A Channel 4 SOE mystery In January and February this year Channel 4 broadcast a history of the war-time Special Operations Executive, SOE, written and presented by the novelist Sebastian Faulks, called Churchill’s Secret Army. It was an interesting series with some excellent first-hand material and footage. But there were two mysteries. The first, and … Read more
[…] life of R.A. Butler (London, 1987). G. Ingham, Capitalism divided? The city and industry in British social development (Cambridge, 1984). P. Knightley, The second oldest profession: the spy as patriot bureaucrat, fantasist and whore (London, 1986). R. Lamb, The drift to war, 1922-1939 (London, 1989) J. Leutze (ed.) The London journal of Raymond E. […]
[…] what was then called the ‘silicon chip’. And Alec Guinness kept the nation spellbound with the television version of John le Carré’s 1974 novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It depicted the tempting of senior UK espionage moguls with a one-off, spectacular solution to Secret Britain’s ills, a Soviet super-spy who would get us back […]
Did Churchill reveal the pending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to Roosevelt two weeks before it happened? Below is what purports to a transcript of a telephone conversation recorded by the Germans during World War 2. If genuine, it shows, as has been alleged in the past, that Roosevelt was indeed warned of the impending … Read more
The origins of Civil Assistance? In the UK in 1974-75 a number of ‘private armies’ appeared, linked to retired senior military and intelligence figures. There were General Sir Walter Walker’s Civil Assistance, Colonel David Stirling’s GB75, and George Young’s Unison. (1) These groups formed in order to frustrate the impact of strike action in the … Read more
[…] a left-wing Putsch in Djakarta, delivering sub-machine guns, radio equipment and money to the value of 300,000 marks’: Heinz Hohne and Hermann Zolling, The General Was a Spy (New York: Bantam, 1972), p. xxxiii. We should not be misled by the CIA’s support of the 1958 Rebellion into assuming that all U.S. Government plotting […]
Parish Notices Thanks to Al Baron, Terry Hanstock, Daniel Brandt, Jane Affleck, Robin Whittaker (in particular), Tom Easton and Dr. David Turner for information since the last Lobster. An apology to David Guyatt not publishing his long and interesting reply to the criticism in ‘Feedback’ of his article on alleged US use of chemical weapons … Read more
[…] anyone skulking in the undergrowth. The book ends on this unsatisfactory note. The Clough book, by contrast, is excellent. It provides a detailed demythologising of this particular spy case and relies on a review of all the literature in the case as well as primary research conducted by the author amongst recently released PRO […]
[…] of the CIA. It appears that one of its main roles is to monitor the clandestine activity of other US government agencies. Coleman’s DIA job was to spy on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which operated out of a base in Cyprus. Coleman alleges that the DEA is supervising, and the DIA is manipulating, […]
[…] spat over “turgid” writing’, The Times, 24 October 2008; Jack Lefley, ‘MOD censors its censor’s history for being boring’, The Evening Standard, 24 October 2008. Anon., ‘Former spy wins first round of “son of Spycatcher” book publication battle’, Solicitors’ Journal, 152 (29), 22 July 2008, p. 5; Anon., ‘Tribunal does not have exclusive jurisdiction’, […]
