What we are dealing with here is simply pseudo-scholarship; its practioners, who award higher prestige to chauvinism than scholarship, should be exposed and treated accordingly. - - George Hewitt

So wrote Professor George Hewitt and, yes, he was speaking about yet another shoddy piece by Dr. Paul Henze-a "friend of Ethiopia." In Paul Henze's Cold Warrior definition of friendship, there is always an enemy and he views it as a personal mission from God to accentuate the differences between his client state and the enemy of the day. Thus, when Paul Henze was a friend of Turkey, the enemies were Soviet communists, Turkish left-wingers, Islamist Turks; when Paul Henze became a friend of Georgia, the enemy was Abkhazia and Russia; when Paul Henze became a friend of imperial Ethiopia, the enemy was left-wing Ethiopians and separatist Eritreans. When he became, to borrow a phrase from the always-readable Ethiopian Review, the "chief melodist" of the ruling regime in Ethiopia, the enemies became all Ethiopian opposition parties and the Eritrean Government and people. Curiously, the countries he forms friendships with always end up worse off than they were when he first met them.

Dr. Henze may be a pseudo-scholar but he was a legend in a profession that the Ethiopian news agency Walta bashfully referred to "worked here at the American Embassy." In fact, Henz has "worked" at a number of foreign embassies since 1952. In Germany (1952-58), in Turkey (1958 - 1969), in Ethiopia (1969 - 1977) and back to Turkey (1977 - 1980). The question is what exactly did he do at these foreign embassies and who benefited from his "work"?

ETHIOPIA

Not much is known about what Henze did for Imperial Ethiopia. Whatever he did must not have been terribly effective because it was during this period that the US lost Ethiopia to the Soviets. This is astonishing considering that Imperial Ethiopia had an toadying foreign policy: not only did it volunteer to send its armed forces to Korea to fight America's War (Remember the rap in the anthem "ItyoPia Agerye yenetSanet Arma" that was played endlessly on Radio Ethiopia in the 1970s? I do. It said, "inkwan l'ageru le'Etoypia k'dist...lelelochem yhonal meswait." Translation: let alone for sacred Ethiopia, our army is ready to be a sacrifice for others.), not only did Ethiopia sign a long-term military contract with the US, but the emperor was genuinely liked in Western circles; he was the Miles Davis CD in the Aryan Nation CD collection-a trophy displayed by supremacist to prove how progressive they were. Hell, the man was even invited to Kennedy's burial ceremony. Moreover, the PMAC (Derg) were not exactly dedicated communists ideologues who were swept by revolutionary fervor. They were a bunch of misfits whose short list of demands entailed nothing more ambitious than a pay increase. Ideologically, they were so clueless, they went shopping all over the world looking for one. It would take clumsy intelligence and inferior analytical skills to screw the US-Ethiopia relationship and our man Henze was quite accommodating. By the time Ethiopia's friend Henze was done with Ethiopia, the nation had willingly ran to the arms of the Soviets and the Henze was sent back to his old station, Turkey.

TURKEY

Turkey, Iraq and Iran were three reliable Western allies who were rewarded handsomely for their cooperation: Kurdistan-a large, mountainous region was deemed incapable of being a "viable country" by the know-it-alls. This is a curious claim considering that half of Iraq's oil reserves are in Kurdish lands. All three countries lived up to their end of their "ally" bargain with feverish energy that would make any red-blooded CIA officer proud. Iraq's Saddam Hussein displayed his claim to the Ally mantle by carrying out an assassination attempt on AbdulKadir Kassem, an "unreliable" independent leader of Iraq. Someone else from the Ba'ath Party did the dirty deed in 1963 and, soon after that, the Ba'ath Party went down a CIA-produced list of commies and lefties with its trademark gusto. During the Iran-Iraq War, the West was particularly impressed with Iraq's ruthlessness in wiping out the Kurds. The Iranians, under Shah Pavlavi, were a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA and the Mossad. But eventually, both Iran and Iraq fell off the Westbound wagon leaving Turkey the sole standard-bearer of CIA skullduggery.

