title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on March 15, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, to fiddle player and Pentecostal preacher Willie Leon (known as "Sun" or "Son") Swaggart and Minnie Bell Herron, daughter of sharecropper William Herron. They were related by marriage, as Son's maternal uncle was Elmo Lewis, who was married to Minnie's sister Mamie. The extended family had a complex network of interrelationships: "cousins and in-laws and other relatives married each other until the clan was entwined like a big, tight ball of rubber bands."


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: He is the cousin of rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country music star Mickey Gilley. He also had a sister, Jeanette Ensminger (1942–1999). With his parents, Swaggart attended small Assemblies of God churches in Ferriday and Wisner.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1952, aged 17, Swaggart married 15-year-old Frances Anderson, whom he met in church in Wisner, Louisiana while he was playing music with his father, who pastored the Assembly of God Church there. They have a son named Donnie. Swaggart worked several part-time odd jobs to support his young family and also began singing Southern Gospel music at various churches.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: According to his autobiography “To Cross a River”, Swaggart, along with his wife and son, lived in poverty during the 1950s as he preached throughout rural Louisiana, struggling to survive on an income of $30 a week (). Being too poor to own a home, the Swaggarts lived in church basements, homes of pastors, and small motels. Sun Records producer Sam Phillips wanted to start a gospel line of music for the label (perhaps to remain in competition with RCA Victor and Columbia, who also had gospel lines at the time) and wanted Swaggart for Sun as the first gospel artist for the label.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: His cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, who had previously signed with Sun, was reportedly earning $20,000 per week at the time. Although the offer meant a promise for significant income for him and his family, Swaggart turned Phillips down, stating that he was called to preach the gospel.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Preaching from a flatbed trailer donated to him, Swaggart began full-time evangelistic work in 1955. He began developing a revival-meeting following throughout the American South. In 1960, he began recording gospel music record albums and transmitting on Christian radio stations. In 1961, Swaggart was ordained by the Assemblies of God; a year later he began his radio ministry. In the late 1960s, Swaggart founded what was then a small church named the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; the church eventually became district-affiliated with the Assemblies of God.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1971, Swaggart began transmitting a weekly 30-minute telecast over various local television stations in Baton Rouge and also purchased a local AM radio station, WLUX (now WPFC). The station broadcast Christian feature stories, preaching and teaching to various fundamentalist and Pentecostal denominations and playing black gospel, Southern gospel, and inspirational music. As Contemporary Christian music (CCM) became more prevalent, the station avoided playing it. However, Swaggart did cover Chuck Girard's CCM song "Sometimes Alleluia", using this as the theme to his weekly and flagship namesake program. Swaggart sold many of his radio stations gradually throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Jimmy Swaggart Ministries still operates several radio stations that operate under the name Sonlife Radio.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In his monthly periodical known as "The Evangelist", he wrote against worldliness in worship music, particularly referring to a Carman concert.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: He also mentioned in the article that Christian leaders were in "terrible opposition" with him for preaching the truth against contemporary Christian music and its artists.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Swaggart has often preached that God does not borrow from the world to reach the youth, but has since changed his position on contemporary Christian music and has integrated its sound and style in his worship services such as Hillsong.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: By 1975, the television ministry had expanded to more stations around the United States, and he began to use television as his primary preaching forum. In 1978, the weekly telecast was increased to an hour.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1980, Swaggart began a daily weekday telecast featuring Bible study and music, and the weekend, hour-long telecast included a service from either Family Worship Center (Swaggart's church) or an on-location crusade in a major city. In the early 1980s, the broadcasts expanded to major cities nationwide. By 1983, more than 250 television stations broadcast the telecast.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Throughout the 1980s, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries was one of many American Evangelical leaders who promoted the South African-backed Mozambican National Resistance, aka RENAMO, which was accused of committing systematic war crimes during Mozambique's 15-year-long civil war. In addition to moral support and publicity, Swaggart Ministries was repeatedly accused of providing funding and material support to the group. In September 1985, government forces supported by Zimbabwe captured RENAMO's main HQ inside Mozambique, Casa Banana in Gorongosa district. Among the materials left behind by retreating rebels were piles of Swaggart's 1982 publication, "How to Receive The Baptism in the Holy Spirit" translated into Portuguese. During the 1988 trial of Australian missionary Ian Grey, who coordinated much of the private support to RENAMO, it was claimed by the defendant that Swaggart Ministries worked through ex-Rhodesian soldier Michael T Howard's Shekinah Ministries to provide support to RENAMO. That year, extensive media coverage of Swaggart and his businesses in the wake of a sex scandal largely excluded these allegations. In 1991, Covert Action Magazine and the government of Zimbabwe both accused Swaggart ministries of continuing to fund RENAMO.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1988, Swaggart was accused of a sex scandal involving a prostitute, initially resulting in his suspension, and ultimately defrocking, by the Assemblies of God. Three years later Swaggart was implicated in another scandal involving prostitution. As a result, Swaggart's ministry became non-affiliated, nondenominational, and significantly smaller than it was in the ministry's pre-scandal years.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Swaggart's first exposure was in retaliation for an incident in 1986 when he exposed fellow Assemblies of God minister Marvin Gorman, whom he accused of having several affairs. Once he was exposed, Gorman was defrocked from the Assemblies of God, and his ministry was all but ended. Gorman filed a successful lawsuit against Swaggart for defamation and conspiracy to ruin his reputation which led to the award of damages amounting to $10 million in 1991, reduced after an appeal and an out-of-court settlement to $1.75 million.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: However, as a retaliatory measure, Gorman hired his son Randy and son-in-law Garland Bilbo to watch the Travel Inn on Airline Highway in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. A camera with a telephoto lens was placed in the window of the motel's Room 12, and draped with a black cloth. When Swaggart arrived, he reportedly went into Room 7. Randy Gorman and Garland Bilbo let the air out of the tires on Swaggart's vehicle. They called Marvin Gorman, whose church was located nearby. Randy Gorman and Garland Bilbo had taken photos of Swaggart outside Room 7 with Debra Murphree, a local prostitute. Gorman arrived at the Travel Inn a short while later and confronted Swaggart, although on details accounts from both sides differed.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: According to "Swaggart: The Unauthorized Biography of an American Evangelist", by Ann Rowe Seaman, Gorman secured a promise from Swaggart that he would publicly apologize to Gorman and start the process of Gorman's reinstatement to the Assemblies of God. Gorman offered to remain silent if Swaggart would state publicly that he lied about Gorman's affairs. Gorman waited almost a year, then hand-delivered a note to Swaggart informing him his time was up; Swaggart did not respond. On February 16, 1988, Gorman contacted James Hamil, one of the 13-man Executive Presbytery of the Assemblies of God, who called G. Raymond Carlson, the Assemblies Superintendent. Carlson summoned Hamill and Gorman to fly to Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, and arranged for an emergency meeting of the presbyters. He was shown photos of several men coming in and going out of Room 7 at the Travel Inn Motel in New Orleans. This was done to establish that the room was being used for prostitution. One of the men shown leaving Room 7 was Swaggart. The presbytery leadership of the Assemblies of God decided that Swaggart should be suspended from broadcasting his television program for three months.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: According to the Associated Press, Murphree, who claimed to have posed nude for Swaggart, failed a polygraph test administered by a New York City Police Department polygraph expert. The test administrator concluded that Murphree had failed to tell the truth on all key questions concerning her statement. The test was administered after Murphree offered to sell the story to the "National Enquirer" for $100,000. Paul Levy, senior editor for the "Enquirer", stated that the polygraph examiner had concluded Murphree was not truthful on six key questions, including one in which she was reportedly asked if she had fabricated the story. Levy stated that the "Enquirer" decided not to print her story due to the test results, her drug use, and the fact that she had arrest warrants in three states. Murphree failed questions about whether she was paid or promised money to "set up" Swaggart, and whether she made up the story to make money from it.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: On February 21, 1988, without giving any details regarding his transgressions, Swaggart delivered what came to be known as his "I have sinned" speech on live television. He spoke tearfully to his family, congregation, TV audience, and ended it with a prayer, "I have sinned against You, my Lord, and I would ask that Your Precious Blood ... would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God's forgetfulness never to be remembered against me anymore."


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: The Louisiana presbytery of the Assemblies of God initially suspended Swaggart from the ministry for three months. The national presbytery of the Assemblies of God soon extended the suspension to their standard two-year suspension for sexual immorality. His return to the pulpit coincided with the end of a three-month suspension originally ordered by the denomination. Believing that Swaggart was not genuinely repentant in submitting to their authority, the hierarchy of the Assemblies of God defrocked him, removing his credentials and ministerial license.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Swaggart then became an independent and non-denominational Pentecostal minister, establishing Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, based at the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the Sonlife Broadcasting Network (SBN) which can be seen in the United States and other countries.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: On October 11, 1991, Swaggart was found in the company of a prostitute for a second time. He was pulled over by a police officer in Indio, California, for driving on the wrong side of the road. With him in the vehicle was a woman named Rosemary Garcia. According to Garcia, Swaggart had stopped to propose sex to her on the side of the road. She later told reporters: "He asked me for sex. I mean, that's why he stopped me. That's what I do. I'm a prostitute." This time, rather than confessing his sins to his congregation, Swaggart told those at Family Worship Center, "The Lord told me it's flat none of your business." Swaggart's son Donnie then announced to the audience that his father would be temporarily stepping down as head of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries for "a time of healing and counseling".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Jimmy Swaggart Ministries mainly comprised Family Worship Center, "The Jimmy Swaggart Telecast", radio and television programs called "A Study in the Word", "SonLife Radio Network", a website, and a 24/7 cable and satellite television network, SonLife Broadcasting Network (SBN).


