Books The Great Betrayal Nicholas Bethel (London 1984) This is either a ‘snow job’, designed to discourage further research in this area (British intelligence attempts to destabilise Soviet and communist influenced regimes), or is just a poor effort on Bethel’s part. One can’t deny that it is useful – after all, it is the […]
[…] On this there is no agreement. Some journalists who were in Northern Ireland at the time remain convinced that it was nothing more than a British Army/ intelligence operation, a ‘funny’. Some suspect it to have been a psy ops job, possibly even run by Wallace himself. Although this view is intelligible given what […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] for the state to keep control (PR) of these histories because openness and demands for change can impact on existing complex relationships, e.g. with India or Pakistan’s intelligence communities. () Targeting a wholly different area, SIS used a sophisticated version of multiple single messaging on 13 August, summarised in the press by the heading: […]
[…] cover seemed interesting and publishing the names seemed to be some kind of act against the-powers-that-be. But in 1985 there was very little information available about the intelligence services, and every scrap seemed significant. These days, if you want them, you can receive e-mail bulletins with more information about the world’s intelligence services – […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] The collection would be even larger if it also included statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. However, if a statement was ‘…an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, it ……excluded even if it now appears erroneous.’ The US establishment probably feels happier with another collection, the Foreign Military […]
[…] 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 […]
