An interesting piece by Mark Hollingsworth appeared in Punch of 23 May-5 June 2001, ‘Spooks in the House’, on intelligence and security personnel who become MPs. Some of the material was familiar but less well known were Raymond Fletcher, and Le Cercle. Fletcher was a Labour MP who was witch-hunted by MI5 as a […]
[…] you where it is. Absolute exemptions are not subject to any public interest test, and include information supplied by, or concerning: the Security Service, MI5; the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6; GCHQ; the Special Forces, e.g. the SAS; tribunals concerning intelligence and interception of communications including the Investigatory Powers Tribunal; and the National Criminal Intelligence […]
[…] in his fifties. This identification, along with allegations – later disproved – that a Swiss-made timing device for the Lockerbie bombing was supplied exclusively to the Libyan intelligence service, led to charges against two Libyans and sanctions against Libya. Syria and the oil war in the Gulf In August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. James […]
[…] speeding ticket at the age of seven, has an IQ of over 200, and concludes that ‘he reads ten thousand pages a week of economic and political intelligence per week – with near total comprehension.’ Bill Clinton, leader of the fascist New World Order? The militias-New World-Order-Clinton strands overlap a good deal, most spectacularly […]
The clandestine world of surveillance, spying and intelligence from ancient times to the post 9/11 world Ernest Volkman London: Carlton, 2007, h/b, £20 This is a lavishly and creatively illustrated, large format, (i.e. slightly bigger than A4) glossy paper, coffee-table book on the history of espionage. A former journalist with Newsday, and author […]
[…] over the estimates of Soviet military capability tends to get overlooked in favour of the more exciting aspects of US foreign policy and the work of US intelligence agencies. This is a pity, because those estimates form the basis for the official US government definition of ‘reality’. A low estimate of Soviet spending/capabilities makes […]
[…] the history of the Agency, merely a history. Huge areas of the Agency’s activities have been ignored, as Jeffrey Richelson, one of the best informed historians of intelligence points out.(7) Richelson’s complaint is that the author has concentrated too much on the Agency’s covert operations. This is clearly true if we are to take […]
[…] sensational episode. Fairly quickly after this appalling crime, expressions of disquiet with official explanations were voiced. If guns had been taken into the Libyan embassy, surely the intelligence agencies would have known? If there had been a Libyan embassy plan to fire at the anti-Gaddafi demonstrators on that fateful day on 17 April 1984, […]
[…] gave an example of why the British state is willing to eat almost any amount of shit handed to them by the US. ‘The UK has no intelligence assets in central Asia. We are dependent on information given to us by the United States’ CIA and NSA.’ The British overseas lobby in Whitehall – […]
[…] claim in The Times by the Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, that Arthur Ransome has been identified in KGB documents as ‘the most important secret source of intelligence on British foreign policy’ for the Cheka, the terror organisation of Bolshevik Russia, has infuriated lovers of Ransome’s work. Unlike Michael Foot, similarly traduced, Ramsome is […]
