The Crash of Flight 3804, A Lost Spy, a Daughter’s Quest,
and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil
Charlotte Dennett
Chelsea Green Publishing
2020
Ms. Hen came to read this book because she met the author on
a Zoom meeting for the National Writers Union, of which she is a member, and
the author was looking for ways to publicize her book, and Ms. Hen told her she
has a blog and she offered to review it. This is not what Ms. Hen usually
reads, but she is an adventurous hen, and is open-minded and likes to learn
things about the world.
Ms. Hen discovered that this is not light summer reading,
but Ms. Hen does not read light books in the summer, because she is not a hen
who follows convention.
This book is a memoir about the author’s father, Daniel Dennett,
who was the top American spy in the Middle East in the 1940s. He died
in a plane crash over Ethiopia in 1947, and the author and her family always
wondered about the circumstances surrounding his death. The plane he was in was
carrying sensitive transmission equipment, and everyone aboard died. Ms.
Dennett believes that it was sabotage that killed him because her father knew
things about the politics of oil in the Middle East. She was six weeks old when
her father died.
Ms. Dennett worked as a correspondent in the Middle East
when she was young, and had an experience that changed the way she looked at
the world. She was almost hit by a sniper’s bullet in Beirut when the civil war
started in that country. Ms. Hen thinks that those things happen to people
often, that someone can have an experience, and the entire world changes for
that person. The fact that she was almost killed drove Ms. Dennett to pursue
the truth at all costs, not only about her father’s death, but about other
issues of consequence.
This book focuses a lot on the history of pipeline politics
in different countries in the Middle East: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey,
and Israel. The key players in the game for oil have been the Bush family, the
Rockefellers, and the oil companies in the United States, Great Britain and
other countries. The idea that the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan was fought for oil and not to fight terrorism is explained here, but
there are citizens of the United States who believed and still believe that the
country was fighting terrorism. We have to read between the lines and try to
figure out where the truth lies. This book explains these situations in detail.
Ms. Hen thinks this book comes alive when the author talks
about her own family. Ms. Dennett’s grandmother was a teacher in Istanbul/
Constantinople at the beginning of the last century. Ms. Hen thinks it’s
fascinating that a woman in that day and age went to college and was educated,
traveled and taught abroad. Ms. Hen also enjoyed reading about Ms. Dennett’s
father and his adventures as a spy in the Middle East. Ms. Hen has never known
anyone who knew a spy, and she thinks being a spy would be exciting. She
imagines working as one now is not the same as it was back in the time of
Daniel Dennett, because so much technology exists, it would be difficult to
hide the way they did during his time.
This book shows evidence that the reason the United States
has a good relationship with Israel is because of oil power and pipelines and
not because of Anti-Semitism and the need for the Jewish people to have a
homeland after the Holocaust and World War II. Ms. Hen believes this is true, contrary to
popular belief, because not everything is what’s on the surface; there are
always more layers to a situation, especially when it has to do with politics
and international relations.
Ms. Hen enjoyed reading something that breaks her out of her
shell. The world is full of complexities and nuance, and not everything is as
simple as it seems. The Middle East is a turbulent area, and always has been,
but hopefully sometime soon, humanity will rid the need for oil, and embrace
greener energy sources. Perhaps because of Covid 19, people will try to reach
for better ways of working to find energy that helps us, and does not drive us
apart. Ms. Hen is a hen with ambition, and she dreams of a better future for
all of us.
This book can be purchased at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Crash-Flight-3804-Deadly-Politics/dp/1603588779/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2QK1YV9C2H23Y&dchild=1&keywords=the+crash+of+flight+3804&qid=1594682454&sprefix=the+crash+of+f%2Caps%2C146&sr=8-2
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