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Swaggart's wife Frances hosts a television program, "Frances and Friends", shown daily on SBN. Swaggart also hosts a daily Bible study program on SBN, "The Message of the Cross". His son Donnie preaches at Family Worship Center and also preaches in churches across America and abroad. Donnie's son Gabriel is the ministry's youth pastor who leads "Crossfire," Family Worship Center's youth ministry. SBN also delivers live broadcasts of all of its weekly services at Family Worship Center, as well as live broadcasts of all of its camp meetings.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Swaggart started SonLife Radio on the noncommercial FM band. Unlike his previous stations, SonLife was commercial-free and it did not sell time to outside ministries; the preaching and teaching were all produced in-house. The music which it played was primarily Southern Gospel. SonLife Radio is also streamed on the Internet.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1973, Swaggart proposed to television producers in Nashville, Tennessee a television program including a fairly large music segment, a short sermon, and time for talking about current ministry projects, after two faltering attempts to tape the half-hour program in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. They accepted, and within weeks the "Jimmy Swaggart Telecast" was being broadcast around the United States.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1981, Swaggart launched a daily television program titled "A Study in the Word". From the beginning, the primary cable channels which the program was aired on were CBN Cable (now Freeform), TBN, and the old PTL Network (now the Inspiration Network).


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1988, Swaggart lost some of his broadcast and merchandise rights following his first prostitution scandal. In 1991, Swaggart's career as standard televangelist came to an end after more local TV stations cancelled their contracts with him following a second prostitution scandal.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 2010, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries launched a 24 hour-a-day television network entitled the Sonlife Broadcasting Network (SBN), on DirecTV channel 344, Dish Network channel 257, Glorystar channel 125, AT&T U-verse, Verizon Fios, and various cable TV providers and broadcast stations.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: SBN is available in the U.S. through Free To Air (FTA) satellite television. It is also available in Australia and New Zealand.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: SBN is also available 24 hours a day in the United Kingdom on SKY (Channel 593), Freesat (Channel 695) and Freeview (Channel 239). It is also shown on DSTV channel 345 for African viewers.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In autumn 1984, Swaggart opened Jimmy Swaggart Bible College (JSBC). The college originally provided education and communication degrees. It flourished during the 1980s.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: JSBC enrollment dropped drastically in 1988 when students left as a result of Swaggart's scandal followed by accreditation issues. In 1988 the enrollment at the Bible college was projected to drop 72% that year but the school was planning to proceed with plans to open a theological seminary. Enrollment in August 1988 was projected to be about 400 students, compared to 1,451 students last year in 1987. The estimate was based on the number of students who had registered and the inquiries from potential students.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1988, Ray Trask, leaves his position as president of JSBC. That July the college dormitories were re-branded and listed as apartments.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1991, JSBC was renamed to World Evangelism Bible College and enrollment dropped to 370 students. The college shut down programs in music, physical education, secretarial science, and communications that October and disbanded its basketball team. In November "the college laid off three Bible professors and an English professor, effective at the end of the fall semester."


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1992, Bernard Rossier resigns as president of Jimmy Swaggart's World Evangelism Bible College and Seminary.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 2019, JSBC offered Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts degrees, both in Biblical Studies. The College was not accredited but was seeking accreditation at that time.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 2020, Ray Trask, former JSBC President at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College died. Mr. Trask served as JSBC president from 1986 to 1988.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 2021, Gabriel Swaggart, grandson of Jimmy Swaggart, is the President of JSBC. JSBC stopped offering online classes around 2020 in one of many steps to seek accreditation. JSBC lists a total of six faculty/staff members.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 2022, Gabriel Swaggart still remains as President of JSBC. Under "accreditation" the college website states "JSBC is a corresponding institution with The Transnational Association of Christian Schools (TRACS)." JSBC lists five college administrators, six faculty, and one staff member.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Swaggart has written about 50 Christian books offered through his ministry. He is the author of the "Expositor's Study Bible", 13 study guides and 38 commentaries on the Bible. The ministry also publishes a monthly magazine, "The Evangelist".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Since October 10, 1952, Swaggart has been married to Frances Swaggart ( Anderson, born August 9, 1937). They have one son, Donnie (born October 18, 1954), named after Jimmy Swaggart's brother who died in infancy. He has three grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren Abby, Caroline, Mackenzie, Samantha, Zack, Ryder, and many more .


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Donnie and his son Gabriel are also preachers, making three generations of the Swaggart family to have become involved in ministerial work.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1982, Swaggart founded Family Christian Academy (FCA). The school was originally run by him but is now run by Carolyn Richards, Swaggart's grandson's mother-in-law.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: The scandals inspired the Ozzy Osbourne song "Miracle Man" on Osbourne's 1988 album "No Rest for the Wicked", and a reference in the Iron Maiden song "Holy Smoke", a UK number three hit single, from the 1990 album "No Prayer for the Dying".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: During his 1988 concerts, Bruce Hornsby would begin his song "Defenders of the Flag" from "Scenes from the Southside" with a tongue-in-cheek dedication to Swaggart.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Similarities were also noted between heel World Wrestling Federation character Brother Love and Swaggart's style of preaching.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: The Zodiac Mindwarp song "Airline Highway" is about Swaggart's hypocrisy, featuring the lyrics "Unoriginal sin led straight to my fall", and in the chorus, "Hey Jim, the crime's in your heart / You put love in a straitjacket, it tore you apart."


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Swaggart was also referred to in several recorded live performances by Frank Zappa with a medley of the Beatles' songs featuring rewritten lyrics referencing him appearing on the album "Zappa '88".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: A tearful Swaggart is seen during the music video for the Def Leppard song "Slang", appearing on-screen during the lyric "God damn".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Part of Swaggart's confessional sermon ("I beg you ... forgive me") can be heard at the start of "Kill Eye" by Crowded House.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1990, "the Jimmy Swaggart show" was included as part of a list of 64 disagreeable things read by Josie Jones and released as a spoken-word track under the name "Imperfect List" by "Big Hard Excellent Fish".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In 1999, rapper Eminem vaguely made reference to hypocritical preachers, most likely referring to many in the 1980s such as Swaggart and others in his song "Criminal" in the verse where he raps "...Oh, and please send me a brand new car/and a prostitute while my wife's sick in the hospital".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: "Jesus He Knows Me", a 1991 song by Genesis, is a satire on televangelists, such as Swaggart, Robert Tilton, and Jim Bakker.


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: In November 2021 multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Lingua Ignota released a compilation of readings called "EPISTOLARY GRIEVING FOR JIMMY SWAGGART", made from letters she penned to Swaggart. This follows her sampling Swaggart's confession in her song "The Sacred Linament of Judgement" on her album "Sinner Get Ready".


title: Jimmy Swaggart

text: Canadian rock band The New Pornographers took their name from a 1986 speech by Swaggart in which he lambasted rock music as "The new pornography."


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: American Airlines Flight 191 was a regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight in the United States operated by American Airlines from Chicago O'Hare International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. On the afternoon of May 25, 1979, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 operating this flight was taking off from runway 32R when its left engine detached, causing loss of control, and it crashed less than from the end of the runway. All 258 passengers and 13 crew on board were killed, along with two people on the ground. With 273 fatalities, it is the deadliest aviation accident to have occurred in the United States.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that as the aircraft was beginning its takeoff rotation, engine number one (the left engine) separated from the left wing, flipping over the top of the wing and landing on the runway. As the engine separated from the aircraft, it severed hydraulic fluid lines that lock the wing's leading-edge slats in place and damaged a section of the left wing's leading edge. Aerodynamic forces acting on the wing resulted in an uncommanded retraction of the outboard slats. As the aircraft began to climb, the damaged left wing – with no engine – produced far less lift (it stalled) than the right wing, which had its slats still deployed and its engine providing full takeoff thrust. The disrupted and unbalanced aerodynamics of the aircraft caused it to roll abruptly to the left until it was partially inverted, reaching a bank angle of 112°, before crashing in an open field by a trailer park near the end of the runway. The engine separation was attributed to damage to the pylon structure holding the engine to the wing, caused by improper maintenance procedures used at American Airlines.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The aircraft involved in the accident was a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 registered as N110AA. It had been delivered on February 25, 1972, and at the time of the crash, it had logged just under 20,000 hours of flying time over seven years. The aircraft was powered by three General Electric CF6-6D engines, one on each wing and one on the vertical stabilizer. A review of the aircraft's flight logs and maintenance records showed that no mechanical discrepancies were noted for May 11, 1979. On the day of the accident, in violation of standard procedure, the records were not removed from the aircraft and were destroyed in the accident.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Captain Walter Lux (age 53) had been flying the DC-10 since its introduction eight years earlier. He had logged around 22,000 flying hours, of which about 3,000 were in a DC-10. He was also qualified to pilot 17 other aircraft, including the DC-6, the DC-7, and the Boeing 727. First Officer James Dillard (age 49) and Flight Engineer Alfred Udovich (age 56) were also highly experienced: 9,275 hours and 15,000 hours, respectively; between them, they had 1,830 hours of flying experience in the DC-10.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: On the accident flight, just as the aircraft reached takeoff speed, the number-one engine and its pylon assembly separated from the left wing, ripping away a section of the leading edge with it. The combined unit flipped over the top of the wing and landed on the runway. Robert Graham, supervisor of maintenance for American Airlines, stated:


