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Spooks

How much does the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency really know about the Pacific Islands? The agency’s reputation as knowledgable and powerful comes under scrutiny with the publication of its latest World Factbook.

By David North

How much docs the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency know about the Pacific Islands?

One test of this is to see how good its published information is on the islands.

Yes, published. The CIA, for several years, has produced the World Factbook which includes 33 detailed entries on islands in the Pacific - from the full-fledged nations (e.g. Fiji and PNG) down to the uninhabited relics of empire (e.g Clipperton Island and

Palmyra Atoll.)

The Factbook’s little maps of the islands, the terse recitation of basic facts about them, and the agency’s rep utation as knowledgeable and powerful had given me the impression that it must know what it was writing about.

Further, I live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, the CIA headquarters is a few miles from my house, and I have encountered a number of active and retired CIA people socially; the spooks I met all seemed bright and enlight ened.

But I started to have second thoughts about the agency, as did many Americans, when it failed woefully to predict the implosion of the USSR, and when the agency’s own internal securi ty system proved so lax that one of its senior people sold secrets to the Soviets for years before he was caught.

The CIA had not noticed, in that

instance, that the spook in question had been driving a Jaguar into the agency parking lot every day, a car that he could not have possibly afford ed on his government salary.

With all that in mind, I took a much closer look at what the ClA’s Factbook had to say about the Pacific Islands.

The 33 entries cover all the indepen dent and associated nations of the Pacific plus islands that are not gov erned as an integral part of another entity. So Australia’s Norfolk Island gets a listing, but Lord Howe (part of New South Wales) does not; Chile’s Easter Island and America’s Hawaii are not list ed, because they are governed like other parts of those nations.Tokelau, Pitcairn and Midway all have listings, because of the nature of their gover nance.

Each one - or two - page country entry has sections on geography, the popula tion, government, economy, communi cations and defense forces. The govern ment section includes a listing I have not seen elsewhere, all the internation al organisations to which the country belongs. Fiji, for instance, is a member

Of Acp,Asdb, Cp, Escap, Fao, G-77,

IBRD, ICAO, ICFTU, IDA, IFAD, IFC, ILO,

Imf, Imo, Intelsat And Intepol And

18 other alphabet agencies, the full names of which are provided else where in the Factbook.

As I examined the book, the first thing I noticed was an aura of carelessness maybe bad editing as opposed to bad

intelligence gathering. For example, on p. 384 of the most recent (1993) edi tion, we find that 57 percent of Tonga’s adults are literate; looking a little fur ther we see that 60 percent of the men are literate, as are 60 percent of the women. The three members are logical ly incompatible; at least one - if not all three - of those numbers must be wrong.

Along the same lines the literacy rate for all adults in FSM is shown as 90 per cent, for the men as 90 percent and for the women it is 85 percent. That set of numbers would be accurate under only one circumstance - if there were 10 times as many men as women in FSM, which is clearly not the case.

PIM recently published a story report ing that the birth rate in the Marshall Islands had fallen to 23.5 per thousand in 1993 from a rate of 35 per thousand in 1989 The 1993 Factbook carries this item on the subject (p. 248) “Birth rate: 46.55 births/1000 population (1993 est.) .’’The CIA missed that one by almost a two-to-one margin.

Well, I thought, maybe the CIA doesn’t do demographics very well, but it has to be good on international disputes.

But an examination of the entries under that heading, for the 33 islands, was not reassuring. Yes, the CIA report ed that the Marshalls claimed Wake Island, now under the US flag, and that Mexico claimed Clipperton, which the French think belongs to France.

But what about Helens Reef or Helens

Island, the uninhabited southernmost island of Palau, which is claimed by Indonesia. No mention. Nor was there any notation about the not very vigor ous dispute over Tonga’s FEZ bound aries. If Tonga’s Minerva Reef is in fact above water, then Tonga’s FEZ goes much further than otherwise. If I know about those disputes, why doesn’t the

Cia?

