[PDF file]: The Devil’s Chessboard Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government David Talbot William Collins, London, 2015 HB, 686pp., illus., index, bib., refs., £25.00 This truly excellent biography is at least partly a biography of two men, Allen Dulles and his older brother John Foster. I write ‘at least partly’ because […]
[PDF file]: Blacklisted The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain O ne of the co-authors, Phil Chamberlain, wrote an early sketch of this material in Lobster 58 (which is on-line 1 ) and the subtitle of that piece, ‘How the Economic League lived on’ might have been the subtitle […]
[PDF file]: Area 51 An uncensored history of America’s top secret military base Annie Jacobsen London: Orion: 2011, £20, h/b Built round interviews with participants, journalist Jacobson has written an account – not quite a history, really – of the U2 and Blackbird surveillance planes, and their significant role in the Cold War. There are lots […]
Russ Kick (ed.) New York: the Disinformation Company, 2002, pb, $24.95. Distributed in the UK by Turnaround () £17.99 in the UK Another massive anthology from the Disinformation people. This is 11″ by 9″ – roughly A4 sized – 345 pages, weighing in at 2 lbs and 11 ounces. Picking it up probably counts … Read more
David Black London:Vision Paperbacks, 20001, £9.99 This a revised edition of the book which was reviewed in Lobster 35. I’m not sure how new it is. I no longer have the original edition but this seems pretty similar to it. What is new is some material on the activities of Steve Abrams, one of the … Read more
[…] a Kaypro computer, and a brochure he enclosed said that he taught courses at the Red Rose School in Portland. They were titled ‘Radical Research’ and ‘ Secret Government in America.’ I learned later that Ace already had a long history of activism by this time. He started out at Portland State, and was […]
[…] including 1919 gives historians and researchers the chance to exhume the genesis of the right in British domestic politics as well as the early activities of the secret state. Despite its title (Oscar died in 1900) Hoare dips quite a big toe into this area, examining the career of Noel Pemberton-Billing (1881-1948). Substantial original […]
Richard J. Aldrich London: John Murray, 2001, £25 Another huge book, 645 pages of text and 70 pages of index, bibliographies and notes. How do you review something this size? I simply don’t know. Short of doing a London Review of Books-sized job and working through it chapter by chapter, all I can really … Read more
The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs Douglas Valentine London/New York: Verso, 2004, h/back, £20 This comes garlanded with praise from Jim Hougan and Anthony Summers. The praise is justified: this is, as Hougan says, ‘a ground-breaking work of investigative reporting’; and it is, as Summers says, […]
[…] belief or simply unavailable to the public. (Some examples: ‘According to a high-ranking Pentagon official’, ‘according to Bruce Roberts, author of the Gemstone File’, ‘according to a secret CIA report’, etc.) Citations of this sort are the investigative equivalent of smoke and mirrors. In the event, Moore defines a professional conspiracist as one ‘who […]
