[…] (See the anodyne obit in Guardian 25 October). Expendables Two recent examples of the way HMG treats its employees when they become embarrassing. Peter Bleach, a former intelligence officer turned arms dealer, is in prison in India after an arms deal he was involved with went sour. The Indian court agreed to examine notes […]
[…] 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 […]
John McMurtry London: Pluto Press, 2002, pb £15.99 I shouldn’t be reviewing this. I haven’t digested it properly and it is going to take some time to do so. But I don’t want to leave this for six months without promoting it. I used to try and preserve books in good condition, didn’t write … Read more
[…] (Taylor Branch and Eugene M. Propper, Penguin 1983), the book about the 1976 assassination of Chilean opposition leader, Orlando Letelier. In mid-1975 General Pinochet ordered the Chilean intelligence service, DINA, to gather compromising material on the human rights situation in other countries. DINA dispatched an anti-Castro Cuban, Virgilio Paz, to Belfast to obtain photographs […]
[…] he subsequently received. I suspect the evidence was exaggerated at a higher level in MI5 in order to ensure that Mr. Smith received a heavy sentence. The intelligence services depend on disproportionate sentences for breaches of the Official Secrets Acts to cultivate the mystique of the importance of their work. I believe Mr. Smith […]
[…] party magazine of the Hindu nationalist party now in government in India, BJP Today, has suggested that the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was the work of British intelligence agents. The article, written by R. Chandrachundan, a close friend of Ghandi’s son, reports the presence of two men from the British consulate with cameras on […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] did not get out in time.” Thus, it appears, “getting out in time” means anything up to 15 months later! (This really is vaguely insulting to one’s intelligence.) Jilian Becker, now part of the new London-based terrorism institute (see elsewhere in this issue), writes of captured PLO documents showing: “that the Soviet Union, through […]
[…] The facts are somewhat different. As early as mid-1961 Ward was being run by the Security Service officer, Keith Wagstaffe, then working for D1 (a), Operations, Counter- intelligence. The Service decided to try and ‘honeytrap’ Ivanov, for which Ward was most willing and eager to provide a suitable female – Christine Keeler. After things […]
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