Turkey was so eager to join NATO that it, just like imperial Ethiopia, volunteered to send its armed forces to Korea to fight the Korean War. Its generosity was not overlooked and it was invited to the exclusive club of NATO shortly thereafter. Back then, a secret condition of joining NATO was that all member states create a stealth security force that, in the event of communist aggression, could wage a resistance fight and declare a government. Thus, Italy had "Gladio", Belgium had "SDRA-8", France had "Rose des Vents", Holland had "P:26", Greece had "Shepskin", etc. Turkey's stealth security force was patterned after Italy's "Gladio" (Sword) and it, along with the "Gray Wolves" was the conduit for CIA's complex web of covert activities in Turkey. (For definition of covert, ask the King of Covert, Mr. Kissinger who defintes it by its opposite: "not missionary work.")

Many Turkish scholars, but specifically a journalist who served 14 years in prison, Ertugrul Kurkcu, have chronicled the horrors of Turk's security network ("Turkey: Trapped in A Web of Covert Killers"). For our purposes, we shall stay with the incident that transformed Mr. Henze from an ordinary run-of-the mill CIA officer to a "renowned case officer", a CIA legend and along with Richard Helms and Robert Ames, a mentor to every spook.

The way dissident Turks tell the story, on September 12, 1980, President Jimmy Carter was watching an opera when his national security advisor tiptoed in and briefed him on the exciting events developing in Turkey. The president called his main man in Turkey, Paul Henze and congratulated him by saying, "Your people have just made a coup." Henze, in turn, called his buddies in Washington, DC to announce "Our boys have done it!" Turkey was not new to coup d'etats; there had been one on May 27, 1960; another one on March 12, 1971. What made Henze's coup the coup de grace was that it was a coup to end all coups: it was engineered not by fringe groups with fringe agendas but by the web of security agencies that had been woven by the CIA. Following the coup, the disappearances, murders, arrests and tortures increased in volume and intensity. Henze's Coup--which was engineered by his good friend Alparsalan Turks--had a triple goal: (a) to combat the growing unrest in Kurdistan; (b) to combat the rising Islamic fundamentalism and (c) to counter Soviet expansionism which had set a beach head in Afghanistan. Henze and his boys came up with an ingenious idea: the so-called "green-belt strategy" was supposed to be an alliance of Muslim countries who were secular enough to oppose Islamic fundamentalism and religious enough to oppose Soviet Marxism. Towards this end, the Turkey military amended the Turkish constitution to "Islamicize" it by making religious studies mandatory in all K-12 schooling. The Soviet Union collapsed of its own dead weight, but Turkey, thanks to Henze and His Boys, is now stuck fighting two groups that the military carefully nurtured to fight communism: Islamic Fundamentalists and right-wing gangs. Turkey, founded on secular, democratic values is teetering towards a police state and Islamic fundamentalism. And Mr. Henze and His Boys can take special credit for that.

The Scholarship Years

What does a legendary CIA agent do to top his crowning achievement in spookland? Well, fortunately for ambitious career developers, the only occupational firewall in the United States is between Church and State. The wall between academia, journalism, consulting, NGO, advisory boards, think tanks, is just a huge revolving door with people donning different hats, coming and going and, sometimes, running into themselves. The Henze became an author, a professor, a consultant, a columnist, and a thinker at tanks like RAND. Throughout, Mr. Henze has distinguished himself in being wrong on everything. He authored books on the assassination attempt of the pope (his claim that it was engineering by Soviet-sponsored terrorism was quickly shredded-including by his former employers) he wrote a dozen books on what ails the Horn of Africa (Soviet communism). The reputation for the shoddy scholarship is well-earned.

On Eritrea

Between 1985 and 1992, Mr. Henze has written 18 RAND papers and books on Eritrea and Ethiopia. Like Japanese soldiers who are still roaming the wilderness convinced that World War II is not over, Mr. Henze refuses to believe that the Cold War is over and he roams troubled regions in the world convinced that every single one of them is the result of Soviet expansion. This is not totally surprising; the CIA, an agency whose entire reason d'etre was the analysis of the Soviet Union, having written volumes of lies about the invincibility of the Soviet Union, was the last agency to learn of the demise of the Soviet Union. There is almost no insight to be gleaned from any of the books he wrote other than that communism is bad, capitalism is good, free enterprise is dandy, and democracy is not bad either. And, oh yes, Ethiopia is the natural ally of the US and Israel.

