A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East

by James Barr

It was Stirling’s counterpart in neighbouring Israel, a well-known Times reporter named Louis Heren, who drew attention to the source of the rumours that his colleague had played a part in Zaim’s removal. The man who later coined that axiom of dogged journalism, ‘Always ask yourself why these lying bastards are lying to you’, Heren pointed out that it was not the Syrians but the French news agency Agence France Presse that had first alleged that Stirling was a spy, reviving the claims made by the French general Fernand Oliva-Roget after the failed French coup in Damascus in June 1945.8 In Heren’s view the shooting of Stirling related to this old feud. It was, he said, part of a ‘rather stupid and unnecessary and certainly dangerous unofficial struggle being waged between certain Frenchmen and Englishmen in these parts’.9 And he suggested that ‘the Colonel knows more about the reason for the attempt than he cares to admit’, a diplomatic way of suggesting that Stirling was rather more than a newspaper reporter.