[…] campaign is being run by the spooks, then Roger Windsor, the former NUM official who laid the (now forgotten) original allegations of Libyan money, must be a spook. Evidence as yet there is none. However there is a hint. Before joining the NUM Windsor had been employed by the transnational union organisation, Public Services […]
Mr Tony was a spook? Issue 7 of Larry O’Hara’s Note from the Borderland () includes a section from the Anne Machon and David Shayler book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers (reviewed in Lobster 49), which was apparently dropped by the publisher. The key section is this, from an unnamed MI5 officer: ‘Blair was recruited […]
I invited David Turner to begin writing a regular column for Lobster. He agreed then rang to tell me his computer had been attacked by a virus and could not meet my deadline. (He is the second contributor to this issue to have been virused recently.) But I had on file this splendid polemic written […]
Introduction What follows is an interim report about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. In so far as it has a central thesis, it is that Jones initiated the Jonestown massacre because he feared that Congressman Leo Ryan’s investigation would disgrace him. Specifically, Jones feared that Ryan and the press would uncover evidence that the … Read more
William Blum Monroe, Maine (USA): Common Courage Press, 2005, $18.95, p/b Blum is a grey-bearded, spook-wise, American lefty who was radicalised by the Vietnam War. He wants to look the beast in the eye with as much information as possible. He isn’t concerned with theoretical questions but he knows imperialism, atrocity and bullshit when […]
Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more
[…] 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 the page […]
Paddy the spook Since the last issue I have skimmed Paddy Ashdown’s two volumes of diaries. While dominated by his attempt to do a deal with the Blair-led Labour Party, there are some other interesting snippets; and, through Ashdown’s eyes, there is a detailed portrait of Tony Blair which suggests that Rory Bremner’s impersonation […]
[…] Campbell (ABC) trial for example. And these were mostly triggered by the fall-out from Watergate and Vietnam in the United States. The people in London who went spook hunting in 1975/6 did so because the idea had been suggested to them by the example of spook hunters in the United States, notably John Marks. […]
On Friday 7 August I was told by a journalist at another paper that the Mail on Sunday had a story that Cabinet Minister Peter Mandelson had worked for the spooks – though which branch was not clear. ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ I said, and described Mandelson’s 1978 Foreign Office (or SIS?)-funded trip to Cuba. … Read more
