[…] 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 […]
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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] that’s what Washington wants”, he would say, “then I’ll support it.” ‘ (p. 240) And was it known, for example, that ‘the weekly report of the Joint Intelligence Committee in London…. was the product of a combined effort with the chief of our CIA station’ (p. 225), or that in 1967, when Soviet Foreign […]
[…] confessed to playing a role in the King shooting, hiding the gun used after the event.) Black boxing An anonymous author, claiming to have been a US intelligence officer of some stripe, included this in an article which is entertaining if light on facts. (A book is promised.)(4) ‘A little side note for you: […]
[…] died after making inquiries into a helicopter deal between the Iraqis and Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen. You discuss this as one of several anomalous deaths among intelligence assets in the context of asking why anyone would want to work for the spooks. Naiveté is the obvious answer, but you failed to mention that […]
[…] think it was ‘an inside job’. But this does not mean that there is nothing to be investigated. As with most official reports into events with sensitive intelligence and/ or political dimensions – and 9/11 had both, in spades – the report into 9/11 was concerned with establishing the official narrative (Al Qaeda attacks) […]
[…] HORNBEAM, trawlers had been used during the first Cold War to spy on Soviet shipping. But the MOD spokesperson refused to confirm that some trawlers had carried intelligence officers. Statewatch Bulletin (Jan/Feb 1992) includes an important update to their paper on Gladio network, quoting from the Belgian parliamentary commission into the subject. The update […]
