Henry Brandon died (Obituary, Independent, 23 April, 1993). Brandon was one of the post-war school of journalists who were happy to act as mouthpieces for the secret services and foreign policy establishments of the NATO bloc. Had he been on the Soviet side of the Cold War, he would have been long dismissed as […]
[…] on the authorities’ attitude to anarchism. My piece had merely referred, in general terms, to the official convention, observed for the past 120 years, not to place secret documents in the Public Records Office. Unbeknown to me, the then well-known author Raymond Postgate nursed abiding anger against official obstructionism. He was writing a book […]
[…] small number of ex-convicts brought together and controlled by British Intelligence. These in turn recruited and controlled others who believed they were members of a genuine loyalist secret organisation.” (16) The gangs were designed to spread disinformation, dissension within the Loyalist ranks, and foment infighting. In the wake of the successful Ulster Worker Council’s […]
[…] free-floating entity independent of Moscow Gold or control. The KGB line is close to being abandoned. The 1970s in Northern Ireland were really the last time our secret state seriously tried to market the Moscow connection, without notable success. The Moscow line conspicuously failed in this country in 1983/4 when it was half-heartedly run […]
[…] 1954 becoming head of one of the major operating divisions of the Department of Plans – a cover for covert operations – part of that being the secret funding of liberal foundations and student organisations. When these activities were revealed (via Ramparts magazine) in the 1960s, Meyer was kicked upstairs to become head of […]
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 […]
[…] price stated This is worth skimming through, especially for the early 1950s period when Beeston was very close to SIS operations in the Middle East. These early chapters convey very clearly how the patriotic British journalist of the period rubbed shoulders with his country’s ‘ secret agents’ and never found them worthy of professional interest.
[…] the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident to the Arabian Gulf in 2003, little seems to have changed in the United States’ approach to starting war. Ellsberg’s account of secret White House activity in the wake of the Tonkin incident shows how initial ineptitude was turned into cynical manipulation to create the pretext for ramping up […]
[…] Leveller, but now I see exactly why they wanted this bit cut: the covert role of the intelligence and security services in British politics is the big secret. The spook in politics That covert role is one of the things fleetingly glimpsed in MI5’s pamphlet The Security Service (36 pages, £4.95 from HMSO). In […]
Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the global nuclear weapons conspiracy Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark London: Atlantic Books, 2007, £25, h/b This is not an area I have any expertise in and I am hardly competent to review this. But I found this big (500 pages), massively-documented book an absolutely riveting read. The authors’ … Read more
