Suffer the innocents? The Stevens inquiry into Britain’s state assassination policy in Northern Ireland in the 1980s began in September 1989. The police officers who signed up for it didn’t think it would take long to do. ‘We thought it was going to be a fairly routine investigation. We didn’t expect to find that there … Read more
[…] entire Sandinista connection was a US intelligence fabrication. Particularly suspicious is the role of Federico Vaughn, the supposed Sandinista official, who appears to have been a US spy all along. An AP dispatch (Omaha World-Herald, 7-29-88) disclosed that subcommittee staffers called Vaughn’s phone number in Managua and spoke to a “domestic employee” who said […]
[…] swipe at the Americans and double-entendre: ‘There are no chinks in our security’. Doubtless, had the script not been so bad, the story about the happily bungling spy could have played in Iraq as part of Britain’s ‘hearts and minds’ campaign: a sort of movie equivalent to British troops losing 9 – 3 to […]
[…] working for those dailies would care to explain. CIA in Northern Ireland The Irish Republic’s Military Intelligence (G.2) discovered that the CIA were behind a plot to spy on loyalist paramilitary groups. (Sunday News 27th November 1983) Lyn Macrey, who does welfare work for UDA prisoners, was approached by ‘The Hettinger Institute’, a phoney […]
[…] and Herman Zolling (London 1972) and an interesting article by Sarah Gainham in the Spectator 9 November 1962. Robin Ramsay adds: Gainham is a writer of spy fiction. Her 1959 The Stone Roses (Sphere paperback, London 1971), a defector story set in Prague, carries the dedication ‘This story is for Friends in Prague’. […]
[…] not refer to her part in Smith’s conviction for espionage and asks: ‘How many Director-Generals of MI5 have been responsible for the conviction of a major Russian spy, who was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment at the Old Bailey?’ Smith thinks Rimington is embarrassed by her part in framing him. Something of the night…. […]
How perceptions have changed! In Leveller 51, March 1981, there was this snippet: ‘Why all the fuss about the Panorama programme on British Intelligence? Eventually there was just one cut — Gordon Winter, BOSS agent, former freelance journalist, in a pre-title sequence: “British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement in […]
The collapse of Polly Peck in 1990 remains perhaps the single greatest British corporate mystery of modern times.(1) How did a multi-billion pound international conglomerate, which had risen from East End obscurity to become the exemplar of eighties British Capitalism, collapse within a period of weeks? How did a favoured son of the London Stock … Read more
[…] mighty screed finally ends, Roberts takes us on an even stranger interlude: ‘EDITOR’S NOTE: This is all Joanie gave us on that date. However, we had a spy hiding behind a moosehead and he tells us that the psychiatrist came back into the room and Joanie handed him the notes quoted above and the […]
Stuart Christie Christie Books, PO Box 35, Hastings East Sussex, TN 34 2UX pb, £34 from www.christiebooks.com I really enjoyed this account of his childhood from Christie, Britain’s most famous anarchist and celebrated radical publisher. But I’m not sure how many other people would. I may have enjoyed it as much as I … Read more
