[…] there is an essay by Richard Aldrich of Salford University, one of the small but growing numbers of British academics trying to incorporate the activities of the intelligence and security services into post-war British history. In his essay on the Special Operations Executive (SOE) after the end of the Second World War, Aldrich writes […]
[…] the US/UK treatment meted out to Iraqis, we see the NATO alliance alive, enlarged and active in Asia; the UK Defence Secretary arguing for ever-larger arms and intelligence expenditure in line with the Pentagon’s; talk of the ‘war on terrorism’ is everywhere, with the British Home Secretary squeezing out long-established civil liberties, and prominent […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] Mayne, and an investigation of Loyalist sectarian killers, The Shankhill Butchers (1989). His book opens with the attempts in 1970 by Captain James Kelly of Irish Military Intelligence to import weapons for the North (Kelly’s books were reviewed in Lobsters 13 and 15) and continues through the history of the Northern Irish conflict up […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 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 […]
[…] various neo-con and/or Israeli-supporting think tanks and action groups, notably the PNAC, had been pushing for more military action against Iraq; and the bits of the military- intelligence network in Washington under their control, such as the Defence Policy Board, within a week of 9/11 began planning how to use 9/11 as the pretext […]
[…] combination of the lack of a security service with a corrupt police force left the Fijian government with little chance of learning about the activities of foreign intelligence services in Fiji. Which possibly ‘kinda delighted’ the CIA. The situation at the moment is that with the Fijian Council of Chiefs (a traditionalist body) permanently […]
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 […]