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: What was said in the cockpit in the 50 seconds leading up to the final impact is not known, as the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) lost power when the engine detached. The only crash-related audio collected by the recorder is a thumping noise (likely the sound of the engine separating), followed by the first officer exclaiming, "Damn!" at which point the recording ends. This may also explain why air traffic control was unsuccessful in their attempts to radio the crew and inform them that they had lost an engine. This loss of power did, however, prove useful in the investigation, serving as a marker of exactly what circuit in the DC-10's extensive electrical system had failed.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: In addition to the engine's failure, several related systems failed. The number-one hydraulic system, powered by the number-one engine, also failed but continued to operate through motor pumps that mechanically connected it to hydraulic system three. Hydraulic system three was also damaged and began leaking fluid but maintained pressure and operation until impact. Hydraulic system two was undamaged. The number-one electrical bus, whose generator was attached to the number-one engine, failed, as well, causing several electrical systems to go offline, most notably the captain's instruments, his stick shaker, and the slat disagreement sensors. A switch in the overhead panel would have allowed the captain to restore power to his instruments, but it was not used. The flight engineer might have reached the backup power switch (as part of an abnormal situation checklist—not as part of their takeoff emergency procedure) to restore electrical power to the number-one electrical bus. That would have worked only if electrical faults were no longer present in the number-one electrical system. To reach that backup power switch, the flight engineer would have had to rotate his seat, release his safety belt, and stand up. Regardless, the aircraft did not get any higher than above the ground and was only in the air for 50 seconds between the time the engine separated and the moment it crashed; time was insufficient to perform such an action. In any event, the first officer was flying the airplane, and his instruments continued to function normally.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The aircraft climbed to about above ground level while spewing a white mist trail of fuel and hydraulic fluid from the left wing. The first officer followed the flight director and raised the nose to 14°, which reduced the airspeed from to the takeoff safety airspeed (V) of , the speed at which the aircraft could safely climb after sustaining an engine failure.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The engine separation severed the hydraulic fluid lines that controlled the leading-edge slats on the left wing and locked them in place, causing the outboard slats (immediately left of the number-one engine) to retract under air load. The retraction of the slats raised the stall speed of the left wing to about , 6 knots higher than the prescribed takeoff safety airspeed (V) of 153 knots. As a result, the left wing entered a full aerodynamic stall. With the left wing stalled, the aircraft began banking to the left, rolling over onto its side until it was partially inverted at a 112° bank angle (as seen in the ) with its right wing over its left wing.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Since the cockpit had been equipped with a closed-circuit television camera positioned behind the captain's shoulder and connected to view screens in the passenger cabin, the passengers may have witnessed these events from the viewpoint of the cockpit as the aircraft dove towards the ground. Whether the camera's view was interrupted by the power loss from the number-one electrical bus is not known. The aircraft eventually slammed into a field around from the end of the runway. Large sections of aircraft debris were hurled by the force of the impact into an adjacent trailer park, destroying five trailers and several cars. The DC-10 had also crashed into an old aircraft hangar at the edge of the airport at the former site of Ravenswood Airport, which was used for storage. The aircraft was destroyed by the impact force and ignition of a nearly full load of 21,000 gallons of fuel; no sizable components other than the engines and tail section remained.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: In addition to the 271 people on board the aircraft, two employees at a nearby repair garage were killed, and two more were severely burned. The crash site is a field located northwest of the intersection of Touhy Avenue (Illinois Route 72) and Mount Prospect Road on the border of the suburbs of Des Plaines and Mount Prospect, Illinois.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The disaster and investigation received widespread media coverage. The impact on the public was increased by the dramatic effect of an amateur photo taken of the aircraft rolling that was published on the front page of the "Chicago Tribune" on the Sunday two days after the crash.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Witnesses to the crash were in universal agreement that the aircraft had not struck any foreign objects on the runway. In addition, no pieces of the wing or other aircraft components were found along with the separated engine, other than its supporting pylon; this would lead investigators to conclude that nothing else had broken free from the airframe and struck the engine. Hence, the engine/pylon assembly separation could only have resulted from a structural failure. The cockpit instrument panels were damaged so badly that they did not provide any useful information.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: During the investigation, an examination of the pylon attachment points revealed some damage done to the wing's pylon mounting bracket that matched the bent shape of the pylon's rear attachment fitting. This meant that the pylon attachment fitting had struck the mounting bracket at some point. This was important evidence, as the only way the pylon fitting could strike the wing's mounting bracket in the observed manner was if the bolts that held the pylon to the wing had been removed. The engine/pylon assembly was supported by something other than the aircraft itself. Therefore, investigators could now conclude that the observed damage to the rear pylon mount had been present before the crash occurred rather than being caused by it.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The NTSB determined that the damage to the left-wing engine pylon had occurred during an earlier engine change at the American Airlines aircraft maintenance facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, between March 29 and 30, 1979. On those dates, the aircraft had undergone routine service, during which the engine and pylon had been removed from the wing for inspection and maintenance. The removal procedure recommended by McDonnell-Douglas called for the engine to be detached from the pylon before detaching the pylon itself from the wing. However, American Airlines, as well as Continental Airlines and United Airlines, had developed a different procedure that saved about 200 person-hours per aircraft and "more importantly from a safety standpoint, it would reduce the number of disconnects (of systems such as hydraulic and fuel lines, electrical cables, and wiring) from 79 to 27." This new procedure involved the removal of the engine and pylon assembly as a single unit rather than as individual components. United Airlines' implementation involved the use of an overhead crane to support the engine/pylon assembly during removal and installation. The method chosen by American and Continental relied on supporting the engine/pylon assembly with a large forklift.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: If the forklift had been positioned incorrectly, the engine/pylon assembly would not be stable as it was being handled, causing it to rock like a see-saw and jam the pylon against the wing's attachment points. Forklift operators were guided only by hand and voice signals, as they could not directly see the junction between the pylon and the wing. Positioning had to be extremely accurate, or structural damage could result. Compounding the problem, maintenance work on N110AA did not go smoothly. The mechanics started disconnecting the engine and pylon as a single unit, but a shift change occurred halfway through the job. During this interval, even though the forklift remained stationary, the forks supporting the entire weight of the engine and pylon moved downward slightly due to a normal loss of hydraulic pressure associated with the forklift engine being turned off; this caused a misalignment between the engine/pylon and wing. When work was resumed, the pylon was jammed on the wing, and the forklift had to be repositioned. Whether damage to the mount was caused by the initial downward movement of the engine/pylon structure or by the realignment attempt is unclear. Regardless of how it happened, the resulting damage, although insufficient to cause an immediate failure, eventually developed into fatigue cracking, worsening with each takeoff and landing cycle during the eight weeks that followed. When the attachment finally failed, the engine and its pylon broke away from the wing. The structure surrounding the forward pylon mount also failed from the resulting stresses.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Inspection of the DC-10 fleets of the three airlines revealed that while United Airlines' hoist approach seemed harmless, several DC-10s at both American and Continental already had fatigue cracking and bending damage to their pylon mounts caused by similar maintenance procedures. The field service representative from McDonnell-Douglas stated the company would "not encourage this procedure due to the element of risk" and had so advised American Airlines. McDonnell-Douglas, however, "does not have the authority to either approve or disapprove the maintenance procedures of its customers."


