[…] 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 […]
Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy Phillip Willan Phillip Willan’s Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, (Constable, London, 1991) is a detailed and interesting book, dealing in a thorough (if partially flawed) way with a fascinating subject. It covers a wide array of interlocking subjects including the infamous P2 … Read more
[…] its factory in Germany seized by the Nazis during the war. Violet resolved the problem and Pinay was so satisfied he recommended him to the new French intelligence organization, SDECE. Violet duly became an SDECE operative, utilizing a global network of contacts to assist that agency in its work.(2) Violet’s early post-war deeds also […]
Raj Chari and Sylvia Kritzinger London: Pluto Press, 2006, £16.99, p/b See note 4. The authors begin by noting how policies emanating from the European Union are of increasing importance to the citizens of the member states. They divide these policies into those which they describe as ‘1st order’, which include single market measures, competition … Read more
[…] 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 […]
[…] Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the body set up under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) to hear complaints relating to conduct by the Security and Intelligence agencies, and complaints about phone-tapping. It also deals with claims under the Human Rights Act 1998, s7(1)(a) that a public authority has acted in a manner […]
[…] a quick skim across Massiter, Bettaney, Charles Elwell – and thence into British Briefing, David Hart etc. (And Colin Wallace was not ‘a former officer in Army Intelligence’; and has not, to my knowledge, suggested that the League had office space in MI5 headquarters . But since this, like most of the assertions in […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] Oswald would not have been any sensible person’s choice for a co-conspirator. He was a ‘loner’, mixed-up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. As to charges that the Commission’s report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that […]
[…] when a reactionary political movement grew out of what were legitimate workers’ struggles, not least because of the input of money and resources by various western pro-capitalist intelligence and ideological agencies. The numbers of those on strike has increased dramatically in the past few years. As the book says: ‘The current unrest signifies the […]