With respect to Eritrea, his view was persistent and persistently wrong: he believed that the liberation struggle for Eritrea was dead and buried (1978), that that the liberation movements were worse than the Derg; that a deal should be made between "moderate" wing of the Derg and the liberation movements... Later on, he, along with most Ethiophiles was struck with a bolt-called Afabet (he had an Afabet Conversion) and he started advocating autonomy and federation for Eritrea. In "Eritrea Options and Ethiopia's Future" (1989), Henze recommended that "...Eritrea be made the centerpiece of a strategy for the restoration of human rights and a flourishing economy in a peaceful Ethiopia." Why? Because "Eritrea still has one-third of Ethiopia's industrial capacity. It has talented and enterprising population." But still no freedom because, "Eritrea makes less sense as a separate country than as a dynamic-even leading component in a reconstituted Ethiopian federal state."

Later on, the idea of free Eritrea began to make sense to Mr. Henze: in a rare display of insight, he wrote: "Eritrea, more than ever before, remains the key not only to the fate of Mengistu's Marxist-Lenninst regime, but to Ethiopia's future." Mr. Henze is now the leading revisionist with respect to the key role of Eritrea to Ethiopia's salvation. Since he had been peripherally involved as one of the busybodies at the London Conference where the terms for Mengistu's one-way ticket to Zimbabwe were negotiated, Mr. Henze was invited to witness the Eritrean Referendum in April 1993.

On March 15, 1999 in a press conference that characterized his legendary contempt for facts and dishonesty, Henze characterised the Eritrean Referendum as: "...not highly honest. It offered only two choices. Yes or no. There was no medium choice." Mr. Henze knows that the only two criteria to assess the honesty of a ballot are whether it was "free" and "fair". Every UN observer team validated that the referendum vote was free and fair. Even Ethiopia's Prime Minister at the time (the now-disappeared Tamrat Layne) called the referendum free and fair.

The entire Q & A session with the journalists at the Addis Hilton was a classic Henze: shoddy work, overreach and naked ingratiating with the power-brokers. Here are some of the lowlights:

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• In February-March 1998 he had visited Axum, Adwa, Adigrat, Irob without seeing a "single Ethiopian soldier." Therefore? Therefore, Eritrea's claim that it was provoked to attack must be wrong. Never mind that the incidents in question happened over a two year period and hundreds of kilometers away from the places he visited. This same argument of phony "I've-been-there'ism", the mortals need to be associated with the history, was last propounded by Our Man in Mekele, Mr. Witten who was validating his "information advantage" by telling us that since he had come as close as 100 kilometers to Ad Murug and Bada, he knows the area belongs to Ethiopia. Using this logic, I have been to San Diego and I know everything about Encinada, Mexico.

• That Ethiopia has "moved staggeringly towards more open society and open economy." Elsewhere he tells us that Ethiopia is rich and Eritrea is poor; Ethiopia is democratic and Eritrea is autocratic. This is a staggeringly bold and staggeringly false statement by any standard of "open society" and "open economy". It is futile to convince the Ethiophiles by pointing to empirical data but the same agencies that tell us that the Ethiopian economy is doing well (IMF, World Bank, UN, CIA) also tell us that Eritrea is doing even better. Independent agencies that monitor progress towards democracy in Africa such as Germany's D+C Development and Cooperation categorize Ethiopia in Category 4 (the worst): a group of nations characterized by "recycling of elite groups" where "conflicts are often pursued with violence, with the rivals setting up their own militias." Eritrea belongs in category 1 (the best): a group of nations "which have already come some distance on the thorny path to constitutionality and parliamentary democracy."

• "When I was in Eritrea in 1995, the Eritreans had occupied some of the Hanish Island and were ready to declare war on Yemen." Actually, it is quite the opposite. It was Yemeni politicians who were all over the media threatening to teach Eritrea a lesson and it was Eritrea who was calling for restraint, mediation and, if necessary, arbitration. The Yemen approach was tried; it resulted in swift punishment. Then the Eritrean call for arbitration was heard.