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The NTSB determined that the loss of one engine and the asymmetrical drag caused by damage to the wing's leading edge should not have been enough to cause the pilots to lose control of their aircraft; the aircraft should have been capable of returning to the airport using its remaining two engines. The NTSB thus examined the effects that the engine's separation would have on the aircraft's flight control, hydraulic, electrical, and instrumentation systems. Unlike other aircraft designs, the DC-10 was not equipped with a separate mechanism that would lock the extended leading-edge slats into place, relying instead solely on the hydraulic pressure within the system. The NTSB determined that the engine tore through hydraulic lines as it separated from the DC-10's wing, causing a loss of hydraulic pressure; airflow over the wings forced the left wing slats to retract, which caused a stall over the left wing. In response to the accident, slat relief valves were mandated to prevent slat retraction in case of hydraulic line damage.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The wreckage was too severely fragmented to determine the exact position of the rudders, elevators, flaps, and slats before impact. An examination of eyewitness photographs showed only that the right wing slats were fully extended as the crew tried unsuccessfully to correct their steep roll. The position of the left wing slats could not be determined from the blurry color photographs, so they were sent to a laboratory in Palo Alto, California, for digital analysis, a process that was pushing the limits of 1970s technology and necessitated large, complicated, and expensive equipment. The photographs were reduced to black-and-white, which made distinguishing the slats from the wing itself possible, thus proving that they were retracted. In addition, the aircraft's tail section was verified to be undamaged, and the landing gear was down.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Wind-tunnel and flight-simulator tests were conducted to help understand the aircraft's trajectory after the engine detached and the left wing slats retracted. Those tests established that the damage to the wing's leading edge and retraction of the slats increased the stall speed of the left wing from to . The DC-10 incorporates two warning devices that might have alerted the pilots to the impending stall: the slat disagreement warning light, which should have illuminated after the uncommanded retraction of the slats, and the stick shaker on the captain's control column, which activates close to the stall speed. Both of these warning devices were powered by an electric generator driven by the number-one engine. Both systems became inoperable after the loss of that engine. The first officer's control column was not equipped with a stick shaker; McDonnell Douglas offered the device as an option for the first officer, but American Airlines chose not to have it installed on its DC-10 fleet. Stick shakers for both pilots became mandatory in response to this accident.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: As the aircraft had reached V1, the crew was committed to takeoff, so they followed standard procedures for an engine-out situation. This procedure is to climb at the takeoff safety airspeed (V) and attitude (angle), as directed by the flight director. The partial electrical power failure, produced by the separation of the left engine, meant that neither the stall warning nor the slat retraction indicator was operative. Therefore, the crew did not know that the slats on the left wing were retracting. This retraction significantly raised the stall speed of the left wing. Thus, flying at the takeoff safety airspeed caused the left wing to stall while the right wing was still producing lift, so the aircraft banked sharply and uncontrollably to the left. Simulator recreations after the accident determined that "had the pilot maintained excess airspeed the accident may not have occurred."


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The crash of Flight 191 brought strong criticism from the media regarding the DC-10's safety and design. The DC-10 had been involved in two accidents related to the design of its cargo doors, American Airlines Flight 96 (1972) and Turkish Airlines Flight 981 (1974). The separation of engine one from its mount, the widespread publication of the dramatic images of the airplane missing its engine seconds before the crash, and a second photo of the fireball resulting from the impact, raised widespread concerns about the safety of the DC-10. The final blow to the airplane's reputation was dealt two weeks after the crash when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded the aircraft. Although the aircraft itself was later exonerated, the damage in the public's eye was already done.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The investigation also revealed other DC-10s with damage caused by the same faulty maintenance procedure. The faulty procedure was banned, and the aircraft type went on to have a long career as a passenger and cargo aircraft. In response to this accident, American Airlines was fined $500,000 (equivalent to $ million in dollars) by the U.S. government for improper maintenance procedures. Earl Russell Marshall, chief of the crew of American Airlines maintenance facility in Tulsa who supervised the last maintenance procedure on the aircraft, subsequently committed suicide the night before he was to be deposed by McDonnell Douglas attorneys.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: On June 6, 1979, two weeks after the crash, the FAA suspended the type certificate for the DC-10, thereby grounding all DC-10s under its jurisdiction. It also enacted a special air regulation banning the DC-10 from U.S. airspace, which prevented foreign DC-10s not under the jurisdiction of the FAA from flying within the country. This was done while the FAA investigated whether the airplane's engine mounting and pylon design met relevant requirements. Once the FAA was satisfied that maintenance issues were primarily at fault and not the actual design of the aircraft, the type certificate was restored on July 13, and the special air regulation was repealed. The type certificate was amended, however, stating, "...removal of the engine and pylon as a unit will immediately render the aircraft unairworthy."


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: In the wake of the grounding, the FAA convened a safety panel under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate the design of the DC-10 and the U.S. regulatory system in general. The panel's report, published in June 1980, found "critical deficiencies in the way the government certifies the safety of American-built airliners", focusing on a shortage of FAA expertise during the certification process and a corresponding overreliance on McDonnell Douglas to ensure that the design was safe. Writing for "The Air Current", aviation journalist Jon Ostrower likens the panel's conclusions to those of a later commission convened after the 2019 grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX. Ostrower faults both manufacturers for focusing on the letter of the law regarding regulatory standards, taking a design approach that addresses how the pilots could address single-system failures without adequately considering scenarios in which multiple simultaneous malfunctions of different systems could occur.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: On October 31, 1979, a DC-10 flying as Western Airlines Flight 2605 crashed in Mexico City after a red-eye flight from Los Angeles. The Western crash, however, was due to low visibility and an attempt to land on a closed runway, through, reportedly, confusion of its crew.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The loss of Air New Zealand Flight 901 on November 28, 1979, which killed 257 people, added to the DC-10's negative reputation. The Antarctic sightseeing flight hit a mountain; however, the crash was caused by several human and environmental factors not related to the airworthiness of the DC-10, and the aircraft was later completely exonerated.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Ironically, another DC-10 crash ten years later, United Airlines Flight 232, restored some of the aircraft's reputation. Despite the aircraft losing an engine and all flight controls and crash-landing in a huge fireball (which was caught on video by a local news crew) that killed 112 people, 184 people survived the accident. Experts praised the DC-10's sturdy construction as partly responsible for the high number of survivors.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Orders for DC-10s dropped off sharply after the events of 1979 (the U.S. economic recession of 1979–82 was also a contributing factor in reduced demand for airliners). From there until the end of production ten years later, the two largest DC-10 customers were FedEx and the U.S. Air Force (KC-10 Extender). Despite initial safety concerns, DC-10 aircraft continued to serve with passenger airlines for over three decades after the crash of Flight 191. DC-10 production ended in 1988, and many retired passenger DC-10s have since been converted to all-cargo use. The DC-10 freighter, along with its derivative, the MD-11, constitute part of the FedEx Express fleet. The DC-10s have been upgraded with the glass cockpit from the MD-11, thereby turning them into MD-10s. American Airlines retired its last DC-10s in 2000 after 29 years of service. In February 2014, Biman Bangladesh Airlines operated the final DC-10 passenger flights. DC-10s continue to be used extensively in air freight operations, and military variants also remain in service.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: For 32 years, the victims had no permanent memorial. Funding was obtained for a memorial in 2009 through a two-year effort by the sixth-grade class of Decatur Classical School in Chicago. The memorial, a concave wall with interlocking bricks displaying the names of the crash victims, was formally dedicated in a ceremony on October 15, 2011. The memorial is located on the south shore of Lake Opeka, at Lake Park at the northwest corner of Lee and Touhy Avenues, two miles east of the crash site. A remembrance ceremony was held at the memorial on May 25, 2019, the 40th anniversary of the accident.


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: The cable/satellite National Geographic channel produced a documentary on the crash, and an episode from "Seconds From Disaster" titled "Chicago Plane Crash" detailed the crash and included film of the investigation press conferences. The Canadian television series "Mayday" profiled the crash in the episode "Catastrophe at O'Hare", which subsequently aired in the U.S. on the Smithsonian Channel and National Geographic Channel's television series "Air Disasters".


title: American Airlines Flight 191

text: Chicago folk singer Steve Goodman wrote the song "Ballad of Flight 191 (They Know Everything About It)" in response to the crash and the subsequent investigation as the inaugural song for a series of topical songs that aired on National Public Radio in 1979.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: Sussanne Khan, formerly known as Sussanne Roshan (born 26 October 1975), is an Indian interior and fashion designer. She is the former wife of actor Hrithik Roshan. Her father is actor Sanjay Khan.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: Sussanne Khan was born to Sanjay Khan and Zarine Katrak Khan on 26 October 1975, in Bombay, as the third child in their family; a family rich with film artists and fashion designers including her father, Sanjay Khan who was a prominent actor in the 1980s. Her mother, Zarine Katrak is also an actress as well as an interior designer. Her father is of mixed Afghan and Iranian descent while her mother comes from a Parsi family. She has 2 elder sisters and a younger brother.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: Her younger brother, Zayed Khan is also an actor who works in Bollywood. Farah Khan Ali who was born as the eldest child out of the four is a jewelry designer and Sussanne's second sister, Simone Khan, is an interior designer.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: She is the niece of late actor Feroz Khan and director Akbar Khan (brothers of Sanjay Khan) and first cousin of Bollywood actor, Fardeen Khan.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: After obtaining an Associate of Arts degree in interior designing in 1995 from Brooks College in the US, Khan started her career as an interior designer in 1996 by following the footsteps of her mother who was also a well-known interior designer during her active career.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: In 2011, she partnered with fellow interior designer and a well recognised film producer, Gauri Khan, to launch and introduce "The Charcoal Project" foundation in Mumbai, which is the first interior fashion design store in India. The Charcoal Project is also considered as the most popular design store in India.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: She worked for The Label Life, an e-commerce fashion lifestyle company established in 2012. She was employed as the first interior fashion designer for the company. In 2014, she launched the official branch of Pearl Academy campus in Mumbai and supporting the students of the academy by handling scholarships.


