[…] do we know the caller was referring to the assassination? We don’t. It is difficult, however, not to conclude it was the assassination the caller had in mind, particularly when one considers the timing of the call – twenty-five minutes before the shooting. Could there have been another event on that day intended? I […]
A guided democracy The following appeared in the Daily Telegraph 23 June 2003. ‘Edward Heath created a secret government propaganda unit to persuade the British people to accept the Common Market. Civil servants were engaged in a dirty tricks department of the Foreign Office to cover up the threat to sovereignty and provide rapid rebuttal … Read more
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie Giles Scott-Smith,(1) who wrote about the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Lobster 36 and 38, has written a very interesting study of Margaret Thatcher’s first visit to America in 1967.(2) Scott-Smith shows that Thatcher, then a junior shadow spokesperson in the Tory Party, was talent-spotted by the State Department’s man in the … Read more
[…] to discredit an individual. Millions of pounds are being spent trying to ruin the reputations of individuals in the UK. The obvious other examples which spring to mind are: Colin Wallace — framed on a manslaughter charge then the victim of a disinformation campaign by state sources. Dr. Hugh Thomas — on whom the […]
[…] picture was extremely fuzzy – presumably taken with a long lens – and it is impossible to tell whether the two women are 20 or 50, never mind whether they were attractive or not. Livingstone states in his column: ‘The spy master Peter Wright, of Spycatcher fame, makes no mention in his book of […]
Ivan Molloy London: Pluto Press, 2001, £18.99/£55 In the 1980s the resurgent US military and neo-conservatives were in a bind: faced with a variety of challenges to the American economic empire, the enormous military power they possessed was constrained by PR considerations; American parents who didn’t want their children dying abroad (the so-called ‘Vietnam … Read more
Horses for courses? Labour MP Denis MacShane used the hospitality of The Observer extended by his old Oxford pal, editor Roger Alton, to proclaim the virtues of Nicolas Sarkozy and confide, a week before the second vote, that his success in the French presidential election was greatly desired in Downing Street. The prospect of a … Read more
[…] transmit suggestions, interfere with both short-term and long-term memory…’ Next time you read about or hear about someone claiming that the CIA (or whoever) is controlling their mind or body, re-read this paragraph before dismissing them as a nutter. Gordon Brown is not gay – official One of the really comic episodes in the […]
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
Annie Machon Lewes (East Sussex): Book Guild, 2005, h/b, £17.95 It is hard to ‘see’ this book because a lot of the material, especially in the first half, is familiar, half-remembered from the press reporting of the Shayler-Machon drama and the book Defending the Realm by Nick Fielding and Mark Hollingsworth. Nonetheless, familiar or […]
