[…] which Porter, in view of his previous works, is ideally placed to have made. (1) There are plenty of works detailing the activities of the security and intelligence services and their allies in the Forces, in the City and in industry at key moments in the development of contemporary Britain, but most of these […]
[…] Sunday Times 4 January 1998). Better known under his pen name Richard Deacon, McCormick was one of the post-war pioneers in the field of writing books about intelligence services and operations from scraps of real information. James Earl Ray died, aged 70. Harold Jackson devoted fourth-fifths of his long obituary in the Guardian (24 […]
[…] index. The most important book on the case published in the last few years. A mass of new evidence – Oswald as FBI informant, Ruby’s gun-running activities, intelligence agencies out of control, and more. Marred only by the La Fontaines’ novelistic autobiographical interludes and the belief that the Anti-Castro Cuban groups could go for […]
David W. Wrone University Press of Kansas; 2003, h/b, $29.99 (UK prices vary) In the conclusion to his Pocket Essentials Who Shot JFK?, the editor of this journal asked: ‘Where are the historians?’ David Wrone is a former Professor of History at Kansas University, and so his book provides at least part of an … Read more
[…] 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 […]
[…] politicians and diplomats his well-founded insights into what their opposite numbers in the USA were privately thinking. Whatever the truth about Brandon’s relationship with MI6, this is intelligence work. The coming of Monetarism Monetarism, which both the UK and the USA had rejected as a means of keeping inflationary pressures under control in the […]
[…] and Kissinger’s sabotaging of the 1968 Paris peace talks (an early ‘October Surprise’), no discussion of Nixon’s links with Howard Hughes, and the links to that vast intelligence underworld. Nixon’s defining moments, the Watergate scandal, his impeachment, and resignation, exist in a similarly conspiracy-free light. Greenberg repeatedly quotes with approval those reporters who admit […]
[…] would announce the creation of a new housing inspectorate. Lucas passed this on to his affected clients. He gave me other examples of what he called ‘… intelligence which in market terms would be worth a lot of money.’ The firm of GJW obtained advance word on the moratorium on gas-fired power stations which […]
The Men with the Guns G.F. Newman (Sphere, London 1984) I’ve got a lot of time for G.F. Newman. He’s written some of the best, sharpest, things about contemporary Britain: the Law and Order series and the Terry Sneed novels are the obvious places to start. But this – perhaps because of the shift to … Read more
[…] events on the British (and Spanish) political underground since the war and the book is thus dotted with interesting fragments about the area where the state, the intelligence services and political activity overlap. There are little bits of new information or perspectives, for example, on Will Owen, the Labour MP who was ripping-off the […]
