Some of the spook recruitment pitches in the media of the last two years have gone out of their way to impress upon prospective candidates the family-friendly credentials of the major state spook employers.(1) But such measures, no matter how sincere and/or necessary, are for the most part aimed at a parent’s convenience – and … Read more
The Spycatcher’s Encyclopedia of Espionage Peter Wright Heinemann, Australia, 1991 The cover-blurb says this is ‘the rest of the story’. It feels more like the out-takes from Spycatcher spiced with a few more fragments of interesting gossip. And I do mean fragments: the interesting bits of 260 pages — largish print and much white space … Read more
[…] 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 […]
Douglas Macleod Edinburgh: Birlinn; £9.99, p/b <www.birlinn.co.uk> Twenty years ago, before the current torrent of information about ‘the secret world of intelligence’, we were scratching about looking for clues to our secret history. One was given in the John Loftus book The Belarus Secret (Penguin 1983) which contained a single reference to the Scottish … Read more
See note(1) The Conventional Wisdom It is generally assumed that the economist J. M. Keynes was instrumental in establishing the post-war Anglo-American economic relationship. The argument is that, along with the US Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Harry Dexter White, Keynes created the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now […]
[…] probably be against the civilian population of large cities. It can be well imagined the degree of consternation, as well as fear and apprehension, that such an agent would produce upon a large urban population.'(6) Hamilton made a number of proposals for the elimination of large populations, among them ‘fission product aerosols to subject […]
Richard M Bennett London: Virgin Books, 2003 £20 hardback This is 350 pages of summaries of political and historical conspiracies. It starts in 2330 BC but the first 2007 years take up only 84 pages. The content is mostly Anglo-American, especially after WW2. It is done chronologically, so you get odd sequences of subjects: … Read more
[…] ‘Libya: Plans to Overthrow Qadahfi in early 1996 are well advanced’. It describes a coup plot against Gadaffi and proves MI6 knowledge of the plot, via an agent codenamed Tunworth. Shayler had earlier claimed MI6 involvement in such a plot, and payments made by MI6 to Tunworth; Foreign Sec. Robin Cook had vigorously denied […]
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
[…] officer in charge of the case admitted that MI5 were involved. The prosecution’s view of Green Anarchist was that it became dangerous with the issue in which agent provocateur Tim Hepple was first published. Hepple was not interviewed by the police. Operation Washington, the name of the state operation against GAndALF, was the first […]
