NB This essay has been compressed a good deal. The longer version is at < http://www.pertier.com/demos.html > Ostensibly a left-leaning ‘think tank’, Demos’ initial Advisory Board gathered mostly those who wished to extend ‘Thatcherism’ into the ‘New Labour’ project. The Advisory Board Martin JacquesHis time in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) has been … Read more
[…] 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 […]
Mr Tony was a spook? Issue 7 of Larry O’Hara’s Note from the Borderland ([1]) includes a section from the Anne Machon and David Shayler book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers (reviewed in Lobster 49), which was apparently dropped by the publisher. The key section is this, from an unnamed MI5 officer: ‘Blair was recruited [by … Read more
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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
[…] 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 […]
[…] concealing the identity of their agents is the reason they won’t open their files, why did they reveal Nicholson’s identity? Twitchers or traitors? In ‘Did twitchy MI5 spy on bird lovers?’ (Sunday Times 11 March 2001) Nick Fielding reported what appeared to be evidence from within MI5 of an MI5 investigation of the Royal […]
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
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
