[…] tried to clamp down on information about the spooks, there was a massive explosion of leaking by the services themselves. White is portrayed as a kind of agent for the overt Whitehall, put in charge of both services to re-orient them, make them face the realities of the post-war world – and be more […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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
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
[…] into another book. They rehearse the fragments known about an apparent assassination attempt in Chicago on 2 November (and the fate of the first black Secret Service agent, Abraham Bolden, who was framed on a counterfeiting charge after trying to tell the Warren Commission about the Chicago attempt). But how serious was the Chicago […]
[…] and Earl Brian, corrupt functionary of the Reagan administration, for an illegal sale of the PROMIS software. Moyle no doubt imagined himself to be a super secret agent; Casolaro wanted fodder for a novel. The juxtaposition of their deaths, and the others connected the pursuit of this Octopus power bloc, says a little more […]
The Time of The Assassins: The Inside Story of the Plot to Kill the Pope Claire Sterling, Angus and Robertson, London 1984 The Plot to Kill the Pope Paul B. Henze, Croom Helm, London 1984 These two books cover the same ground, more or less, and have the same thesis: the KGB used the Bulgarians, […]
[…] were abducted from Holland into Germany, is only mentioned in passing; and there is no reference to the simultaneous discussions between Max Hohenlohe and Malcolm Christie, an agent both for SIS and for Sir Robert Vansittart, despite the suggestive evidence that they might be connected.(3) Did Chamberlain back an attempt to assassinate Hitler, as […]
[…] Americans did. After 1966 the counter-intelligence section of the CIA, headed by the loony James Angleton, came to believe that Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent; and CIA counter-intelligence was the ultimate source of much of the disinformation and smears about him and those around him in the middle 1970s. This may […]
