[…] be Mandelson’s next-door neighbour in West London) and within a day Draper had lost his lobbying job. Soon thereafter he was shorn of his weekly ‘Inside the mind of New Labour’ column in The Express which Draper claimed to have had regularly vetted by the then Minister Without Portfolio. In the next few days […]
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
[…] most subtle and successful conspiracies…….to embroil us in a foreign war’ But, unknown to Aaronovitch, there was such a conspiracy (though not the one Flynn had in mind) – and it involved not just Flynn’s hate figure, Roosevelt, but the British government. Part of the conspiracy was a series of covert operations in America […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] as a result of police horse action. Despite the fact that the NF had not engaged in violence that day, thenceforth they were associated in the public mind with mayhem, and realised the Left were opponents who could not be ignored, or placated. A November 1974 members’ bulletin called for the expansion of ‘facilities […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] I might take this as a claim that Britain’s security and intelligence institutions have been involved in assassinations (the attempts to get Nasser or Lumumba spring to mind). Paget’s reply to Fayed’s assertion is: ‘It is important to note in the Stevens (Northern Ireland) Report that the term “agents” is used to refer to […]
[…] out no operation, investigation, surveillance or action against any individual otherwise than for the purposes laid down in its directive.’ The words ‘lying’ and ‘bastard’ come to mind, as they say. Gill takes a deep breath and contents himself with observing that ‘such an inquiry, to be carried out properly, would have taken many […]
[…] were the other stories. Some were the horror stories with which we have become familiar: for example MK-Ultra and Ewen Cameron’s insane experiments with reprogramming the human mind which Hollings discusses. But also: by 1959 Cary Grant had taken LSD over 60 times as part of a Hollywood set who were using it with […]