Given these armchair findings, I decid ed to reach out to fax pals in the Pacific to see what they had to say about the accuracy of the CIA. Many were either too busy, or too impressed by the agency, to respond, but Nicholas R. Henry of the always helpful Cook Islands Travel Authority took the time to provide some detailed information about his islands. The CIA, again, was found wanting.

The principal problem with the Cook Islands entry (on pp 90-91 of the cur rent edition) is that it was hopelessly out of date. For example, in the eco nomic overview section of the entry; “Agriculture provides the economic base. The major export earners are fruit, copra and clothing”.

Tourism has long since become the chief earner of hard currency in the Cooks, and the cultured black pearl has started to make a major contribu tion to exports. While there are still exports of pawpaw, taro, mangoes and some citrus, according to Mr Henry, this is, in relative terms, a declining fac tor.

As for clothing, the industry active in some parts of the Pacific (e.g. CNMI) and eagerly sought in others (e.g.

American Samoa), it plays a much smaller role than the CIA thinks.

Again, according to Mr Henry, “The clothing factories in Rarotonga today are making T-shirts ... for local con sumption only, especially with a larger tourist market. One boutique designer has sent some product overseas, but at this stage only a very nominal amount.”

The Cook Islands entry in the 1993 edition is full of 1988 estimates, when newer ones were certainly available when the book went to press. As a result, the economic and population base of the Cooks is seriously under stated. For example; there were nine usable airports in 1993, not the seven reported by the CIA; there were 7122 people in the labour force, not 5810; the gross national product was USSB7 million in 1993, compared to the USS4O million noted as a 1988 esti mate.

On a more basic level, the CIA remains a Cold War agency, focussed on an international battle which is now part of his history. Until a couple of years ago the Factbook carried notations about the presence or absence of the Communist Party in many of the larger islands jurisdictions.

But the current threats to peace of mind arising within the islands have nothing to do with either Soviet or Libyan conspiracies, and there is no

men tion of any of them. JH Nothing is said about the K separatist movement in K Bougainville, nor about the islands as potential KHHi way stations in the drug trade (as the Marianas seem to be for “ice”).

A more obscure cause for concern (also noted in this publication) is the tendency of some island nations to issue “brass plate” bank licences.

Swindlers use the bank licences as part of their con games in North America, but rarely appear in the islands.

On a longer-term basis there are the very real threats to the islands of over population, governmental financial mis management, and the resulting impend ing economic misery which may cause serious internal dislocation, and may cause migration away from the islands to climb to unprecendented heights.

But the CIA is not yet (not publicly) reporting on any of these matters.

On the other hand, though one can fault its. timeliness and its superficiality, I find the World Factbook a fascinat ing source of information, and look for ward to the publication of the next edition.

Where else can you learn, for example, that the only two islands in the Pacific with railroads are Fiji (narrow guage for sugar cane) and Nauru (built by the

Germans to m - help extract phos

; ’ phate).

Incidentally, K* PIM read - :-v ers. is that \ *..?*£ C correct? No other rail roads in

K the

■ • islands? (see box) Where else but the Factbook can you get neat summaries of totally obscure places, such as this on Palmyra, the now empty US island halfway between Hawaii and American Samoa: “Environment: about 50 islets covered with dense vegetation, coconut trees and balsa-like trees up to 30 metres tall”?

Where else can you find a whole gov ernment structure summarised in a few lines, as is done in this book for all the islands with governments, with the cor rect spellings and pronunciations of the names of the leaders and of the legislatures.

Finally, in my browsing, I encountered the name of a group of islands that should be in the South Pacific, but is not. The uninhabited islands are French, are claimed by Madagascar, and lie between that ex-French colony and the coast of Africa. They are the Glorioso Islands. ■

PlM’s David North is keen to hear from readers about the accuracy of material in the Factbook on their own island.

North can be reached at; 3113 N.

Kensington St, Arlington, Va, USA or fax: (703) 241-1209