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
[…] 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
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
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
[PDF file]: […] publisher on the eve of its appearance. I am grateful to Lobster for reviving “Transnationalised Repression”. Though the essay starts from events of the seventies (Watergate, the murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington, the Nixon war on drugs) which have since passed into history, the essay also builds to a general overview of transnationalised […]
[PDF file]: […] as a copycat crime, carried out by unconnected criminals. It took nearly four months for the LAPD to arrest and indict Manson and co. for the two murder sprees. O’Neill sets out to prove that the powers-that-be of the LAPD knew early on that Manson and the Family were the murderers; which leads to […]
[…] He eventually died in 2020 from renal failure. 34 Biletsky had been released from prison the previous month, having been convicted in 2013 of involvement in a murder committed in 2011. His premature release was the result of a national amnesty for political prisoners. 35 14 ‘sounds somewhat absurd’, and remarked dismissively that ‘love […]
[PDF file]: […] He eventually died in 2020 from renal failure. 34 Biletsky had been released from prison the previous month, having been convicted in 2013 of involvement in a murder committed in 2011. His premature release was the result of a national amnesty for political prisoners. 35 14 shooting but has said it ‘sounds somewhat absurd’, […]
