[…] was again: break-ins, pranks, things left in the house, nuisance calls – the familiar repertoire. Which is to say: we still have a secret state whose legal, intelligence and security wings are virtually unregulated. There are now elaborate procedures mimicking regulation – both Kennedy and Henderson are exploring these – but the state can […]
[…] In the case of why the Americans attacked Iraq, for example, our knowledge of the actual decision-making process is growing by the week as the military and intelligence bureaucracies leak in the great game of avoiding the blame for the disaster; and the knowledge that the actual evidence is increasingly available diminishes Porter’s discussion […]
[…] point. Unfortunately, where Crawford points to collusion in a detailed way, he points to what we already know, for example, about Brian Nelson’s role as a UDA intelligence officer but also, in arms procurement from South Africa for what became the Combined Loyalist Military Command. There is much that is useful in Crawford’s book, […]
[…] shot. Phoenix found his activities curtailed and was fearful that the Protestants were going to be sold out. He believed that the handing over of responsibility for intelligence work to MI5 was part of this sellout. Those thought most likely to oppose any deal, whether politicians, civil servants or even police, were themselves to […]
[…] of what would be a very interesting book); none of them have taken on board enough of the parapolitical agenda: there is almost nothing on the military- intelligence complex; and all three give too little weight to the dominance of the City in this country’s recent history. But all of them, especially Tiratsoo and […]
[…] 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 […]
Robert Fisk London: Fourth Estate, 2005, £25.00 This very fine book runs to more than 1,300 pages, is well footnoted, referenced and indexed, carries a helpful bibliography and is written by one of the most fluent, knowledgeable and thoughtful journalists of our time. That part of its dedication is to Fisk’s parents ‘who taught … Read more
Introduction I began writing this in the early 1980s. If you were then reading the Guardian or the Observer, and knew a little, simple economics, it didn’t take genius to notice that while the UK’s manufacturing economy was being decimated by Conservative Party economic policy, the City of London was booming. More interestingly, and less … Read more
[…] article Foundations and Empire, produced by the Solidarity group circa 1970, and possibly part of a magazine, documents a number of connections between the British and American intelligence services and their fronts and GMWU (as the GMB was then) officials and officers in the1950s and 60s. 7 Most people seem to recollect that this […]
[…] published by him in Dundalk in the Republic of Ireland to circumvent censorship, it was subsequently republished in an expanded edition. Under the new title, The British Intelligence Services in Action, it has become a modern classic, is virtually impossible to now locate, and still compares well with subsequent volumes by Martin Dillon, Paul […]
