[…] gave up on the Labour Party in 1992 with the arrival of John Smith as leader and my involvement declined from being branch secretary and local election agent to being just another inactive member, unable to cut the cord. I eventually resigned over Iraq. A conspiracy theorist? Much of the content of this book […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] bus stops. This contradiction helped the Crown to establish a link between a training mission in Lisbon by a certain Mr E, in 1979, and the KGB agent, Victor Oschenko, appointed as Michael’s controller. For those who live in Oporto the crosses may be easily placed in places of tourist interest. And if you […]
[…] the 1954-55 internal party battles ‘Dirty Work’, we get no idea just how murky this actually was. For example, we know that Gaitskell worked closely with National Agent Sara Barker, but we are told nothing on how she came by the detailed information on members she kept in her bulging files. Indeed, in the […]
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
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
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 […]
[…] 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 […]
