Books Secret Contenders Melvin Beck (Sheridan Square Publications, US 1984) The CIA Christmas party of 1958 found 48 year old all-American boy, Melvin Beck, getting the offer of overseas work with Clandestine Services. He “struck like a hungry bass” and landed in Havana in 1959, just as the first Russian freighter was arriving. Fairly early … Read more
[…] revelatory, one way or the others. (He was acquitted in 1988 of involvement in the Bologna bombing for lack of evidence, and in February this year of murder charges relating to a 1969 bombing. See Daily Telegraph 21/2/89. Ed.) For Signorelli’s early affiliations with ON, see Ferraresi p.62; for his AN backing see Flamini […]
Colin Crawford. London: Pluto Press, 2003, £14.99, p/back When World-in-Action and Tribune journalist David Boulton published his excellent book, The UVF, 1966-73, (Torc Books, 1974) he bemoaned a near absence of valuable books and journal articles on Loyalism. In contrast to their Republican counterparts, Loyalists do not have a substantive support base overseas; nor … Read more
by Peter Padfield Papermac, London, 1993, £12.99 There are now several versions of the Hess affair. One is the official story – a politician whose star is one the wane, attempts a spectacular comeback, fails, is locked up for forty years and finally commits suicide in despair. Another is the double theory, first outlined in … Read more
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
Secrets and Lies: A history of CIA mind control and germ warfare Gordon Thomas JR Books (www.jrbooks.com) 2007, h/b, £20 Gordon Thomas has written a number of books on the intelligence services and this has a glossy cover, voluminous appendices and some admiring quotes. But it adds little to what we already know about … Read more
[…] followed, a week later, by Simon Edge, ‘Dr Kelly: The questions that just won’t go away’ in The Daily Express, 31 July. My problem with the Kelly murder theory is that it has never been clear to me why anyone would think it necessary to kill him. With a senior British civil servant like […]
[…] allegedly left-wing ’17 November’ group which claims to have killed a Greek publisher. ‘November 17’ is said to have left a note at the scene of the murder “arguing that the publisher had been helping the CIA to create a climate of uncertainty in Greece.” The World Anti-Communist League The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) […]
[…] of the Second World War, Smith and Kay (Putnam 1972) includes virtually all the information in Last Talons of the Eagle. See Tom Bower, Blind Eye to Murder – Britain, America and the Purging of Nazi Germany, a Pledge Betrayed (1981) and The Paperclip Conspiracy (1984) and Christopher Simpson, Blowback – America’s Recruitment of […]
[…] raid on Colonel Gadhafi’s family, President Reagan described the Libyan despot as a ‘unique threat to free peoples’, a ‘rogue regime that advances its goals through the murder and maiming of innocent civilians’. Sanctions followed, but not for Halliburton. As Robert Bryce wrote in the Austin Chronicle: ‘Since the mid-1980s, Gadhafi’s “rogue regime” has […]
