[…] 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.
[…] him by launching the largest private sector political warfare campaign in history against him. But there are other factors. For an American politician, getting embroiled with the intelligence services or the military looks almost uniquely dangerous. There are also two more general reasons for the inertia. The Democrats are reluctant to criticise America, domestically […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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
[…] As Phillips describes it, the British state and its politicians declined to do anything about this even though they were warned repeatedly throughout the 1990s by other intelligence services and other states. Phillips attributes this inactivity to a combination of political reluctance to tackle something as sensitive as immigration and concern about the impact […]
[…] 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) […]
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 […]
[…] would sack a large number of ageing officers and have a smaller Washington headquarters working with a larger number of agents through third nations – use the intelligence forces of other countries rather than the CIA – which was implemented by Nixon in ’72 or so. But the whole idea, which involved the material […]
[…] 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 […]