• "One of the problems, I think, in the world is that Eritreans are very good propagandists. They know how to lie. They know how to make atrocity. And Ethiopians are not quite good at lies. They don't like to lie." That loud noise you just heard was the international journalists' uncontrollable laughter and slapping their knees silly at this audacious statement. It may be true that Ethiopians don't like to lie; but their government surely does. If one is to believe the Ethiopian Government, one has also to believe those reporters for AFP, Reuters, Sunday Times (London), The Times of London, The Independent, The Guardian, BBC, VOA, AP were telling lies. The Ethiopian Government lied about the genesis of the conflict. The Ethiopian Government lied about the escalation of the conflict. The Ethiopian Government lied about the sequence of the air raids on June 5. The Ethiopian Government lied about how many planes it lost in the bombing of Asmara. (Reuters, June 7, 98). The Ethiopian Government lied about the June battle in Zalambesa so blatantly that even reserved journalists said that Ethiopia's statements were "patently false" (Sunday Times of London, June 14, 1998). Here is how David Hirst put it:

  "To someone like myself, who twice visited Eritrea when its present leaders were still rebels in the bush, it all had a familiar feel. First, the clear Ethiopian lie: petty, perhaps, but typical of the self -delusion with which, first under the Emperor Haile Selassie and then under Colonel Mengistu, the state conducted its counter-insurgency. Almost to the end, the rebels were dismissed as mere "bandits" on the brink of obliteration. Second, the Ethopians' dogged reliance on vastly superior but ill-trained and little-motivated manpower."--The Guardian June 10, 1998

  The Ethiopian Government lied about an alleged bombing of Adigrat on February 5, 1999. (Reuters, February 5, 1999); the Ethiopian Government lied about capturing Geza Gherehelase on February 8, a report refuted by Reuters (February 8), BBC (February 8), AP (February 9) and most devastatingly by Corriere della Sera (February 16.) The Ethiopian Government lied about hitting the Assab water reservoir (AP, February 16, 1999)I and topped it all off with the Tsorona insult. It is impossible to overlook ALL of the above unless one is a propagandist. In fact, if many of the Ethiopian journalists who attended the same press conference find themselves in jail tomorrow, Paul Henze will be spinning lies on how the Ethiopian Government is making staggering progress towards depopulating the prisons.

THE SCHOLAR AS A CONDUIT

On October 20, 1995, His Excellency Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, had a meeting with Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia at the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington D.C. The usual assortments of suspects were there asking their usual assortments of questions and the PM gave his usual assortment of self-aggrandizing lies. (In case you've never seen the PM address a crowd, the man gets so animated and so full of himself, you half-expect him to take a pause to give himself a huge, wet kiss.) Among the more interesting guests there was an affable woman named Annette Scheckler of the Refugee Policy Group, who, later on, in a classic American revolving-door career move, went to head the Horn of Africa Desk of Voice of America. (VOA, during the months of May-July 98, was guilty of crimes of omission and commission. ) In any event, most of the questions dealt with constitutionalism in Ethiopia, minority rights, land reform, Addis Ababa UniversityI.all tough questions. There was only one Larry King type of softball question in the league of "why are you so great?" and guess who asked it? None other than Mr. Henze. His question: what is the IMF and World Bank's view of the Ethiopian Government's financial policy? This is a set-up question that interview subjects usually respond by saying, "thanks for asking that question." It is the type question that generates the type of answer that organizations like the Institute Of Peace can say "Bingo!" and dole out millions of dollars to study regional conflicts in Africa. Then, revolving-door careerists and opportunists can get a grant to direct projects to, say, study "sources of conflict in the Horn of Africa during the past two decades." (Paul Henze - $35,000). There are 100 projects funded (including one for Henze) to study the 20 conflicts in Africa that it is hard to escape the conclusion that we are doomed for eternal conflicts. When Dr. Salk found the cure for polio, many of the organizations set up to find a cure suddenly went belly up. Eritrea is the Dr. Salk of East Africa and all these experts trying to find the cure for the African dilemma are livid at Eritrea's unique prescription of self-sufficiency and living within your means.

This is the only way to explain why a Paul Henze would tell the assembled press in Ethiopia "I hope the Ethiopian army is able to push the Eritreans back out of the rest of the territory they have occupied in Ethiopia. I hope there will be further victories of various kinds for Ethiopians to rejoice." It is not in the interest of the conflict managers to have conflicts managed; it is in their interest that these conflicts go on and on, so they can be studied and funded and studied some more.

