[…] aristocrats and eccentric M.Ps or forces which were much more powerfully rooted in the structure of the British State? What was their relationship with the security and intelligence services? Why did Churchill feel the need to have his own intelligence adviser, Sir Desmond Morton? Costello seems to believe that the pro-appeasement faction was powerful […]
[…] pro quo for the pension he is now receiving, is to bolster the key myth of MI6, that while we may be the junior partner in the intelligence relationship with the U.S., we’re the best, the most subtle and the most reliable — the people to handle those uncouth Yanks, to hold their hands […]
[…] credible confirmed by the report of an inquiry carried out by Sir John Stevens………’ You or I might take this as a claim that Britain’s security and intelligence institutions have been involved in assassinations (the attempts to get Nasser or Lumumba spring to mind). Paget’s reply to Fayed’s assertion is: ‘It is important to […]
[…] (p. 6) It defies belief to think that anti-fascists would deliberately admit to covertly monitoring fascist meetings from within the same premises: such would alert Nazi “counter- intelligence”. This points, therefore, to the state having at least one, or maybe more, operatives inside the local BNP, and them being very confident indeed. ‘(Emphasis added) […]
[…] CW armoury. The bomb was dropped on elements of the Republican Guard in Southern Iraq, I was informed. Heavy casualties resulted. The operation, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, was a counter-strike, following an Iraqi Scud that fell on Israel. The missile had contained Sarin. Fuming, the Israelis had prepared to detonate a nuclear […]
[…] embarrassment to ‘national security’ while trying to prosecute the ‘war on drugs’. It also contains the best account I have read of how the actions of the intelligence agencies in the United States, chiefly the CIA, produce unanticipated consequences. I will try to summarise this. A group of Cuban Bay of Pigs veterans created […]
[…] Spooks Richard L. Russell, an academic based at the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, the National Defense University, examines the strengths and weaknesses of American intelligence during the first Gulf War. As you would expect from someone who worked for the CIA (he was a political-military analyst specialising in Middle East and […]
[…] (p. 372) – an absurd description for a man who, by his own admission, spent virtually the whole of the post-war period working for British and American intelligence. His role in educating Thatcher on security and intelligence issues with his Shield group of old spooks is omitted and his memoir is not included in […]
[…] 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 […]
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair London:Verso, 1999, £10 Much has been written about the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the global drugs trade but this is the first book that actually brings it all together in one place. The authors haven’t exposed much that is new, instead they have taken […]
