[…] nation-wide occurrences.’ Bessie Braddock assured the reader that this ‘bears all the distinctive marks of a genuine Communist directive’. Although it is difficult to parody the Stalinist mind, I doubt that even the Cominform would actually have written that ‘new and concentrated effort must be made by specially suitable undercover activists to penetrate into […]
[…] experiments were discussed in conjunction with atomic bomb testings. The CIA’s human behaviour control program was chiefly motivated by perceived Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind control techniques. The CIA originated its first program in 1950 under the name of BLUEBIRD, which in 1951, after Canada and Britain had been included, was […]
[…] 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 […]
Editorially First, most important, our thanks to those Lobster subscribers who responded to our appeal for money. Your response, and a bit of ‘consulting’ with Fleet St. on the content of Lobster 11, has halved our debts. We shall survive. It is tempting to say something about the developing crisis re the Wilson-MI5 story (Lobstergate?). … Read more
[…] of Defense during the Kennedy administration because the work ‘disgusted’ him. One scientist who knew Stark says he claimed to have been attached to the CIA ‘ mind control’ project – later revealed as MKULTRA.(1) The Brotherhood of Eternal Love Stark had world-wide business interests in pharmaceuticals. Behind his various ‘legit’ fronts, by 1969 […]
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
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
[…] seemed extraordinary to me that the ship, with all its wealth of unhappy information still available, had been deliberately sunk unless there was some other purpose in mind. One likely explanation would be a problem with nuclear weapons still on board, in which case an appropriate course of action would be to sink the […]
[…] 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 […]
