[…] 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 […]
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
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
[…] the Soviet Embassy on request. Betty Boothroyd told her boss; her boss called in MI5. But the MI5 officer misread her, and tried to recruit her to spy on some Labour MPs. She refused. MI5 did what they do so well: they bad-mouthed her at the Foreign Office and she was banned from working […]
Leonard Doyle, Guardian 24th February 1984. Sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for illegal surveillance of private citizens, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) settled out of court. LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division were accused of ‘organising a massive spying operation providing right-wing organisations with a sophisticated computer and handing on extensive files … Read more
Nicholas Bethell’s memoir Spies and Other Secrets (Viking, London, 1994) includes a curious section in which Bethell describes how in 1970, after he had been involved in the first publication of Solzhenitzen’s Cancer Ward in the West, he was attacked by a curious alliance of the left, Private Eye, and various people in and close … Read more
Searchlight again In the Daniel Brandt essay in this issue there is a section on the scandal in the United States resulting from the discovery that the Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has been found to be collecting data on hundreds of political groups, both right and left, and trading data with agencies of … Read more
Kimberley Cornish London: Arrow, 1999, £7.99 On p. 86 of this enthralling book Kimberley Cornish invites readers to complete the following sentence: ‘Wittgenstein was offered the Chair in Philosophy at Lenin’s university [Kazan] in 1935 because…’ What possible reason can there be except that he was serving the Soviet regime? Cornish contends that Wittgenstein recruited … Read more
Andrew Emmerson and Tony Beard. London: Capital Transport, 2004, £25.00, h/b Gimme Shelter(s)! The secret underground government structures that originated during the Second World War and were later adapted, enlarged and augmented for the Nuclear Age were given a once-over by Peter Laurie in Beneath the City Streets (1970) and given much more detailed … Read more
[…] agent operation that may have spurred the Soviets to produce more lethal chemical and biological agents. He was referring to David Wise’s book, Cassidy’s Run: The Secret Spy War Over Nerve Gas. ………the deception ultimately worked against US interests by spurring the Soviets to develop more lethal chemical and biological agents and may also […]
