Inside the League Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson (Dodd, Mead and Co., New York 1986) This is the only book I know on the World Anti-Communist League. Most of it is new to me but the few bits I am familiar with look accurate, and it is reasonably well documented. It is really in … Read more
[…] Ray had managed to acquire the identities of four men in Toronto who all looked like him, but omitted any of the subsequent research on the King murder, such as that by John Edginton, the British TV producer, and particularly by Dr William Pepper. Godfrey Hodgson’s obit in the Independent (25 April 1998) was […]
MI5 and the Wilson Plot The MI5 website (www.mi5.gov.uk) has a section called ‘myths and misunderstandings’, which features, among other things, ‘the Wilson Plot’. The paragraph it devotes to this episode is worth studying. It refers the reader to Spycatcher and Peter Wright’s allegation that ‘up to 30 members of the Service had plotted to … Read more
[…] himself on the left. He played an important part in the opposition to the Lloyd George Coalition’s Irish policy, in particular the so-called ‘reprisals’ policy with its murder squads and house-burnings. And then he joined the Labour Party. The eagerness with which the Labour Party, including the party at constituency level, welcomed this upper […]
Clippings The Lie Detector Story In the wake of the Prime case, US intelligence has made polygraph (lie detector) introduction into GCHQ at Cheltenham a condition of future GCHQ-NSA cooperation. “At a meeting in July with Civil Service union leaders, Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, made it clear that Senior Whitehall officials were reluctant … Read more
[…] politicians claimed that the FRU was directed at loyalist and republican para-militaries, this is simply untrue ….the FRU was prevented by RUC Special Branch from infiltrating loyalist murder gangs.’ (p. 32) (1) The exception to this was ex-Army Brian Nelson, the ‘intelligence officer’ of the UDA, who directed the UDA’s killing of republicans for […]
Introduction The mid 1970s was not a good time to be a social democratic ally of the United States. In Britain we had “the Wilson plots’; in Australia Gough Whitlam, Jim Cairns and the Australian Labour Party got Governor Kerr and the CIA; in Germany Willi Brandt resigned after a “security scandal’; in New Zealand … Read more
Political activist Daniel Ellsberg and Professor Alfred McCoy have something special in common. Based on their actions and accomplishments of nearly thirty years ago, they have achieved the status of icons within the subculture of what passes for the New Left. Icon Ellsberg became a celebrity in 1971 after he leaked The Pentagon Papers, an … Read more
[…] 27 August 2006). See also Terry Hanstock’s Re: in this issue – ed. Note: ‘unwelcome’ public sector histories are always of interest. For example, in his book Murder in Samarkand, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray writes: ‘I returned to London for a conference. At a meeting with Linda Duffield, Director of Wider […]
ed. Roedad Khan Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1999 Faisal A. Qureshi This book caused quite a stir when published in Pakistan due to the government’s reluctance to declassify its own documentation for this period. The editor deserves credit for going to the US and utilising the FOIA to put together and index various documents, such … Read more
