Tim Rifat Century Books, London, 1999 £17.99 I was enormously disappointed to discover that this non-fiction book, which has printed on its cover, ‘The History and Science of Psychic Warfare and Spying’, not only lacks an index, it contains no meaningful references. Occasionally the reader comes across some scant footnotes; but the bulk of the … Read more
Reflections on the ‘cult of the offensive’: pre-emptive war, the Israel lobby and US military Doctrine In our book, Spies, Lies and the War on Terror,(1) a central theme is the ascendancy of pre-emptive war doctrine in US military strategy and its impact on public perceptions and the construction of political narrative. A parallel and … Read more
Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies Jim Schnabel Dell (USA) 1997, $5.99 Psychic Warrior David Morehouse Michael Joseph, London, 1996, £16.99 I approached the Jim Schnabel book with some caution. A number of people, including Armen Victorian, are intensely suspicious of Schnabel’s activities in the UFO/paranormal fields: some suspect him of … Read more
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1998, £l7.95 Savitri Devi – real name Maximiani Portas; she was part Greek, part French – is an odd subject for a biography. This is someone of little importance to anyone other than extreme environmentalists and/or the ultra-right. Even the title is misleading. She never met Hitler (so cannot, … Read more
[…] this really is extraordinary, for he was one of the journalists who did the work which showed that the nuclear state had hired private security firms to spy on Sizewell objectors against whom there was nothing at all; in other words, to spy on Sizewell objectors per se. In any case, before her death […]
[…] appeared in the original edition. This is additional information. A further list of corrections will appear in a future issue. (WIA) Material taken from the documentary ‘The Spy Who Never Was’ about Peter Wright on World in Action ITV 16 July 1984. Not all the names supplied by Wright were mentioned or published. I […]
[…] the subject of beliefs that he was really thousands of years old. At one time he was a friend of Casanova and was arrested as a Jacobite spy in London during the 1745 uprising. Barruel (see above, just after (8) in the text) names him as one of the Masonic super-conspirators behind the French […]
[…] Cold War spies’, in Guardian 9 December ’89. The late Joseph Josten. And so on. Deacon usefully reminds his reader of British State sponsorship of disinformation in spy fiction, a notable example of which is the 1981 ‘novel’, The KGB Directive, by Richard Cox. Born in 1931, Cox is a former First Secretary in […]
British Spies and Irish Rebels British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916-1945 Paul McMahon Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008, h/b, £30 First up, I have no specialist knowledge of this area, so if there any howlers in here, I’m unlikely to spot them. However, I know a good book when I see one. This has been … Read more
[…] paranoid fight against the CPUSA, and later, Martin Luther King. (13) It sounds impressive, but as with all Soviet contacts one can’t get away from the ‘ spy’ and ‘mole’ debate, however much one wants to. The Bureau had become worried when another Soviet source ‘Fedora’ notified the FBI that Jack Childs was about […]
