Nostradamus' Media Watch

Wednesday, May 10, 1995 - 10:00

Based on highly reliable international contacts, leaked documents and horoscopes from several TV magazines, Nostradamus' Media Watch presents a highly accurate forecast of political events across the globe.

McNamara's Vietnam confessions continue

Former US defence secretary Robert McNamara admits that not only was the war in Vietnam a mistake, but the military weren't sure where they were fighting.

In exclusive extracts run on evening current affairs shows, taken from the bits his editors had cut from his book, he says, "Some of us actually thought it was the Philippines — where we'd fought before and did pretty well. Others thought it was one of the islands off Japan with a few Japanese soldiers running around not knowing World War II had ended — but hey, you know, all those Asian countries are pretty damn similar."

He also reveals that the US military had kept three successive presidents in the dark about Vietnam in order to gain US military commitment there.

He says that President Kennedy had been told that Vietnam was in Cuba. President Johnson had been told that it was a part of North Korea that the Chinese weren't interested in. And President Nixon had been told that it was a southern US state that was a Democrat stronghold.

Aum Supreme Truth allegations continue

The Japanese government continues to unearth allegations about the international terrorist activities of the Aum Supreme Truth religious sect.

Senior Japanese policy makers go on variety TV shows and claim they have evidence linking the sect to Japan-US trade wars, the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the many attacks on Tokyo in 1950 by the nuclear monster Godzilla.

Government sells ASIS

At a mid-winter Canberra Cabinet meeting, the government endorses the sale of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

Rupert Murdoch makes a very competitive bid for the service, backed by a proposal for a cable TV show, Super Secret Service, in which the best spies from select intelligence agencies will compete with each other for a trophy.

It is only after the contract is signed that the government admits it had never meant to privatise ASIS — but it had confused the report of the ASIS Samuels Inquiry with that of the Hilmer Inquiry into privatisation and competition.