Since the storming of the Iranian Embassy in London on 5 May 1980, the Special Air Service (SAS) has become a cultural phenomenon as much as a military one; has become, in the words of its former Director, Peter de la Billiere, ‘a living embodiment of the individualism of the British’. Their heroic exploits have […]
[…] David Kelly was a ‘Walter Mitty character’ must have made Colin Wallace smile. For this is how the MOD briefed journalists about Wallace during his trial for murder in 1981. Corinne Souza pointed out to me that the only people using the Walter Mitty expression these days are spin-doctors. Notes 1 < http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2003/issue2/english/art4.htmlxt issue […]
[…] account, was “so British as to belong to a past backed by an Empire that ruled the waves,” a world where “theft, deception, lies, mutilation and even murder are possibilities.” (p13) Cavendish and Young were to work together from 1973 in Unison, the co-ordinating committee which was to play its part in the anti-Wilson […]
[…] on Stone’s movie JFK, it seemed worth reproducing again. Our concern. From the day of President Kennedy’s assassination, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time […]
[…] behind a sign that read ‘US GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS PROHIBIT DISCUSSION OF THIS ORGANISATION OR FACILITY’. Its sabotage operations were run by station chief Theodore ‘Ted’ Shackley, who had led the Brigade 2506 amphibious landings at the Bay of Pigs and organised Operation Mongoose, a series of covert actions that included attempts to murder Fidel Castro.
One of the recurring sub-themes of the literature on intelligence systems in the West in the past decade has been the status of the claims made by KGB defector Golitsyn. Until recently all the book-reading public knew about Golitsyn was (a) that he has exposed some (relatively minor) Soviet operations; (b) made a series of … Read more
[…] signs of deliberate disinformation.(7) To know Bill Clinton and die? There is an extraordinary 1994 pamphlet by the editor of something called The Wall Street Underground, titled Murder, Bank Fraud, Drugs and Sex, that links 21 deaths to Clinton and Arkansas.(8) My faith in the author, Nicholas A. Guarino, is not heightened by the […]
In 1953 Dr Drank Olsen, a scientist working for the CIA, was found dead on the pavement outside a New York hotel. The Agency instituted a cover-up of the circumstances of his death. The cover-up survived until 1975 when it was revealed that Olsen had been one of many people who had been unwittingly given … Read more
[…] once again’. The only Officials who might have been involved with the UCA if it had existed were the element that went IRSP with Costello after the murder of Joe McCann. The few survivors, whom I met regularly, have no recollection of any such organisation let alone meeting them. The leaflets were leaked to […]
PART 1 See also Part 2 in Lobster 6 Most Western political scientists, following in the traditions of Marx or Weber, scorn the study of secret and occult societies as irrelevant to understanding the politics of the age. In their view, politics can best be understood as the working out, in public arenas, of bureaucratic, … Read more
