[…] plays amateur psychoanalyst at Roberts’ expense. It reminds me of the ‘skeptics’ who attack Lee Harvey Oswald as a psychopathological loner and ignore his connections to the spy world. As for Roberts alternating between ‘asking Nader for help and accusing him of being part of the Mafia’, that dynamic replayed among American voters in […]
Clippings Digest to May 31st. 1984 Policing The Miners Up to May 30th. These are only brief references to the major elements. Magistrates setting restrictive bail conditions. Guardian 5th April Police trying to buy NUM badges Guardian 19th May Police changing their ID numbers for picket duty Tribune 25th May Pickets charged with conspiracy for … Read more
Accountability I will be discussing a non subject – the accountability of the intelligence services. By accountable we mean the ability to be brought to account, to be answerable for their actions, to be subject to scrutiny and ultimately to have their actions adjudicated upon in a court of law. I will be looking at … Read more
Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin Gollancz, London 1991 Pat Nixon, wife of Richard Nixon, died in June. The obituarist in the Independent of 23 June 1993, commented that ‘she stood by him loyaly, convinced that he was the victim of an international plot involving double agents and the CIA.’ Well, something like that. Mrs Nixon’s … Read more
Roundtable I get regular e-mail bulletins from an organisation called the roundtable – not the Round Table but somebody? some people? – trying to document the US ruling elite by the study of its organisations. Really they should be called Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – because it is the CFR they mostly write about; … Read more
Gary Murray Simon and Schuster, London, 1993 For twenty five years Gary Murray worked as an RAF policeman and private investigator. In the early 1970s Murray ‘unexpectedly’ (invitation?) joined the Operations Intelligence cadre of 21 SAS, and this led to close contact with people from MI6, Army SIB, the Royal Military Police and the Parachute … Read more
The Angolan hostages episode, and more … Although Unita’s capture of 16 Britons at Kafuno diamond mine in Angola received massive publicity, the intriguing titbits thrown up by the reporting were not pursued. In particular, there was the article by Stephen Glover (Daily Telegraph 16th May 1984) in which he stated that he had been … Read more
[…] Guardian 11/2/87 NOTE: The Lobster 17 article on the Pinay Circle contained several spelling errors of the names of Circle members. The correct versions are given above. The ‘Network’ book mentioned in the footnotes to Lobster 17 is more easily available under the republished title The General was a Spy, Hohne and Zolling, Pan, 1973.
[…] the SAS that played a major part in creating that regiment’s overblown myth. More recently, he published Brixmis: The Untold Exploits of Britain’s Most Daring Cold War Spy Mission, hardly a subversive work! His forte has been listening to covert warriors’ stories (including their complaints!) and turning them into popular history. It is this […]
[…] York Sun, 19 March 2008. This was discussed by Mary Dejevsky in The Independent on 2 May 2008, ‘The Litvinenko files: Was he really murdered?’ ‘Why a spy was killed’, The Guardian, 26 January 2008. Their Website is Nick McDermott, ‘Big Brother tapping our phones and e-mails 1,000 times a day’, The Daily Mail, […]
