Michael Smith Gollancz, London,1996, £20 This is a curious and rather pointless book. In short chapters Smith attempts potted histories of MI5, SIS, signals and military intelligence. These are quite well done, but covering half a century in 20 pages, say, the chapters are barely more than sketches. (The Information Research Department gets a page!) … Read more
[…] of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, added the following information on LFI. (2) The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mercer, former research assistant and electoral agent for Gwyneth Dunwoody, ‘life president’ of LFI. The parliamentary register of Members’ interests shows that recent visitors who have had flights and accommodation paid by Labour […]
Tony Geraghty Harper Collins, London 1998, £19.99 Before dawn one Thursday in December 1998 a team of six Ministry of Defence police raided the home of the writer and journalist, Tony Geraghty. After seven hours, they left taking his computer, modem, disks and work in progress, having charged him under Section V of the Official […]
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 […]
Thanks to Terry Hanstock and Ian Tresman for contributions. Contributions, comments and info welcome. – My email address is Electronic Privacy/ECHELON The importance of taking advantage of the current debate about Echelon summarised by Nicky Hager: ‘…the lack of serious debate can protect the intelligence agencies from political accountability and control…..it is probably the … Read more
Phone-tapping Phone-tapping of CND (Observer 9 December 1984; Daily Telegraph 10 December.) Telegraph piece includes claim that people phoning CND office have been connected to Ministry of Defence and local police stations. Police Review (15 February 1985) quotes “a source inside British Telecom” on the question of warrants for taps: ‘When it is a police … Read more
[…] so much the story of Nagell as materials for a study of him. The book’s 800-odd pages leave nothing out. A massive work. Nagell, a CIA contract agent, went into an El Paso bank in September 1963, fired a couple of shots into a wall, and got himself intentionally arrested — thus ensuring he […]
[…] with an alleged enormous Soviet disinformation offensive against the West. In this book Crozier reworks in much greater detail some of the sections of his memoir, Free Agent, describing three lawsuits in which he was involved which concerned alleged Soviet influence in Der Spiegel, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in the United States, […]
[…] largish chunk of their subject matter has, in effect, been covertly controlled by the British state. Which is more or less what Brian Crozier was telling us in his memoir, Free Agent, wasn’t it? Notes See Tom Easton’s piece in Lobster 36. Dodds-Parker was also busy in the 1960s peddling smear stories about Harold Wilson.
