Terror Within: Terrorism and the Dream of a British RepublicClive Bloom Stroud, Glos.: Sutton, 2007, h/bk, 297 pages, h/b, £20.00 This sets out to provide a narrative describing the range of ‘attempts’ to set up a republic in Britain from the time of the French revolution until the present day. (Although the bulk of … Read more
[…] long piece, over 5,000 words, on Newton’s political career, Bateman’s account (and the errors allegedly therein) and why he did not believe Newton had been an MI5 agent. Very interesting indeed. But he attached a condition: print intact, unedited, or not at all. So I sent it back. (I didn’t want to materially change […]
[…] book, like all the others, does not explain the Reagan phenomenon. RR Deadly Deceits Ralph McGeehee (Sheridan Square Publications Inc. USA 1983) Ralph McGeehee was a CIA agent for 25 years operating mainly in South East Asia. He is now a bitter opponent of his old firm and the anger comes through clearly in […]
Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy Phillip Willan Phillip Willan’s Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, (Constable, London, 1991) is a detailed and interesting book, dealing in a thorough (if partially flawed) way with a fascinating subject. It covers a wide array of interlocking subjects including the infamous P2 … Read more
The publication of Frank Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations in 1971 created a storm on the left.(1) An influential British army officer with considerable experience of colonial warfare was advocating that the army prepare for counterinsurgency operations at home. As far as Kitson was concerned there was a serious danger of revolutionary disturbance in Britain in … Read more
The Christie File part 3, 1967-75 Stuart Christie p/back, £34 (inc. p and p) from <www.christiebooks.com> Like the first, reviewed in Lobster 44, this third volume (300 pages, indexed) in Christie’s autobiography is done on A4 pages with the central text bordered with photographs of the people and incidents concerned, newspaper clippings, posters, cartoons etc. … Read more
Counter-insurgency in Rhodesia J. K. Villiers (Croom Helm, London, 1985) An expanded Masters thesis, full of descriptions of psychological operations by the Rhodesian forces (which failed utterly: and no wonder, they were useless), and rather less about pseudo-gang activities which, like their equivalents in the British operations in Kenya, were a success – i.e. they … Read more
[…] Afghanistan. One of the people arming and training the Afghan fighters was Osama bin Laden. While Plimpton served as editor of The Paris Review, he was an agent of influence for the CIA, according to a former ambassador who served on the National Security Council. That is, he was not an intelligence officer as […]
[…] particularly struck me. The first is in Number 51, Winter 1994, ‘Canadian Intelligence Service Abets Neo-Nazis’, describing how the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service was running an agent who founded what became Canada’s largest current neo-Nazi group, the Heritage Front. (Sound familiar?) The second was in issue 52, Spring 1995, ‘The Rise of the […]
[…] including Kirkpatrick, Schultz, Meese and Webster of the FBI. The major themes here are: The Soviet Union is behind world terrorism; the PLO is a major Soviet agent in funding and encouraging world terrorism. The minor theme is, of course, that the Soviet Union was behind the attempted assassination of the Pope. But covertly […]
