[…] 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
[…] largely unaware that he had been marked down as a dangerous enemy of the centralised British political system. According to the former MI5 officer David Shayler, the intelligence services file on Owen Oyston was re-examined in 1992 by the head of MI5, when it looked as if Neil Kinnock’s revived Labour party might defeat […]
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
[…] experimental than strategic, but it was definitely offensive rather than defensive, and was part of an ongoing development program within the bowels of the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence establishments. Re: the comments in Lobster 45 p. 24, subhead ‘Monkey business?’, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie Foundations poured millions into women’s studies, black studies, and […]
[…] in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi […]
[…] Colonel John Alexander, who is now NATO advisor on non-lethal weapons. As was reported in the previous Lobster 28, Alexander has consulted with both British and American intelligence agencies since Armen’s interest in him. Armen is undeterred by this harassment and his research is continuing. He has recently received 2,500 pages of declassified material […]
[…] (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 […]
[…] Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and author of Grave New World, is a colleague of Francisco Pazienza who acted as a Mr Fix-it between P-2, Italian intelligence and the far right. Sterling acts as a conduit for Ledeen, Henze and their agencies behind her front as Readers Digest hack and archetypal American abroad […]
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
[…] 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 […]
