[…] seems unable to recognise that whilst Iraq does not present the challenges of a jungle topography, it does contain a human challenge more demanding. No amount of Agent Orange and puppet regime change will make the Islamic undergrowth disappear; it will merely help to propagate a diffuse but deeply rooted resistance which Bush’s tough-talking […]
[…] August did not run the story but two other papers that day were dropping big hints. The Sunday Telegraph reported that ‘…a friend of the former MI5 agent told the Sunday Telegraph that there was “concrete evidence” that two senior ministers had worked for the security service…..the same source said that Mr Shayler’s girlfriend, […]
[…] French intelligence, as some kind of wheeze to plant dodgy documents on the Anglo-American alliance and then expose them as fraudulent. See, for example, Bruce Johnston, ‘ Agent behind fake uranium documents worked for France’, The Sunday Telegraph 19 September 2004. 7. Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, HC 898, July 2004, […]
[…] 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 […]
David Black, Vision, London, 1998, £9.99 pb I enjoyed this book hugely, and I’d recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the politics of psychedelia – apart from anything else, there are stories here you almost certainly won’t have heard. However, overall it aspires to more than it can deliver. As the title implies, the … 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
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
[…] 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
[…] 1 Assassination Team’); and the role of James Miller, the mid-1970s version of Brian Nelson. Take a bow MI5, for penetrating the UDA completely, twice getting an agent into the role of UDA ‘intelligence officer’. Bruce, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen, who had previously worked for over a decade at […]
