[…] 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 […]
[…] ‘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 […]
[…] 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. […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] of Reuben Falber appeared in the The Independent 31 May 2006. Falber had been the contact between the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Soviet Embassy in London. Falber collected and disbursed the Soviet government’s secret subsidies to the CPGB from 1958 onwards. The obituary included the misleading statement that ‘The fact […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] Hakluyt’s career hinged on patronage motivated by interest in his geographical research. His biographers, Parks and Taylor, are both convinced that when Hakluyt served in the Paris embassy as Sir Edward Stafford’s secretary he was really there as the client and agent of Walsingham to gather geographical information; that is he was an Elizabethan […]
