NEWSFLASH: FISK GETS IT WRONG

In an article written while in Sao Paulo – staying at the Maksoud Plaza hotel – Fisk dredges up an obscure tidbit of Brazil - US history:

In 1941, a newly belligerent America--plunged into a world war by an attack every bit as ruthless as that of 11 September 2001--had become so worried about the big bit of Brazil that juts far out into the Atlantic, that it set up military bases in the north of the country without waiting for the authorisation of the Brazilian government. Now what, I wonder, does that remind me of?

Now what does that remind me of? Anti-American bullshit.

Brazilian history specialist Professor Frank D. McCann tells a different story:

The region was undefended, beyond the range of American aircraft in the Caribbean, and inaccessible by land to the Brazilian forces concentrated in the south. In November 1940, to secure the Brazilian bulge, the United States Army negotiated a secret agreement with Pan-American Airways to build two chains of airfields from North America to the northeast. In January 1941, Vargas gave verbal authority for Panair do Brasil to undertake Airport Development Program (ADP) construction at points such as Belém, Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, Maceió, and Salvador. However, because important military figures as yet were unwilling to throw themselves into the arms of the Americans, he delayed issuing a formal decree until July 1941.

The airfields were not military facilities; they were built mainly to facilitate US supply support of the British campaign in Africa. On another topic Fisk is too smart to totally commit:

Then in my mail bag comes an enclosure from Antony Loewenstein, an old journalistic mate of mine in Sydney.

Even Fisk isn't silly enough to call Loewenstein a journalist.