[…] group that we could prevent actions because of the credibility of our source.’ This is reminiscent of the comment by former BOSS agent, Gordon Winter that, ‘British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement in Britain bigger than a football team our man is the captain or the vice captain, […]
[…] characters, such as Greville Wynne and John Vassall, to major operators Blunt, Burgess, Maclean and Philby. ‘Spooks’ are also covered, with almost ninety members of the intelligence community listed. Many of these had other occupations John Henry Bevan (‘intelligence officer and stockbroker’), Maurice James Buckmaster (‘intelligence officer and businessman’), Tomas Joseph Harris […]
[…] one I can’t do it. The world is weird and the US state is capable of great evil but the people at the top of its military- intelligence complex are not stupid enough or bold enough to have sanctioned something like this. The MIHOP ‘sceptics’ presented in this book want us to believe that […]
[…] He canters briskly and amusingly over the field of spook foul-ups in the post-war period to ‘show the pointlessness of so much of the work of the intelligence services everywhere.’ The result is an entertaining but very sharp analysis of that peculiar mixture of ruthless patriotism and utter incompetence which characterises so much of […]
[…] – provided he could earn a living or clinch a deal in exchange. By 1904-1905, in the Far East, he was simultaneously wheeling and dealing with the intelligence services of Russia, Japan, Britain, France and the USA. In due course his abilities and official connections in various countries made him a natural for the […]
[…] convincing. While establishing his thesis of a Kennedy newly devoted to the cause of peace, he also stakes his ground quickly on Oswald, establishing his credentials in intelligence – a familiar argument to anyone who knows the JFK case – but also showing that, far from hating Kennedy or seeing him as a target […]
[…] Fadlallah was untouched, some eighty bystanders, men, women and children, were killed and over two hundred injured. The terrorist organisation responsible for this attack was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).(1) An overwhelming case can be made that the CIA has been the most dangerous terrorist organisation at work in the world since the Second […]
[…] its turn, was not merely Islamist and tribal but it had relationships that spread back to the major cities of Pakistan and even into its military and intelligence services. Western operations in West Asia have to deal with a world beyond Afghanistan that encompasses Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia – as well as India […]
How perceptions have changed! In Leveller 51, March 1981, there was this snippet: ‘Why all the fuss about the Panorama programme on British Intelligence? Eventually there was just one cut — Gordon Winter, BOSS agent, former freelance journalist, in a pre-title sequence: “British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement […]
[…] of things is uninteresting. This collection contains three essays of note. The first is Bob de Graff and Cees Wiebes’ study of the CIA and the Dutch Intelligence Service, which is the first of its kind that I can think of; and is, presumably, a template for the relationship between the CIA and the […]
