[…] breakthrough piece chronicling the links between the CIA; the Contras and the crack cocaine explosion in Los Angeles; through the CIA’s use of psychedelics, ex-Nazi scientists and mind control, into the murky worlds of Indo-China; and then, via a chapter on Afghanistan, back to the United States and the cocaine connections to Arkansas and […]
[…] inquiries into past spying’ (Guardian, 27 March 1995). There are a few MPs who know something of the intelligence services: Tam Dalyell and Rupert Allason spring to mind; and others willing to ask awkward questions. None of those were appointed by the leaders of the two main parties to the committee. It would have […]
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
[…] This does not prove he would have withdrawn completely, including the 16,500 advisers. However, the record is clear that he had laid the groundwork for doing so.’ Mind you, 16,500 ‘advisers’…. a lot of advice, Kemo Sabe. The Hilsman letter was part of a mail-out from the Assassination Archives and Research Centre, which continues […]
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
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 […]
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
[…] Orange Two. Through General Sir Peter Leng, Ware confirms the existence of a “Clockwork Orange One” (“hare-brained”, according to Leng), but tells us that “today, in Wallace’s mind, ‘Clockwork Orange’ has become a more sinister Mark Two which … went beyond destabilising the IRA; it was aimed at mainland Labour politicians – which just […]
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
The killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in public view and for no apparent reason remains one of the most notorious murders of recent decades. For sixteen years there have been few signs of any serious attempts to locate and bring to justice the perpetrator of this outrage. Finally, this April, in an outstanding piece of … Read more
