[…] 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 is unclear. The first issue is rather good, containing a survey of British courses which […]
Mark Felt is ‘Deep Throat’. Bob Woodward says so, and his word is law in this particular arena. No matter that Woodward had a dozen sources, some of whom may have been more important than Throat himself. The point is that ‘Throat’ is anyone Woodward says he is, and he says he is Felt. In … Read more
Introduction Intelligence officers who blow the whistle get attacked by their erstwhile employers. Agee, Stockwell, Marchetti,Wallace, Holroyd, Jock Kane, Cathy Massiter – they all have variously suffered for their decision to go public. Their allegations and their characters are rubbished; operations are mounted to discredit them and disrupt their lives – and worse. Gordon Winter … Read more
[…] reason to then conclude that the state has any operatives inside the local BNP. They might have – hell, let’s hope so! – but this isn’t evidence. Spook spotting in the media O’Hara believes, as I do, that the media contains journalists who run stories for Whitehall’s clandestine warriors. Our lists of such spook […]
Lost plot After Lobster 35 I received a long letter from John Pilger, followed by a revised version of it, complaining about my review of his recent book, Hidden Agendas in 35. With the second version came a note asking me to publish his letter without comment. I replied that I was happy to publish … Read more
[…] father had been active in the wartime resistance. MI5 thought the situation so obvious as to be hardly worth arguing about. In short, I was a Soviet spook. At the time, I knew nothing of the background. When Pat had burst into tears early in the relationship, asking me where I met my Soviet […]
Hugh Wilford London: Frank Cass, 2003; £22.99, h/b This book is a striking example of how far we have come. A senior British academic writing a book with this title was inconceivable 20, even 10 years ago. But there is now a group of British academics, historians mostly, who are working on the history […]
A Hack’s Progress Phillip Knightley Jonathan Cape, 1997, £17.99 This is a highly enjoyable and very well written memoir by one of our senior investigative journalists. As a young-Aussie-leaves-home-and-sees-the-world tale this is nearly as entertaining as the celebrated Clive James version (and with fewer forced jokes). Any journalist’s memoirs are welcome: it’s always interesting to … Read more
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION Seattle, Washington April 25, 1972 Re: Harold Adrian Russell Philby, Also Known As “Kim” Philby The Wednesday, October 13, 1971, edition of “Kodumaa,” Number 41, (677), contained on page 3 an interview with KIM PHILBY. “Kodumaa” (Homeland) is published in Estonian by the Soviet Committee for … Read more
Introduction I began writing this in the early 1980s. If you were then reading the Guardian or the Observer, and knew a little, simple economics, it didn’t take genius to notice that while the UK’s manufacturing economy was being decimated by Conservative Party economic policy, the City of London was booming. More interestingly, and less … Read more