title: Sussanne Khan

text: Khan married Hrithik Roshan in 2000 after dating for four years. The couple ended their 13-year-old relationship in 2013 and got divorced a year later, after having two sons. However, they still remain close friends and spent the lockdown during 2020 together with their sons. She was involved in the Dragon fly club raid in December 2020. In May 2022, Sussanne Khan shared a photo with boyfriend Arslan Goni, confirming their relationship.


title: False flag

text: A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misrepresentation of someone's allegiance. The term was famously used to describe a ruse in naval warfare whereby a vessel flew the flag of a neutral or enemy country in order to hide its true identity. The tactic was originally used by pirates and privateers to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking them. It later was deemed an acceptable practice during naval warfare according to international maritime laws, provided the attacking vessel displayed its true flag once an attack had begun.


title: False flag

text: The term today extends to include countries that organize attacks on themselves and make the attacks appear to be by enemy nations or terrorists, thus giving the nation that was supposedly attacked a pretext for domestic repression or foreign military aggression. Similarly deceptive activities carried out during peacetime by individuals or nongovernmental organizations have been called false flag operations, but the more common legal term is a "frameup", "stitch up", or "setup".


title: False flag

text: In land warfare, such operations are generally deemed acceptable under certain circumstances, such as to deceive enemies, provided the deception is not perfidious and that all such deceptions are discarded before opening fire upon the enemy. Similarly, in naval warfare such a deception is considered permissible, provided the false flag is lowered and the true flag raised before engaging in battle. Auxiliary cruisers operated in such a fashion in both World Wars, as did Q-ships, while merchant vessels were encouraged to use false flags for protection. Such masquerades promoted confusion not just of the enemy but of historical accounts. In 1914 the Battle of Trindade was fought between the British auxiliary cruiser RMS "Carmania" and the German auxiliary cruiser SMS "Cap Trafalgar", which had been altered to look like "Carmania". (Contrary to some accounts, the RMS "Carmania" had "not" been altered to resemble the "Cap Trafalgar".)


title: False flag

text: Another notable example was the World War II German commerce raider "Kormoran", which surprised and sank the Australian light cruiser HMAS "Sydney" in 1941 while disguised as a Dutch merchant ship, causing the greatest loss of life on an Australian warship. While "Kormoran" was fatally damaged in the engagement and its crew captured, the outcome represented a considerable psychological victory for the Germans.


title: False flag

text: The British used a "Kriegsmarine" ensign in the St Nazaire Raid and captured a German code book. The old destroyer "Campbeltown", which the British planned to sacrifice in the operation, was provided with cosmetic modifications that involved cutting the ship's funnels and chamfering the edges to resemble a German Type 23 torpedo boat. By this ruse the British were able to get within two miles (3 km) of the harbour before the defences responded, where the explosive-rigged "Campbeltown" and commandos successfully disabled or destroyed the key dock structures of the port.


title: False flag

text: Between December 1922 and February 1923, a commission of jurists at the Hague drafted a set of rules concerning the Control of Wireless Telegraphy in Time of War and Air Warfare. They included:


title: False flag

text: This draft was never adopted as a legally binding treaty, but the International Committee of the Red Cross states in its introduction on the draft: "To a great extent, [the draft rules] correspond to the customary rules and general principles underlying treaties on the law of war on land and at sea," and as such these two non-controversial articles were already part of customary law.


title: False flag

text: In land warfare, the use of a false flag is similar to that of naval warfare: the trial of Otto Skorzeny, who planned and commanded Operation Greif, by a U.S. military tribunal at the Dachau Trials included a finding that Skorzeny was not guilty of a crime by ordering his men into action in American uniforms. He had relayed to his men the warning of German legal experts: that if they fought in American uniforms, they would be breaking the laws of war; however, they probably were not doing so simply by "wearing" the American uniforms. During the trial, a number of arguments were advanced to substantiate this position and the German and U.S. military seem to have been in agreement.


title: False flag

text: In the transcript of the trial, it is mentioned that Paragraph 43 of the Field Manual published by the War Department, United States Army, on 1 October 1940, under the entry "Rules of Land Warfare" states: "National flags, insignias and uniforms as a rusein practice it has been authorized to make use of these as a ruse. The foregoing rule (Article 23 of the Annex of the IV Hague Convention), does not prohibit such use, but does prohibit their improper use. It is certainly forbidden to make use of them during a combat. Before opening fire upon the enemy, they must be discarded."


title: False flag

text: In 1788, the head tailor at the Royal Swedish Opera received an order to sew a number of Russian military uniforms. These were then used by the Swedes to stage an attack on Puumala, a Swedish outpost on the Russo-Swedish border, on 27 June 1788. This caused an outrage in Stockholm and impressed the Riksdag of the Estates, the Swedish national assembly, who until then had refused to agree to an offensive war against Russia. The Puumala incident allowed King Gustav III of Sweden, who lacked the constitutional authority to initiate unprovoked hostilities without the Estates' consent, to launch the Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790).


title: False flag

text: On July 13, 1870, Otto von Bismarck published the Ems Dispatch – an internal message from King Wilhelm I to Bismarck regarding certain demands made by the French ambassador. In the version purposefully released to the public, Bismarck instead made it sound like the King had gravely disrespected the ambassador – a ploy to trick Emperor Napoleon III into declaring war on the North German Confederation, with the end goal of unifying the northern and southern German states. This ploy would be successful, as Napoleon III would declare war six days later; and six months later, the Confederation would win and unify the German states.


title: False flag

text: In September 1931, Seishirō Itagaki and other Japanese mid- to junior-grade officers, without the knowledge of the Tokyo government, fabricated a pretext for invading Manchuria by blowing up a section of railway. Though the explosion was too weak to disrupt operations on the rail line, the Japanese nevertheless used the Mukden Incident to seize Manchuria and create a puppet government in the form of the nominally independent state of Manchukuo.


title: False flag

text: The Gleiwitz incident in 1939 involved Reinhard Heydrich fabricating evidence of a Polish attack against Germany to mobilize German public opinion for war and to justify the war with Poland. Alfred Naujocks was a key organiser of the operation under orders from Heydrich. It led to the deaths of Nazi concentration camp victims who were dressed as German soldiers and then shot by the Gestapo to make it seem that they had been shot by Polish soldiers. This, along with other false flag operations in Operation Himmler, would be used to mobilize support from the German population for the start of World War II in Europe.


title: False flag

text: The operation failed to convince international public opinion of the German claims, and both Britain and FrancePoland's alliesdeclared war two days after Germany invaded Poland.


title: False flag

text: On 26 November 1939, the Soviet army shelled Mainila, a Russian village near the Finnish border. Soviet authorities blamed Finland for the attack and used the incident as a pretext to invade Finland, starting the Winter War, four days later.


title: False flag

text: The proposed, but never executed, 1962 Operation Northwoods plot by the U.S. Department of Defense for a war with Cuba involved scenarios such as fabricating the hijacking or shooting down of passenger and military planes, sinking a U.S. ship in the vicinity of Cuba, burning crops, sinking a boat filled with Cuban refugees, attacks by alleged Cuban infiltrators inside the United States, and harassment of U.S. aircraft and shipping and the destruction of aerial drones by aircraft disguised as Cuban MiGs. These actions would be blamed on Cuba, and would be a pretext for an invasion of Cuba and the overthrow of Fidel Castro's communist government. It was authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. The surprise discovery of the documents relating to Operation Northwoods was a result of the comprehensive search for records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by the Assassination Records Review Board in the mid-1990s. Information about Operation Northwoods was later publicized by James Bamford.


title: False flag

text: In January and February 2022, Western government agencies predicted that Russia would use a false flag operation in Ukraine. In the days leading up to the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government intensified its disinformation campaign, with Russian state media promoting false flags on a nearly hourly basis purporting to show Ukrainian forces attacking Russia, in a bid to justify an invasion of Ukraine. Many of the disinformation videos were poor and amateur in quality, with mismatching metadata showing incorrect dates, and evidence from "Bellingcat" researchers, and other independent journalists, showed that the claimed attacks, explosions, and evacuations in Donbas were staged by Russia.


title: False flag

text: On 4 April 1953, the CIA was ordered to undermine the government of Iran over a four-month period, as a precursor to overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. One tactic used to undermine Mosaddegh was to carry out false flag attacks "on mosques and key public figures", to be blamed on Iranian communists loyal to the government.


title: False flag

text: The CIA operation was code-named TPAJAX. The tactic of a "directed campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist party", involved the bombing of "at least one" well known Muslim's house by CIA agents posing as Communists. The CIA determined that the tactic of false flag attacks added to the "positive outcome" of TPAJAX.


title: False flag

text: However, as "the C.I.A. burned nearly all of its files on its role in the 1953 coup in Iran," the true extent of the tactic has been difficult for historians to discern.


