[…] unimportant points and issues. For example, with only the word of an unnamed ex-MI6 officer (Tomlinson?) as evidence, he claims that Nelson Mandela was once an MI6 agent. If true, this is important. It not only changes our perception of Mandela, the most important African politician of this generation, but also of the scope […]
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
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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
Denis McShane Clarendon Press, Oxford, £37.50 The origins of the Cold War in Europe has been a major battle ground now for nearly 40 years. The first version of the story, written while the Cold War was still going on and produced as part of the ideological struggle, was a simple folk tale of evil … Read more
[…] the Munster and Leinster Bank to handle funds from the North for weapons purchases. Having drawn a blank at weapons supplies from America, and uncovered an MI6 agent called Captain Peter Markham-Randall who came to Dublin posing as an arms dealer, Northern representatives began negotiating with a Hamburg arms dealer called Otto Schleuter and, […]
[…] 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 […]
