[…] ripping-off what they could. Not for them the enthusiastic pursuit of intelligence coups – as would-be ideologically defector Michael Bettanay discovered when his overtures to the Soviet embassy in London were spurned by the cautious comrade Guk. ‘It was not in the institutional interests of British intelligence to tell ministers or officials what they […]
[…] been allegations of torture and killing. According to newspaper reports at the time, this contract had “the discreet approval of the Foreign Office.” Shortly before the Libyan Embassy shooting a British corporation, AMAC, otherwise known for trying to supply riot control vehicles to Chile, was talking to the Libyan Government about training 17 of […]
[…] MP. Two months after returning from Israel, Tony Blair was introduced to Michael Levy at a dinner party by Gideon Meir, the number two in the Israeli embassy in London. (3) Levy was a retired businessman who had made his money creating and then selling a successful record company and had become a major […]
[…] Club: Carlton. (FO, DDI) Holden (Lord) Angur William Eden Holden, b. 1898. Liberal peer. Ex Guards’ Regiment; Hon Attache, H.M. Mission to Holy See, 1918; to H.M. Embassy, Madrid, 1922; to Berlin, 1925. Club: Guards’, Royal Automobile. Advocate of negotiated peace, 1939-40. (FO, PREM, Stokes, Chamberlain, Cockett, De Courcy) Kerr, Lt-Col Charles Iain, M.P. […]
[…] Bush to make a decision.’ Afghanistan In Afghanistan too, there are mutterings – and not only about resources and the Americans. The populist story about the UK Embassy in Afghanistan being given a swimming pool for staff to relax in while the soldiery faces water shortages in Helmand Province may be exaggerated, but it […]
[…] ‘sky high!’ FBI spy Robert Hanssen was bad! (But no info about his specific badness, and no mention of the tunnel the Americans dug under the Russian embassy, or vice versa). Never mind! Bin Laden bad! The longer articles similarly crash on the rocks of recycled press reports. ‘Peru is a nation not usually […]
[…] the men arrested in Gambia and subsequently released said that when he was questioned by his American interrogator and demanded to contact a lawyer and the British Embassy he received an illuminating response: ‘Who do you think asked us to arrest you? Where do you think this information came from, the questions we are […]
[…] on Mexico City University in the sixties. US students who played sports or hung out with Russian students were expected to report on their conversations to the Embassy where the CIA would either recruit them or warn them not to fraternise with the commies. The recruits would report on other US students who didn’t […]
[…] tells us that by 1953 the various US information services – what we would now call psy-ops – had 93 (!) people working out of the London Embassy. Doing what? There are new accounts here of some of the major landmarks of British post-war decolonisation, Malaya and Cyprus; but, oddly, nothing on Kenya. The […]
[…] as temporary police stations. (letter in Leveller Supplement No 2, December 1984) (b) and public order Met. Police ‘exceeded their powers’ in arresting people outside South African embassy. (Times August 2) Met. Commissioner Newman said ‘prevention of public disorder was at the top of their list of priorities’, and 500 men in Police Support […]