title: False flag

text: In the summer of 1954, a group of Egyptian Jews recruited by Israeli army intelligence were caught with plans to bomb American, British, and Egyptian civil targets in Egypt. The bombings were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents", or "local nationalists", with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to refrain from evacuating its troops occupying Egypt's Suez Canal zone, a move that would embolden Egyptian President Nasser against Israel. However, the plot was exposed before launch and Egyptian authorities were able to tail an operative to his target, arrest him and later search his apartment where the entire plan, including the names of other agents and explosive materials, was held. The exposé caused a scandal in Israel, with Israeli officials blaming one another for the operation and the Israeli defense minister, Pinhas Lavon, resigning under pressure.


title: False flag

text: Pseudo-operations are those in which forces of one power disguise themselves as enemy forces. For example, a state power may disguise teams of operatives as insurgents and, with the aid of defectors, infiltrate insurgent areas. The aim of such pseudo-operations may be to gather short or long-term intelligence or to engage in active operations, in particular assassinations of important enemies. However, they usually involve both, as the risks of exposure rapidly increase with time and intelligence gathering eventually leads to violent confrontation. Pseudo-operations may be directed by military or police forces, or both. Police forces are usually best suited to intelligence tasks; however, military provide the structure needed to back up such pseudo-ops with military response forces. According to US military expert Lawrence Cline (2005), "the teams typically have been controlled by police services, but this largely was due to the weaknesses in the respective military intelligence systems."


title: False flag

text: The State Political Directorate (OGPU) of the Soviet Union set up such an operation from 1921 to 1926. During Operation Trust, they used loose networks of White Army supporters and extended them, creating the pseudo-"Monarchist Union of Central Russia" (MUCR) in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks.


title: False flag

text: An example of a successful assassination was United States Marine Sergeant Herman H. Hanneken leading a patrol of his Haitian Gendarmerie disguised as enemy guerrillas in 1919. The patrol successfully passed several enemy checkpoints in order to assassinate the guerilla leader Charlemagne Péralte near Grande-Rivière-du-Nord. Hanneken was awarded the Medal of Honor and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant for his deed.


title: False flag

text: During the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s, captured Mau Mau members who switched sides and specially trained British troops initiated the pseudo-gang concept to successfully counter Mau Mau. In 1960, Frank Kitson, who was later involved in the Northern Irish conflict and is now a retired British general, published "Gangs and Counter-gangs", an account of his experiences with the technique in Kenya. Information included how to counter gangs and measures of deception, including the use of defectors, which brought the issue a wider audience.


title: False flag

text: Another example of combined police and military oversight of pseudo-operations include the Selous Scouts in the former country Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), governed by white minority rule until 1980. The Selous Scouts were formed at the beginning of Operation Hurricane, in November 1973, by Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Ronald Reid-Daly. As with all Special Forces in Rhodesia, by 1977 they were controlled by COMOPS (Commander, Combined Operations) Commander Lieutenant General Peter Walls. The Selous Scouts were originally composed of 120 members, with all officers being white and the highest rank initially available for black soldiers being color sergeant. They succeeded in turning approximately 800 insurgents who were then paid by Special Branch, ultimately reaching the number of 1,500 members. Engaging mainly in long-range reconnaissance and surveillance missions, they increasingly turned to offensive actions, including the attempted assassination of Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army leader Joshua Nkomo in Zambia. This mission was finally aborted by the Selous Scouts, and attempted again, unsuccessfully, by the Rhodesian Special Air Service.


title: False flag

text: Some offensive operations attracted international condemnation, in particular the Selous Scouts' raid on a Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) camp at Nyadzonya Pungwe, Mozambique in August 1976. ZANLA was then led by Josiah Tongogara. Using Rhodesian trucks and armored cars disguised as Mozambique military vehicles, 84 scouts killed 1,284 people in the camp, registered as a refugee camp by the United Nations (UN). Even according to Reid-Daly, most of those killed were unarmed guerrillas standing in formation for a parade. The camp hospital was also set ablaze by the rounds fired by the Scouts, killing all patients. According to David Martin and Phyllis Johnson, who visited the camp shortly before the raid, it was only a refugee camp that did not host any guerrillas. It was staged for UN approval.


title: False flag

text: According to a 1978 study by the Directorate of Military Intelligence, 68% of all insurgent deaths inside Rhodesia could be attributed to the Selous Scouts, who were disbanded in 1980.


title: False flag

text: If the action is a police action, then these tactics would fall within the laws of the state initiating the pseudo, but if such actions are taken in a civil war or during a belligerent military occupation then those who participate in such actions would not be privileged belligerents. The principle of plausible deniability is usually applied for pseudo-teams. (See the above section Laws of war). Some false flag operations have been described by Lawrence E. Cline, a retired US Army intelligence officer, as pseudo-operations, or "the use of organized teams which are disguised as guerrilla groups for long- or short-term penetration of insurgent-controlled areas".


title: False flag

text: "Pseudo-operations should be distinguished," notes Cline, "from the more common police or intelligence infiltration of guerrilla or criminal organizations. In the latter case, infiltration is normally done by individuals. Pseudo teams, on the other hand, are formed as needed from organized units, usually military or paramilitary. The use of pseudo teams has been a hallmark of a number of foreign counterinsurgency campaigns."


title: False flag

text: Similar false flag tactics were also employed during the Algerian civil war, starting in the middle of 1994. Death squads composed of Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) security forces disguised themselves as Islamist terrorists and committed false flag terror attacks. Such groups included the Organisation of Young Free Algerians (OJAL) or the Secret Organisation for the Safeguard of the Algerian Republic (OSSRA). According to Roger Faligot and Pascal Kropp (1999), the OJAL was reminiscent of "the Organization of the French Algerian Resistance (ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists created in December 1956 by the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (Territorial Surveillance Directorate, or DST) whose mission was to carry out terrorist attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes of political compromise".


title: False flag

text: In espionage, the term "false flag" describes the recruiting of agents by operatives posing as representatives of a cause the prospective agents are sympathetic to, or even the agents' own government. For example, during the Cold War, several female West German civil servants were tricked into stealing classified documents by agents of the East German "Stasi" intelligence service pretending to be members of West German peace advocacy groups (the "Stasi" agents were also described as "Romeos", indicating that they also used their sex appeal to manipulate their targets, making this operation a combination of the false flag and "honey trap" techniques).


title: False flag

text: According to ex-KGB defector Jack Barsky, "Many a right-wing radical had given information to the Soviets under a 'false flag', thinking they were working with a Western ally, such as Israel, when in fact their contact was a KGB operative."


title: False flag

text: The term is popular amongst conspiracy theory promoters in referring to covert operations of various governments and claimed cabals. According to "Columbia Journalism Review", this usage mostly "migrated to the right", however because some historical false flag incidents occurred, historians should not fully cede the usage of the term to conspiracy theorists. Perlman says "The real danger is if we use the nonattributive 'false flags' as shorthand for conspiracy theories, without explaining what they are and who is promoting them." At the same time, Perlman writes that "people yelling that any attack attributed to someone on 'their side' was committed by 'the other side' drown out the voices of reason."


title: False flag

text: Political campaigning has a long history of this tactic in various forms, including in person, print media and electronically in recent years. This can involve when supporters of one candidate pose as supporters of another, or act as "straw men" for their preferred candidate to debate against. This can happen with or without the candidate's knowledge. The Canuck letter is an example of one candidate's creating a false document and attributing it as coming from another candidate in order to discredit that candidate.


title: False flag

text: In 2006, individuals practicing false flag behavior were discovered and "outed" in New Hampshire and New Jersey after blog comments claiming to be from supporters of a political candidate (Charles Bass) were traced to the IP address of paid staffers for that candidate's opponent (Paul Hodes).


title: False flag

text: On 19 February 2011, Indiana Deputy Prosecutor Carlos Lam sent a private email to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker suggesting that he run a "'false flag' operation" to counter the protests against Walker's proposed restrictions on public employees' collective bargaining rights:


title: False flag

text: If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions... Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support the media may be creating in favor of the unions.


title: False flag

text: The press had acquired a court order to access all of Walker's emails and Lam's email was exposed. At first, Lam vehemently denied it, but eventually admitted it and resigned.


title: False flag

text: Some conservative commentators suggested that pipe bombs that were sent to prominent Democrats prior to the 2018 mid-term elections were part of a false flag effort to discredit Republicans and supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Cesar Sayoc, motivated by his belief that Democrats were “evil”, was later convicted of mailing the devices to Trump's critics.


title: False flag

text: On the internet, a concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the troll claims to hold. The concern troll posts in web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt within the group often by appealing to outrage culture. This is a particular case of sockpuppeting and safe-baiting.


title: False flag

text: Proponents of political or religious ideologies will sometimes use false flag tactics. This can be done to discredit or implicate rival groups, create the appearance of enemies when none exist, or create the illusion of organized and directed persecution. This can be used to gain attention and sympathy from outsiders, in particular the media, or to convince others within the group that their beliefs are under attack and in need of protection.


title: False flag

text: In retaliation for writing "The Scandal of Scientology", some members of the Church of Scientology stole stationery from author Paulette Cooper's home and then used that stationery to forge bomb threats and have them mailed to a Scientology office. The Guardian's Office also had a plan for further operations to discredit Cooper known as Operation Freakout, but several Scientology operatives were arrested in a separate investigation and the plan was exposed.


title: False flag

text: According to "PolitiFact", some false flag conspiracy theories (such as claims that mass shootings are hoaxes) are themselves spread by astroturfing, which is an attempt to create false impression of popularity in a belief.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote "The Threepenny Opera" with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic "Lehrstücke" and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the .


