[…] striking feature of this particular kind of article). Everything from an interest in crop circles to ‘the belief in sinister links between the military-industrial complex and the intelligence services’ is taken as evidence of ‘a flight from reason’ on the part of the public. She also suggests some possible causes for the growing vogue […]
[…] drug and other criminal activities the Nicaraguan bishops had complained back in 1978. Equally disastrous was the initial decision to leave oversight of the Contras to Argentine intelligence officers, for whom the drug-financing of operations was a way of life. On March 16, 1998, in response to Webb’s allegations, the CIA Inspector-General admitted that […]
[…] contender for the prize for most inaccurate jacket ever written. It begins by stating that this is the first MI6 memoir (it isn’t), calls MI6 officer Bristow an ‘agent’, (the one thing which drives intelligence officers nuts), and then makes claims not to be found in the text. Of interest only to serious MI6 buffs.
[…] be required. Mission-critical systems: defense attempting to address major software challenges (27 pp.) GAO/IMTEC-93-13, December 1992. Billions of dollars in defense weapons and command, control, communications and intelligence systems depend on high-performance, correctly functioning real-time computer systems capable of withstanding severe stresses without failing. This report identifies the many software problems affecting weapons and […]
[…] major figure. Over the last 20 years there have been occasional stories in Private Eye speculating that the World Wildlife Fund was some kind of cover for intelligence personnel. This thought cropped up once again with the obituary of the former CIA officer Donald Aspinall Allan (Washington Post, 5 August 2006 ). Allan’s career […]
[…] for example, he talks of the CIA in its ‘great, early days ….. manned by the flower of American youth…. something almost entirely new in history, a secret intelligence service that was dedicated to doing good in the world by stealth.’ Ah, the self-confidence (and self-delusion) in ‘doing good in the world by stealth’. RR
Scott Newton, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, £30 This is the book Newton was working on which produced the spin-off pieces published in Lobster: ‘The economic background to appeasement and the search for Anglo-German detente before and during WW2’ in Lobster 20, and ‘The Who’s Who of Appeasement’ in Lobster 22. As those essays showed, Newton … Read more
[…] have been characterised by a special Anglo-American relationship, running in parallel with the strategic one based on collaboration in NATO and the UN, as well as in intelligence sharing and nuclear weapons policy. The ideological rationale for all this has been the defence of liberal capitalism (equated with freedom of speech and national self-determination) […]
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Vincent Bugliosi New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2007 xlvi + 1612 pps. + CD-ROM End Notes and Source Notes (958 + 170 pps.). Illustrations, bibliography, index, $49.95. ‘Reclaiming History is important not just because it’s correct, though it is. It’s significant not just … Read more
Dr David Turner went to former MI5 Director-General Stella Rimington’s book-signing at Hatchard’s, Piccadilly, on 18 September 2001, where the following exchange took place. Turner (presenting book for signing after queuing briefly behind several people, including a woman wearing an Anarchist badge) ‘Hello. Do you mind a lengthy inscription?’ Rimington (smiling, flanked by several […]
