Global Intelligence: the World’s Secret Services Today Paul Todd and Jonathan Bloch, London and New York, Zed Books, 2003 h/back £32.95/ $55.00 p/back £9.99/ $17.50 ‘We lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD program’ Vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Stuart Cohen, December 2003 With the spectacular failure of … Read more
[…] strangers to the JFK case. They published Guth and Wrone’s magisterial bibliography The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography 1963-79 (1980). A spook joke (and a good one, at that) Many prisoners do not fare too well in the hands of Shin Bet, an agency with a reputation for […]
[…] of the Association of National Security Alumni’ and is actually a magazine/newsletter run by and for the radical end (sic) of the former U.S. foreign service and spook world. It is edited by David McMichael, who quit the CIA in the mid 1980s over the distortion of the intelligence process forced on the Agency […]
[…] are protecting Grosvenor. The documents he presents at the address above show that the police and pols are certainly dragging their feet. Are they afraid of Grosvenor? Spook involvement is implied but not demonstrated, in my opinion. See for yourself. Big stuff. Grosvenor did not reply to my e-mails requesting an on-the-record statement about […]
From Garrick Alder Re: John Newsinger’s ‘Orwell and the IRD in Lobster 38 The appearance since Lobster 45 of further details of Orwell’s dealings with the IRD has reminded me how very interested I was by Mr Newsinger’s admirable reappraisal of the Orwell/IRD incidents. Two things have struck me that seems to have escaped comment … Read more
Ivor Crewe and Anthony King Oxford University Press, 1995, £25 Few who lived through the launch of the Social Democratic Party are likely to forget the impact of the creation of the Gang of Four in 1981. The avowed intention of the four former Cabinet ministers was to offer Britain a fresh alternative – a … Read more
[…] figure who happened to bump into Parsons and his colleagues with predictable consequences. He could have been a simple confidence trickster. Equally he could have been a spook ensuring that Parsons was (a) investigated at close range, (b) financially ruined and (c) eased out of rocket research. Or he could have been a combination […]
Richard M Bennett London: Virgin Books, 2003 £20 hardback This is 350 pages of summaries of political and historical conspiracies. It starts in 2330 BC but the first 2007 years take up only 84 pages. The content is mostly Anglo-American, especially after WW2. It is done chronologically, so you get odd sequences of subjects: … Read more
[…] on that subject. His latest piece of research on the Remote Viewing programme (p. 23) has massively broadened and thickened our knowledge of this fascinating piece of spook history. With another transatlantic missive from Brother Alex Cox, surveying the madhouse called America from his monastery cell in Venice, California, bits and pieces from me […]
Books Secret Contenders Melvin Beck (Sheridan Square Publications, US 1984) The CIA Christmas party of 1958 found 48 year old all-American boy, Melvin Beck, getting the offer of overseas work with Clandestine Services. He “struck like a hungry bass” and landed in Havana in 1959, just as the first Russian freighter was arriving. Fairly early … Read more
