A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America’s intelligence agencies James Bamford, New York: Doubleday, 2004, h/back, $26.95 Ghost Wars: The Secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001 Steve Coll New York: Penguin, 2004, h/back, $29.95 These books cover some […]
[…] 1995. It describes the internet and its potential as a tool for the DoD, both for gathering and disseminating information, for psy-ops and support of unconventional warfare. Intelligence source ‘The internet is a potentially lucrative source of intelligence useful to DoD’; e.g. information about the plans and operations of politically active groups. It can […]
[…] Sterling’s, and it is hers I will concentrate on. As with her last book, The Terror Network, much of her ‘evidence’ is attributed to unidentified police and intelligence officers. This bothered me less than it did with The Terror Network. This book is more modest in its ambitions, more tightly focused, the unattributable assertions […]
[…] of the judiciary from the state executive being almost entirely eroded. The criminalisation of foreigners and of dissent increased, beginning with the Asylum Act of 1993 and Intelligence and Security Act of 1994, after which rival law enforcement agencies began competing with the police.(12) Although MI5 made much of its anti-fascist credentials in the […]
[…] in their book The Blair Revelation (Spokesman, Nottingham, 1996) that Powell’s job in the British embassy in Washington concealed a role as the liaison officer between British intelligence and the CIA, but they have no evidence. Powell’s career summary as given in The Diplomatic Service List for 1995 contains nothing from which to definitely […]
[…] B’ episode of 1976/7, the subject of this book, which saw a group of the CIA’s critics on the right being given access to the Agency’s raw intelligence data, was one of the key moments in the counter-attack against detente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, […]
[…] knows what it is doing about civil disorder. It is fishing. As the facts come out, they often seem to fit into the standard pattern of poor intelligence and some mistreatment of those arrested. We remain convinced that miscarriages of justice are likely in this mismanaged chaos. We have noted the signs of a […]
[…] Schuster, London, 1993 For twenty five years Gary Murray worked as an RAF policeman and private investigator. In the early 1970s Murray ‘unexpectedly’ (invitation?) joined the Operations Intelligence cadre of 21 SAS, and this led to close contact with people from MI6, Army SIB, the Royal Military Police and the Parachute Regiment. In 1980 […]
[…] but is incapable of turning the analysis round: what has US foreign policy persistently done in the past? Who says the CIA and the assortment of other intelligence organisations stopped what they were doing just because the NED was put in front of them as a fig leaf? Might these criticisms also apply to […]
[…] of new material on the assassination of the sixties and related events. It contains pieces on William Pepper’s excellent book Orders to Kill (reviewed above); Garrison; military intelligence in Dallas; Cuban intelligence and JFK – the Cubans’ viewpoint; a report on the Coalition’s annual conference; updates on material generated by FOIA requests and by […]
