Brian Crozier

Journalist and strategist Brian Crozier in the Oval Office for a meeting with President Reagan in 1985

Brian Rossiter Crozier (4 August 1918 in Shire of Cloncurry, Queensland – 4 August 2012)^[1] was a historian, propagandist and journalist. He was also one of the central staff members of a secret propaganda department belonging to the UK Foreign Office, known as the Information Research Department (IRD) which republished and supported much of his work,^[2] and used his position to insert propaganda articles within British publications.^[3]

Early life[]

Crozier was born in a small village in Australia, where his father worked as mining engineer. In 1923 his family moved to France. In 1930, it moved to England, where he received a scholarship to study piano and composition at the Trinity College of Music in London.^[4][5] Early in life he believed in communism, as a reaction to the Great Depression and to Adolf Hitler, but he later changed his philosophy and worked to combat communism.^[6]

Career[]

Crozier eventually became interested in journalism and pursued a career that led him to become a foreign correspondent for Reuters, a columnist for The Economist, a reporter for the BBC and, during a brief return to Australia, a writer for The Sydney Morning Herald.^[7]

Crozier worked as the director of , set up in 1966 by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which had ties to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While editing the Economist's "insider" news sheet Foreign Report, Crozier, as he later recorded in his memoirs, kept some of the best stories that reached him for the CIA. He stated in 1975 that Forum World Features had broken all ties to the CIA when he became its director in the 1960s.^[8]

In 1970, Crozier founded the , based in London, to study insurgencies and terrorism. He presided over it for most of the 1970s. According to a profile written by David Rees in 1985 for the American fortnightly National Review "the Institute... was the first private think-tank devoted to the study of terrorism and subversion". Under his direction (he left in 1979) the institute specialised in the study of the "peacetime" strategy of the Soviet Union. Its analyses, including the Annual of Power and Conflict, which it published for ten years, have been used in war colleges throughout the West.^[7]

For many years, Crozier wrote a regular column, "The Protracted Conflict", in the National Review. Joseph D'Agostino of Human Events stated, "Crozier has another distinction: in 1988 he appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records for having interviewed the most heads of state or government, 58 in all".^[6]

Crozier provided advice to the British Secret Intelligence Service, to the Information Research Department (IRD) of the British Foreign Office, and to the CIA. Lecturing to Britain's staff college for army officers during the early 1970s, when the Labour Party was in power under Harold Wilson, Crozier stated if the government went "too far", it was the armed forces' duty to intervene (he claimed that he was enthusiastically applauded). In 1982, it was revealed from the papers of a former Bavarian state security chief, , that Crozier was an attendant of Le Cercle and headed a secret international group that tried to influence the West German federal election of 1980 by using secret-service connections and cover-up financial transactions to make Franz Josef Strauß Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.^[9]

Crozier was a co-founder of the group The 61, an organisation that wanted to counter Soviet communist propaganda.^[4]

HarperCollins published Crozier's autobiography, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991, in 1993, which was revised and corrected in paperback edition in 1994.^[10]

Crozier was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow on War, Revolution, and Peace of the Hoover Institution.^[11] He was also a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.^[12] In 1985, he signed a petition in support for the far-right paramilitary Contras (Nicaragua).^[13]

Personal life[]

Crozier was married twice. He had three daughters (Kathryn-Anne, Isobel and Caroline) and a son (Michael).^[4]

Death[]

Crozier died on 4 August 2012 after a long illness at 94.^[4]

Selected works[]

External video
Washington Journal interview with Crozier on The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, 14 November 1999. C-SPAN.

