From Garrick Alder Re: John Newsinger’s ‘Orwell and the IRD in Lobster 38 The appearance since Lobster 45 of further details of Orwell’s dealings with the IRD has reminded me how very interested I was by Mr Newsinger’s admirable reappraisal of the Orwell/IRD incidents. Two things have struck me that seems to have escaped comment … Read more
[…] own judgement before being inflected with ‘spin’. The reliability and accountability of information is going to be very different if it is from an accredited British intelligence agent, a Home Office civil servant, the Met, the Sussex Police Authority, someone from Number Ten (all theoretically ultimately answerable to the Commons at some stage) or […]
Many thanks, as always, to Terry Hanstock for contributions. Comments and contributions welcome. My email is ‘War on Terrorism’: Repercussions of 11 Sept. 2001 The Sept 11 2001 attacks on the US and subsequent ‘war against terrorism’ have provided law enforcement/intelligence agencies with an opportunity to push for sweeping new powers, plus fast-tracking of … Read more
[…] of covert and clandestine politics which are directly relevant to this study. See, for example, Gary Marx, ‘Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant’, American Journal of Sociology 80:2 (September 1974), especially pp. 402-3. One of the few dissertations dealing directly with this topic, though not […]
[…] Czech intelligence officer Husack to the MI5 officer attached to his Ministry did not prevent MI5 later using those contacts to try and portray Stonehouse as an agent of the Soviet bloc. Charles Laughlin MP reported contacts from another Czech official but MI5 did not tell him that the official was an intelligence officer […]
[…] the document were arguing that the Foreign Office should back the Canaris-German resistance-Vatican proposal. This report had to cross the desk of Kim Philby a Soviet agent before it could be officially circulated to Ministers. Philby duly rejected the document, thus blocking any formal discussion of a peace deal that would be […]
[…] is certain. I do not see what is accomplished by suggesting, as he does here, that Martin Bright of The Observer might (or might not) be an agent of the state. Except to irritate Bright – and maybe send him looking for a libel lawyer – if he ever hears of it. Notes from […]
[…] – with fascinating material on the fuzzy alleged 1963 assassination attempt on JFK planned for Chicago, and the role in exposing it of the black Secret Service agent, Abraham Bolden. Every time I come across Bolden I am reminded what a great story this is. First black Secret Service agent; after the assassination, seeking […]
[…] links the UVF specifically to the murder of 23 year-old Sharon McKenna, in 1993 and implicates Mark Haddock, a UVF Commander who was also a Special Branch agent, in this killing. Haddock is currently on remand for charges arising from paramilitary activity and his unit is believed to have killed around a dozen people […]
[…] in the 1950s the Americans (and the British) knew very little about the Soviet Union and had almost no agents on the ground. How to get an agent into the Soviet Union must have been high on many agenda in the US intelligence community; defection was one obvious way of doing it; and sending […]
