A Note on MRA, CIA and L. Ron. Hubbard In response to my snippet in issue 38 (p.22) on Moral Rearmament and the CIA, Daniel Brandt (1) sent me the following from Miles Copeland’s, The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA’s Original Political Operative (London: Aurum Press, 1989, pp. 176-177). This is a nice demonstration … Read more
[…] behind US foreign policy…..was the defence of democracy’, is a joke. Or a lie. The ‘essential idea’ was to defend US economic and geopolitical interests and never mind how much (non-white) blood was spilt. It gets worse. I always look at the assassination of John Kennedy as a touchstone for academics writing about America […]
As a recent TV programme (James Bellini’s ‘The Polite Conspiracy’ 4th April 1984 BBC2) made clear, the rich have devised some artful ways of avoiding tax. Of course they also have a government committed to drastically reducing their tax ‘burden’ (e.g. Nigel Lawson’s abolition of investment income surcharge, formerly payable on high unearned incomes). Naturally, … Read more
Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more
[…] 1960pp. 485-6. The World of Learning, 1980-81 (Switzerland) p 1236 See Chapter 9, ‘Human Ecology’ in John Marks, The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’: The CIA and Mind Control (Allen Lane, London 1979). In 1955 the CIA incorporated the Society for the Study of Human Ecology which was renamed the Human Ecology Fund in […]
[…] Peter Blaker discuss newly-appointed Minister Robert Atkins Blaker You know that Robert’s in the government now? Murrin Yes, I did. Yes. Blaker Which is good for him. Mind, he deserves to be. Done a great job. …. I think we should keep Robert in on this, by the way. Murrin Oh everything that you’ve […]
[…] for this sensitive mission, there was only one crew-member, the pilot. This makes sense in terms of secrecy, a consideration that would have been paramount in the mind of the CIA planners. Because of this necessary limitation, is it not possible that the aircraft was adapted to carry its munitions on wing pylons that, […]
[…] 1953. This is Fisk’s observation on that 1997 meeting at Woodhouse’s retirement home in Oxford: ‘The coup against Mossadeq, the return of the Shah, was, in Woodhouse’s mind, a holding operation, a postponement of history. There was also the little matter of the AIOC, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – later British Petroleum – which […]
[…] apparent when he insisted on trying to foist an unusable programme idea on colleagues of Gerry in television. A free lunch always at the forefront of his mind, Riley went off, leaving his unlocked briefcase in their office. Gerry promptly opened it and copied Riley’s rather uninteresting address book.(7) Watch this space. O’Hara cannot […]
Giles Scott-Smith London: Routledge/PSA 2002, £55 This is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA-funded operation that ran for two decades after World War II of which Encounter magazine was the best-known British component. Giles Scott-Smith has added to the historical record well illuminated by Christopher … Read more
