A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America’s intelligence agencies James Bamford New York: Doubleday, 2004, h/back $26.95 Ghost Wars: The Secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001 Steve Coll New York: Penguin, 2004, h/back $29.95 These books cover some […]
[…] of the judiciary from the state executive being almost entirely eroded. The criminalisation of foreigners and of dissent increased, beginning with the Asylum Act of 1993 and Intelligence and Security Act of 1994, after which rival law enforcement agencies began competing with the police.(12) Although MI5 made much of its anti-fascist credentials in the […]
[…] knows what it is doing about civil disorder. It is fishing. As the facts come out, they often seem to fit into the standard pattern of poor intelligence and some mistreatment of those arrested. We remain convinced that miscarriages of justice are likely in this mismanaged chaos. We have noted the signs of a […]
[…] but is incapable of turning the analysis round: what has US foreign policy persistently done in the past? Who says the CIA and the assortment of other intelligence organisations stopped what they were doing just because the NED was put in front of them as a fig leaf? Might these criticisms also apply to […]
Books The Great Betrayal Nicholas Bethel (London 1984) This is either a ‘snow job’, designed to discourage further research in this area (British intelligence attempts to destabilise Soviet and communist influenced regimes), or is just a poor effort on Bethel’s part. One can’t deny that it is useful – after all, it is the […]
[…] which will be corrected in succeeding issues by Wright. This is very much Agee country anti-CIA, naming names etc.. The first issue of the Study Group on Intelligence Newsletter has appeared. This ‘Study Group’ is a group of British academics working in spook country, and how widely they are willing to release their newsletter […]
[…] interesting if unsurprising that the final edits are done by Blair’s two closest advisors. But by the time Hutton heard this, the memo from Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chair John Scarlett had been released which referred to the JIC’s ‘customers’. (5) Once that concept has been taken on board the game is […]
[…] Italian networks of Luciano in Marseilles (1948-50). Later the CIA drew on the French gangsters employed for penetration and assassination purposes by Colonel Pierre Fourcald of French intelligence (SDECE). (The CIA already knew Colonel Fourcald from its collaboration with his Service Action Indochine – a special warfare operation financed by the sale of opium […]
[…] Mayne, and an investigation of Loyalist sectarian killers, The Shankhill Butchers (1989). His book opens with the attempts in 1970 by Captain James Kelly of Irish Military Intelligence to import weapons for the North (Kelly’s books were reviewed in Lobsters 13 and 15) and continues through the history of the Northern Irish conflict up […]
A review of Lobster in The reader’s guide to intelligence periodicals, by Hayden B. Peake. Loan copy available here.