PAUL HENZE' WORLD VIEW

When Mr. Paul Henze is not plotting coups, roaming Tigray, defending antiquities in Gojam, playing strategic games, writing essays, thinking at tanks, visiting universities, studying conflicts, he is called on to conduct field trips at many of the world's hot spots. In November 1992, he was part of an NGO International Alert team sent on a fact-finding visit to Abkhazia-a breakaway republic of Georgia which, itself, is a breakaway republic of the USSR. Georgia went to war with Abkhazia; Abkhazia won the war and declared itself a republic. Later on, the Russians blocaded Abkhazia and Abkhazia is now neither a sovereign state, nor an autonomous part of GeorgiaIit is just another nation that fell victim to the wily politics of the post cold-war realignment.

A professor of Caucasian Languages at the London University, Mr. George Hewitt, reviewed Henze's diary and scholarship. Mr. Hewitt has exposed Henze's shoddy scholarship so vigorously that I move a motion for a unanimous consent to nominate him (along with Richard Joseph from Emory University) an honorary Dehaier and part of the Truth Brigade. The most damning one being the following:

"Henze must see the Caucasus in very elementary and formulaic terms-people who oppose Russia/the Kremlin deserve Western support, those whose attitudes are less clearly defined, possibly because they themselves are in conflict with those well known for their anti-Russian/anti-Kremlin sentiments, do notI. The Diary reads like a 1940's B-movie script in which the 'goodies' are clean-shaven, neatly dressed individuals endowed with all the positive qualities one could imagine, whilst the 'baddies' are unshaven, dressed in black and painted in the worst possible lightI" This explains why Henze wrote and peddled a bogus story of how the assassination attempt against the Pope was engineered by the Soviets.

The Eritrean liberation movement, which was fighting US-supported Haile Selassie, and had to get help from Soviet-satellite nations, was, in Henze's book forever suspect and can not be anti-Communist enough. Meanwhile, the TPLF movement, which began its fight against Soviet supported Derg and loudly told the world that it considers the Soviets imperialist, found a special place in Henze's heart. It is too bad the Henze is still fighting the Cold War and cannot reconcile himself to the annoying reminder of his irrelevance: a free, prospering and sovereign Eritrea.

Whatever the outcome of the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict, one thing is for sure: if Ethiopia continues to listen to the advice of Henze, it will accelerate its rapid pace towards creating a police state with 20 security agencies all guarding against Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, separatists, commies, pinkos, destabilizes, or whatever the enemy of the day is. Henze calls that staggering progress.

Conclusions:

It is not my intent here to disparage the Henze's readiness to be partial on the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict. As a friend of Ethiopia, he has every right to do so. In fact, I like partisans; for example, I have no problem with the work of Mr. Young who is obviously a TPLF sympathizer but has enough integrity to be mildly critical when necessary. What I find objectionable is how he--supposedly a learned man with keen intellect--has such a low regard for facts and empirical data. Mr. Henze would have us believe that Ethiopia is a model country, taking giant strides towards democracy and national self-actualization. It is fine if he presents this as his "hope and prayer" but a researcher and a scholar should do more than hope--present the evidence. What is more repulsive is that Henze and Witten are actually encouraging the Ethiopian Government to resolve the conflict militarily.

Mr. Henze claims that he has talked to "Eritrean leaders" since the eruption of the conflict. Considering how careless he is with facts, I would be curious to know whom exactly he spoke with. Certainly not the Eritrean Embassy in the US. Certainly not the Eritrean representative to the UN. Who did he talk to? And how can he give a supposedly balanced report without having talked to Eritrean officials?

I know what you are thinking: am I not doing the same thing? Believe me; I tried to interview the man. I've left voice messages, I've sent faxes; in fact, I am on first-name basis with his personal secretary. The man has not responded...and unlike him, I can back up every assertion I have made in this article.

Finally, a note of thanks to a good friend who pulled a couple of all-nighters to try to glean a single insight from the Hnzi's tomes and papers. Nothing there. The only smoking gun is that in one of his books, he has a map of Eritrea and Ethiopia....and the Badme Triangle is still a triangle dissected by a straight line.