Douglas Macleod Edinburgh: Birlinn; £9.99, p/b Twenty years ago, before the current torrent of information about ‘the secret world of intelligence’, we were scratching about looking for clues to our secret history. One was given in the John Loftus book The Belarus Secret (Penguin 1983) which contained a single reference to the Scottish […]
[…] former prime minister.(Sydney Morning Herald, May 19 1987) “Ratu Mara was in it from the beginning,” said one source. The Times on Sunday said that while initial intelligence advice was that it was a narrowly based military coup, within a few days evidence was available to the Australian Government that the coup “was backed […]
[…] interesting – if unsurprising – that the final edits are done by Blair’s two closest advisors. But by the time Hutton heard this, the memo from Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chair John Scarlett had been released which referred to the JIC’s ‘customers’.(5) Once that concept has been taken on board the game is up […]
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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] to reconstruct for researchers a historical narrative based on non-existent and authentic documents supported by published facts with classic disinformation techniques in what is termed in counter- intelligence parlance as “gray” intelligence. The question of whether they are genuine, authentic or real is not the issue here. The important point to keep in mind, […]
[…] 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: […]
[…] one of the architects of the British Secret State. He played, we are informed, ‘a far more important and active part in the creation of Britain’s modern intelligence community than is generally recognized’; and, moreover, his ‘lifetime shadow war’ in defence of British interests, culminated with Operation Boot, the overthrow of Mussadiq in Iran.(1) […]