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (as a child known as Eugen) was born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Germany, the son of Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869–1939) and his wife Sophie, née Brezing (1871–1920). Brecht's mother was a devout Protestant and his father a Roman Catholic (who had been persuaded to have a Protestant wedding). The modest house where he was born is today preserved as a Brecht Museum. His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. At Augsburg, his maternal grandparents lived in the neighbor house. They were Pietists and his grandmother influenced Bertolt Brecht and his brother Walter considerably during their childhood.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Due to his grandmother's and his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would have a life-long effect on his writing. From , too, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied. At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher, with whom he formed a life-long creative partnership. Neher designed many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helped to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: When Brecht was 16, World War I broke out. Initially enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army". Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 for writing an essay in response to the line "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" from the Roman poet Horace, calling it "Zweckpropaganda" ("cheap propaganda for a specific purpose") and arguing that only an empty-headed person could be persuaded to die for their country. His expulsion was only prevented by the intervention of Romuald Sauer, a priest who also served as a substitute teacher at Brecht's school.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: On his father's recommendation, Brecht sought to avoid being conscripted into the army by exploiting a loophole which allowed for medical students to be deferred. He subsequently registered for a medical course at Munich University, where he enrolled in 1917. There he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret star Frank Wedekind.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the new name "Bert Brecht" (his first theatre criticism for the "Augsburger Volkswille" appeared in October 1919). Brecht was drafted into military service in the autumn of 1918, only to be posted back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military VD clinic; the war ended a month later.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer (who had begun a relationship in 1917) had a son, Frank. In 1920 Brecht's mother died. Frank died in 1943, fighting for Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin. Brecht's diaries for the next few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform. Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie Chaplin, for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology". Writing in his "Messingkauf Dialogues" years later, Brecht identified Valentin, along with Wedekind and Büchner, as his "chief influences" at that time:


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht's first full-length play, "Baal" (written 1918), arose in response to an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating a trend that persisted throughout his career of creative activity that was generated by a desire to counter another work (both others' and his own, as his many adaptations and re-writes attest). "Anyone can be creative," he quipped, "it's rewriting other people that's a challenge." Brecht completed his second major play, "Drums in the Night", in February 1919.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Between November 1921 and April 1922 Brecht made acquaintance with many influential people in the Berlin cultural scene. Amongst them was the playwright Arnolt Bronnen with whom he established a joint venture, the Arnolt Bronnen / Bertolt Brecht Company. Brecht changed the spelling of his first name to Bertolt to rhyme with Arnolt.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1922 while still living in Munich, Brecht came to the attention of an influential Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering: "At 24 the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight"—he enthused in his review of Brecht's first play to be produced, "Drums in the Night"—"[he] has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision. [...] It is a language you can feel on your tongue, in your gums, your ear, your spinal column." In November it was announced that Brecht had been awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize (intended for unestablished writers and probably Germany's most significant literary award, until it was abolished in 1932) for his first three plays ("Baal", "Drums in the Night", and "In the Jungle", although at that point only "Drums" had been produced). The citation for the award insisted that: "[Brecht's] language is vivid without being deliberately poetic, symbolical without being over literary. Brecht is a dramatist because his language is felt physically and in the round." That year he married the Viennese opera singer Marianne Zoff. Their daughter, Hanne Hiob, born in March 1923, was a successful German actress.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario for what was to become a short slapstick film, "Mysteries of a Barbershop", directed by Erich Engel and starring Karl Valentin. Despite a lack of success at the time, its experimental inventiveness and the subsequent success of many of its contributors have meant that it is now considered one of the most important films in German film history. In May of that year, Brecht's "In the Jungle" premiered in Munich, also directed by Engel. Opening night proved to be a "scandal"—a phenomenon that would characterize many of his later productions during the Weimar Republic—in which Nazis blew whistles and threw stink bombs at the actors on the stage.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1924 Brecht worked with the novelist and playwright Lion Feuchtwanger (whom he had met in 1919) on an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's "Edward II" that proved to be a milestone in Brecht's early theatrical and dramaturgical development. Brecht's "Edward II" constituted his first attempt at collaborative writing and was the first of many classic texts he was to adapt. As his first solo directorial début, he later credited it as the germ of his conception of "epic theatre". That September, a job as assistant dramaturg at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater—at the time one of the leading three or four theatres in the world—brought him to Berlin.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1923 Brecht's marriage to Zoff began to break down (though they did not divorce until 1927). Brecht had become involved with both Elisabeth Hauptmann and Helene Weigel. Brecht and Weigel's son, Stefan, was born in October 1924.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In his role as dramaturg, Brecht had much to stimulate him but little work of his own. Reinhardt staged Shaw's "Saint Joan", Goldoni's "Servant of Two Masters" (with the improvisational approach of the "commedia dell'arte" in which the actors chatted with the prompter about their roles), and Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" in his group of Berlin theatres. A new version of Brecht's third play, now entitled "Jungle: Decline of a Family", opened at the Deutsches Theater in October 1924, but was not a success.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: At this time Brecht revised his important "transitional poem", "Of Poor BB". In 1925, his publishers provided him with Elisabeth Hauptmann as an assistant for the completion of his collection of poems, "Devotions for the Home" ("Hauspostille", eventually published in January 1927). She continued to work with him after the publisher's commission ran out.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1925 in Mannheim the artistic exhibition "Neue Sachlichkeit" ("New Objectivity") had given its name to the new post-Expressionist movement in the German arts. With little to do at the Deutsches Theater, Brecht began to develop his "Man Equals Man" project, which was to become the first product of "the 'Brecht collective'—that shifting group of friends and collaborators on whom he henceforward depended." This collaborative approach to artistic production, together with aspects of Brecht's writing and style of theatrical production, mark Brecht's work from this period as part of the "Neue Sachlichkeit" movement. The collective's work "mirrored the artistic climate of the middle 1920s", Willett and Manheim argue:


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: with their attitude of "Neue Sachlichkeit" (or New Matter-of-Factness), their stressing of the collectivity and downplaying of the individual, and their new cult of Anglo-Saxon imagery and sport. Together the "collective" would go to fights, not only absorbing their terminology and ethos (which permeates "Man Equals Man") but also drawing those conclusions for the theatre as a whole which Brecht set down in his theoretical essay "Emphasis on Sport" and tried to realise by means of the harsh lighting, the boxing-ring stage and other anti-illusionistic devices that henceforward appeared in his own productions.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1925, Brecht also saw two films that had a significant influence on him: Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" and Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin". Brecht had compared Valentin to Chaplin, and the two of them provided models for Galy Gay in "Man Equals Man". Brecht later wrote that Chaplin "would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre's requirements." They met several times during Brecht's time in the United States, and discussed Chaplin's "Monsieur Verdoux" project, which it is possible Brecht influenced.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1926 a series of short stories was published under Brecht's name, though Hauptmann was closely associated with writing them. Following the production of "Man Equals Man" in Darmstadt that year, Brecht began studying Marxism and socialism in earnest, under the supervision of Hauptmann. "When I read Marx's "Capital"", a note by Brecht reveals, "I understood my plays." Marx was, it continues, "the only spectator for my plays I'd ever come across." Inspired by the developments in USSR, Brecht wrote a number of agitprop plays, praising the bolshevik collectivism (replaceability of each member of the collective in "Man Equals Man") and the Red Terror ("The Decision").


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1927 Brecht became part of the "dramaturgical collective" of Erwin Piscator's first company, which was designed to tackle the problem of finding new plays for its "epic, political, confrontational, documentary theatre". Brecht collaborated with Piscator during the period of the latter's landmark productions, "Hoppla, We're Alive!" by Toller, "Rasputin", "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik", and "Konjunktur" by Lania. Brecht's most significant contribution was to the adaptation of the unfinished episodic comic novel "Schweik", which he later described as a "montage from the novel". The Piscator productions influenced Brecht's ideas about staging and design, and alerted him to the radical potentials offered to the "epic" playwright by the development of stage technology (particularly projections). What Brecht took from Piscator "is fairly plain, and he acknowledged it" Willett suggests:


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: The emphasis on Reason and didacticism, the sense that the new subject matter demanded a new dramatic form, the use of songs to interrupt and comment: all these are found in his notes and essays of the 1920s, and he bolstered them by citing such Piscatorial examples as the step-by-step narrative technique of "Schweik" and the oil interests handled in "Konjunktur" ('Petroleum resists the five-act form').


