For almost two generations, researchers in the UFO field have suspected that there is a cover-up by US government agencies which prevents any meaningful progress in discovering the facts behind the UFO myth. The single most important factor supporting this view has been the alleged crash of a UFO at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. […]
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall University of California Press, Cambridge (UK) 1991, £8.95. The basic rule of politics, domestic and international is that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. That rule ensured that the CIA adopted as allies the opium growers of the Golden Triangle in the 1960s and 70s, and the heroin producing […]
[…] had to be rethought. Inevitably, which contributions seem most important in a collection such as this reflects the interests and concerns of the reviewer. Bearing this in mind, of particular interest in this are Piotr Wrobel’s ‘An NKVD Residentura (Residency) in the Warsaw Ghetto’, Hilary Earl’s ‘Confessions of Wrongdoing, or How to Save Yourself […]
[…] fired some 400 Soviet experts, on the spurious ground that they were no longer needed. The relevant CIA department, known as Covert Action, ceased to operate.’ Never mind Crozier forgetting – and The Times subs missing – that it was Gerald Ford who succeeded Nixon, not Jimmy Carter, it was Crozier’s use of the […]
See note(1) Very few notions generate as much intellectual resistance, hostility, and derision within academic circles as a belief in the historical importance or efficacy of political conspiracies. Even when this belief is expressed in a very cautious manner, limited to specific and restricted contexts, supported by reliable evidence, and hedged about with all sort … Read more
[…] bleak winter of 1944-45, when Philby was busily forming his new Soviet counter-espionage section, that Muggeridge met him again… Two small incidents imprinted themselves indelibly on Muggeridge’s mind. Each concerned Philby. The first was a heated discussion at table about the rights and wrongs of withholding important Bletchley intercepts from the Soviet Union. It […]
Researching the European State: a critical guide Edited by Tony Bunyan Statewatch PO Box 1516, London N16 0EW £7.00 With sixty A4 pages plus a six page index, this is, as the title suggests, an annotated bibliography. The flyer which came with it accurately described it thus: ‘This is the first bibliography on the European […]
The Triumph of the Political Class Peter Oborne London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, £18.99 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller London: Pluto, 2007, £15.99 End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair CounterPunch and AK Press, Oakland … Read more
[…] remains questionable – and here the CIA dimension takes on a greater importance. But neither was the end of ideology simply a CIA plot. With this in mind, what is perhaps more relevant is how this anti-ideological standpoint enabled the Congress to hold together a broad crosssection of the intellectual community who saw it […]
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
