."
So the simplistic work of Jay Mallin only reflects a part of what the imperialists and their commanders actually think. The larger issues of neo-colonialism and real counter-insurgency strategy are far above his level. Even in the area of mass propaganda Jay Mallin is insignificant (certainly so compared to the Moral Majority or Jesse Jackson). His specific role is basic political indoctrination of U.S. imperialism's front-line soldiers against national liberation, keeping them motivated and "ready to go." This is the strand that ties together Jay Mallin's diverse connections.
U.S. Imperialism maintains a multiplicity of armed forces—some military, some police, and some supposedly unofficial and para-military—but all are carefully taught to think the same. Both U.S. Air Force officers reading Air University Review and Klansmen reading Soldier of Fortune got similar political indoctrination from Jay Mallin. As did Puerto Rican police officers, white mercenaries in South Afrika, U.S. "Green Berets" operating in Central Amerika, and many others.
It is just as if Jay Mallin were an employee of a central imperialist military indoctrination bureau. Only it is clearly in U.S. Imperialism's interest to hide the connections. Just as in 1965 the U.S. Government tried to hide the fact that Mallin's book supporting the Dominican Republic invasion was a secret CIA project from start to finish. As the CIA Chief of Cover and Commercial Staff told a Senate Committee in 1976: "We need a variety of mechanisms. We need a variety of cooperating personnel and organizations in the private sector." U.S. Imperialism wants to conceal their overall command and coordination of all the diverse repressive forces of imperialism. From South Afrika to Puerto Rico to Mississippi.