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht was struggling at the time with the question of how to dramatize the complex economic relationships of modern capitalism in his unfinished project "Joe P. Fleischhacker" (which Piscator's theatre announced in its programme for the 1927–28 season). It wasn't until his "Saint Joan of the Stockyards" (written between 1929–1931) that Brecht solved it. In 1928 he discussed with Piscator plans to stage Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and Brecht's own "Drums in the Night", but the productions did not materialize.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: 1927 also saw the first collaboration between Brecht and the young composer Kurt Weill. Together they began to develop Brecht's "Mahagonny" project, along thematic lines of the biblical Cities of the Plain but rendered in terms of the "Neue Sachlichkeit"'s "Amerikanismus", which had informed Brecht's previous work. They produced "The Little Mahagonny" for a music festival in July, as what Weill called a "stylistic exercise" in preparation for the large-scale piece. From that point on Caspar Neher became an integral part of the collaborative effort, with words, music and visuals conceived in relation to one another from the start. The model for their mutual articulation lay in Brecht's newly formulated principle of the "separation of the elements", which he first outlined in "The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" (1930). The principle, a variety of montage, proposed by-passing the "great struggle for supremacy between words, music and production" as Brecht put it, by showing each as self-contained, independent works of art that adopt attitudes towards one another.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1930 Brecht married Weigel; their daughter Barbara Brecht was born soon after the wedding. She also became an actress and would later share the copyrights of Brecht's work with her siblings.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very influential. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Ruth Berlau and others worked with Brecht and produced the multiple teaching plays, which attempted to create a new dramaturgy for participants rather than passive audiences. These addressed themselves to the massive worker arts organisation that existed in Germany and Austria in the 1920s. So did Brecht's first great play, "Saint Joan of the Stockyards", which attempts to portray the drama in financial transactions.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: This collective adapted John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera", with Brecht's lyrics set to music by Kurt Weill. Retitled "The Threepenny Opera" ("Die Dreigroschenoper") it was the biggest hit in Berlin of the 1920s and a renewing influence on the musical worldwide. One of its most famous lines underscored the hypocrisy of conventional morality imposed by the Church, working in conjunction with the established order, in the face of working-class hunger and deprivation:


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: The success of "The Threepenny Opera" was followed by the quickly thrown together "Happy End". It was a personal and a commercial failure. At the time the book was purported to be by the mysterious Dorothy Lane (now known to be Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's secretary and close collaborator). Brecht only claimed authorship of the song texts. Brecht would later use elements of "Happy End" as the germ for his "Saint Joan of the Stockyards", a play that would never see the stage in Brecht's lifetime. "Happy End"'s score by Weill produced many Brecht/Weill hits like "Der Bilbao-Song" and "Surabaya-Jonny".


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: The masterpiece of the Brecht/Weill collaborations, "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" ("Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny"), caused an uproar when it premiered in 1930 in Leipzig, with Nazis in the audience protesting. The "Mahagonny" opera would premier later in Berlin in 1931 as a triumphant sensation.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht spent the last years of the Weimar-era (1930–1933) in Berlin working with his "collective" on the "Lehrstücke". These were a group of plays driven by morals, music and Brecht's budding epic theatre. The "Lehrstücke" often aimed at educating workers on Socialist issues. "The Measures Taken" ("Die Massnahme") was scored by Hanns Eisler. In addition, Brecht worked on a script for a semi-documentary feature film about the human impact of mass unemployment, "Kuhle Wampe" (1932), which was directed by Slatan Dudow. This striking film is notable for its subversive humour, outstanding cinematography by Günther Krampf, and Hanns Eisler's dynamic musical contribution. It still provides a vivid insight into Berlin during the last years of the Weimar Republic.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Fearing persecution, Brecht left Nazi Germany in February 1933, just after Hitler took power. After brief spells in Prague, Zurich and Paris, he and Weigel accepted an invitation from journalist and author Karin Michaëlis to move to Denmark. The family first stayed with Karin Michaëlis at her house on the small island of Thurø close to the island of Funen. They later bought their own house in Svendborg on Funen. This house located at Skovsbo Strand 8 in Svendborg became the residence of the Brecht family for the next six years, where they often received guests including Walter Benjamin, Hanns Eisler and Ruth Berlau. During this period Brecht also travelled frequently to Copenhagen, Paris, Moscow, New York and London for various projects and collaborations.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: When war seemed imminent in April 1939, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he remained for a year. After Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, Brecht left Sweden for Helsinki, Finland, where he lived and waited for his visa for the United States until 3 May 1941. During this time he wrote the play "Mr Puntila and his Man Matti" ("Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti") with Hella Wuolijoki, with whom he lived in .


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays: "Life of Galileo", "Mother Courage and Her Children", "The Good Person of Szechwan", "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui", "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", "Fear and Misery of the Third Reich", and many others.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht co-wrote the screenplay for the Fritz Lang-directed film "Hangmen Also Die!" which was loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Deputy Reich Protector of the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man in the SS, and a chief architect of the Holocaust, who was known as "The Hangman of Prague." Hanns Eisler was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical score. The collaboration of three prominent refugees from Nazi Germany – Lang, Brecht and Eisler – is an example of the influence this generation of German exiles had on American culture.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: "Hangmen Also Die!" was Brecht's only script for a Hollywood film. The money he earned from writing the film enabled him to write "The Visions of Simone Machard", "Schweik in the Second World War" and an adaptation of Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi".


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht's reluctance to speak publicly in support of Carola Neher, who died in a gulag prison in the USSR after being arrested during the 1936 purges, was much criticised by Russian emigrants in the West.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In the years of the Cold War and "Red Scare", Brecht was blacklisted by movie studio bosses and interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Along with about 41 other Hollywood writers, directors, actors and producers, he was subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC in September 1947. Although he was one of 19 witnesses who declared that they would refuse to appear, Brecht eventually decided to testify. He later explained that he had followed the advice of attorneys and had not wanted to delay a planned trip to Europe. On 30 October 1947 Brecht testified that he had never been a member of the Communist Party. He made wry jokes throughout the proceedings, punctuating his inability to speak English well with continuous references to the translators present, who transformed his German statements into English ones unintelligible to himself. HUAC vice-chairman Karl Mundt thanked Brecht for his co-operation. The remaining witnesses, the so-called Hollywood Ten, refused to testify and were cited for contempt. Brecht's decision to appear before the committee led to criticism, including accusations of betrayal. The day after his testimony, on 31 October, Brecht returned to Europe.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: He lived in Zurich in Switzerland for a year. In February 1948 in Chur, Brecht staged an adaptation of Sophocles' "Antigone", based on a translation by Hölderlin. It was published under the title "Antigonemodell 1948", accompanied by an essay on the importance of creating a "non-Aristotelian" form of theatre.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: In 1949 he moved to East Berlin and established his theatre company there, the Berliner Ensemble. He retained his Austrian nationality (granted in 1950) and overseas bank accounts from which he received valuable hard currency remittances. The copyrights on his writings were held by a Swiss company.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Though he was never a member of the Communist Party, Brecht had been schooled in Marxism by the dissident communist Karl Korsch. Korsch's version of the Marxist dialectic influenced Brecht greatly, both his aesthetic theory and theatrical practice. Brecht received the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht wrote very few plays in his final years in East Berlin, none of them as famous as his previous works. He dedicated himself to directing plays and developing the talents of the next generation of young directors and dramaturgs, such as Manfred Wekwerth, Benno Besson and Carl Weber. At this time he wrote some of his most famous poems, including the "Buckow Elegies".


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: At first Brecht apparently supported the measures taken by the East German government against the uprising of 1953 in East Germany, which included the use of Soviet military force. In a letter from the day of the uprising to SED First Secretary Walter Ulbricht, Brecht wrote that: "History will pay its respects to the revolutionary impatience of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. The great discussion [exchange] with the masses about the speed of socialist construction will lead to a viewing and safeguarding of the socialist achievements. At this moment I must assure you of my allegiance to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany."


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht's subsequent commentary on those events, however, offered a very different assessment—in one of the poems in the "Elegies", "Die Lösung" (The Solution), a disillusioned Brecht writes a few months later:


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: And elect another?</poem>Brecht's involvement in agitprop and lack of clear condemnation of purges resulted in criticism from many contemporaries who became disillusioned in communism earlier. Fritz Raddatz who knew Brecht for a long time described his attitude as "broken", "escaping the problem of Stalinism", ignoring his friends being murdered in the USSR, keeping silence during show trials such as Slánský trial.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht died on 14 August 1956 of a heart attack at the age of 58. He is buried in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery on Chausseestraße in the Mitte neighbourhood of Berlin, overlooked by the residence he shared with Helene Weigel.


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: According to Stephen Parker, who reviewed Brecht's writings and unpublished medical records, Brecht contracted rheumatic fever as a child, which led to an enlarged heart, followed by life-long chronic heart failure and Sydenham's chorea. A report of a radiograph taken of Brecht in 1951 describes a badly diseased heart, enlarged to the left with a protruding aortic knob and with seriously impaired pumping. Brecht's colleagues described him as being very nervous, and sometimes shaking his head or moving his hands erratically. This can be reasonably attributed to Sydenham's chorea, which is also associated with emotional lability, personality changes, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and hyperactivity, which matched Brecht's behavior. "What is remarkable," wrote Parker, "is his capacity to turn abject physical weakness into peerless artistic strength, arrhythmia into the rhythms of poetry, chorea into the choreography of drama."


title: Bertolt Brecht

text: Brecht developed the combined theory and practice of his "Epic theatre" by synthesizing and extending the experiments of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.