Books

• The Rebels: A Study of Postwar Insurrections. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960. ISBN 978-1258501716.
• The Morning After: A Study of Independence. London: Methuen, 1963. ISBN 978-1135351274.
• South East Asia in Turmoil. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965. ISBN 978-0684129969.
• The Struggle for the Third World. Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1966. ISBN 978-0802310354.
• Franco: A Biographical History. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967. ISBN 978-0413267702.
• Masters of Power. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969. LCCN 77-79368.
• Since Stalin: An Assessment of Communist Power. New York: Coward-McCann, 1970. LCCN 78-136438.
• De Gaulle. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. ISBN 978-0684129969.
• A Theory of Conflict. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974. ISBN 978-0241024584.
• The Man Who Lost China: The First Full Biography of Chiang Kai-shek. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976. ISBN 978-0684146867.
• Strategy of Survival. London: Temple Smith, 1978. ISBN 978-0851171432.
• This War Called Peace, with Drew Middleton and Jeremy Murray-Brown. Universe Books, 1985. ISBN 0876634633 / ISBN 978-0876634639.
• The Gorbachev Phenomenon: Peace and the Secret War. Brinkworth, UK: Claridge Press, 1990. ISBN 978-1870626217.
• Free Agent: The Unseen War, 1941-1991. London: HarperCollins, 1993. ISBN 978-0060171179.
• The KGB Lawsuits. Brinkworth, UK: Claridge Press, 1995. ISBN 978-1870626026.
• The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. Rocklin, Calif.: Forum, 1999. ISBN 978-0761520573. Published in association with National Review.
• The Other Brian Croziers. A&C Black, 2002. ISBN 1870626648 / ISBN 978-1870626644.
• Political Victory: The Elusive Prize of Military Wars. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2005. ISBN 978-0765802903.

Book contributions

• "South-East Asia" (Chapter 6). The Cold War: A Reappraisal, by Evan Luard. New York: Praeger, 1964. LCCN 64-25786.
• "Der Spiegel: Confirmation from the East" (pp. 99–105). Counter Culture, Vol. 2, by Sir James Goldsmith. 1993.

Articles

• "The Diem Regime in Southern Vietnam." Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 24, No. 4, April 1955, pp. 49–56. doi:10.2307/3023970.
• "The International Situation in Indochina." Pacific Affairs, Vol. 29, No. 4, December 1956, pp. 309–323. JSTOR 3035143.
• "France and Algeria." International Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 3, July 1960, pp. 310–321. doi:10.2307/2610008. Authored with Gerard Mansell. A discussion at Chatham House, 8 March 1960.
• "Peking and the Laotian Crisis: An Interim Appraisal." The China Quarterly, No. 7, July–September 1961, pp. 128–137. JSTOR 763326.
• "Indonesia: Retrospect and Prospect." The World Today, Vol. 18, No. 7, July 1962, pp. 295–304. JSTOR 40393419.
• "Peking and the Laotian Crisis: A Further Appraisal." The China Quarterly, No. 11, July–September 1962, pp. 116–123. JSTOR 651454.
• "The Communist Struggle for Power in Burma." The World Today, Vol. 20, No. 3, March 1964, pp. 105–112. JSTOR 40393589.
• "The Struggle for the Third World." International Affairs, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 1964, pp. 440–452. doi:10.2307/2610827.
• "Pour une bribe d'empire." Revue des Deux Mondes, April 1989, pp. 249–253. JSTOR 44185802.
• "Creating 'A Lot on Her Hands.'" Labour History, No. 85, November 2003, pp. 89–101. doi:10.2307/27515929. Authored with Helen Gregory.

Book reviews

• Review of La Fin d'une guerre: Indochine 1954, by Jean Lacouture & Philippe Devillers. International Affairs, Vol. 37, No. 2, April 1961, pp. 264–265. doi:10.2307/2611931.
• Review of Indonesia: A Profile, by Jeane S. Mintz. Pacific Affairs, Vol. 35, No. 2, Summer 1962, pp. 184–185. doi:10.2307/2753261.
• Review of The Story of Indonesia, by Louis Fischer & The Beginnings of the Indonesian-Dutch Negotiations and the Hoge Veluwe Talks, by Idrus Nasir Djajadiningrat. Pacific Affairs, Vol. 35, No. 2, Summer 1962, pp. 185–186. doi:10.2307/2753262.

References[]

Bibliography

• Norton-Taylor, Richard. "Brian Crozier" (obituary). The Guardian, 9 August 2012.
• Bellamy, Chris. "Brian Crozier: Intelligence and security expert who fought communism and founded his own spy network" (obituary). The Independent, 13 August 2012. Archived from the original.

External links[]

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by or about Brian Crozier in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Brian Crozier papers at the Hoover Institution Archives