The Third Decade
The Third Decade, “a journal of research on the John F. Kennedy assassination” keeps appearing with impressive, not to say stunning, frequency. 6 in a year so far, and that’s 26 plus pages per issue.
With The Third Decade the Kennedy assassination researchers have finally got, as near as makes no difference, a fully-fledged academic journal. Its hard to know whether to be delighted that they’ve come so far despite the derision they have to put up with, or depressed that the more the assassination develops as a ‘subject’, the further we get from any real chance of political action on it.
No 5 includes a fascinating piece by Paul Hoch on the role of Army Intelligence and the Army Intelligence Reserve, fascinating meticulous work showing that the P.D. Scott/Hoch ‘tendency’ within the assassination buff world are really getting pretty close to making an irresistible case for this hypothesis.
No 6 is a particularly fine issue. It includes an excerpt from the memoirs of the veteran American journalist Fred J. Cook, on his early attempts to get his doubts about the Warren Commission into print, and three examples of the kind of micro-textual analysis which the serious JFK assassination researcher does so well.
Editor is Jerry Rose, State University College, Fredonia, New York 14063.
Intelligence/Parapolitics
We should have given a lot more attention to the Paris-based Intelligence/Parapolitics than we have to date. It really is wonderfully interesting, simply, and thoroughly done.
In./PP receives, translates and summarises parapolitical articles from all over the world. It also sells photocopies of the originals.
The August/September issue, for example, includes French accounts of a large, leaked French intelligence service report on Soviet operations in France, and Italian and French sources on the role of Francesco Pazienza in P2 et al.
This issue also includes a brief history of the journal and the organisation – ADI – which supports it. Founded in 1980, ADI has had “several well-known members of the French independent left or even the French socialist party ” on its board. In./PP regularly displays its political independence by reporting the activities of the Soviet bloc intelligence services.
Subscriptions are $20 American per year. Send to ADI, 16 Rue des Ecoles, 75005 Paris.
Foreign Intelligence Literary Scene
We’ve now seen one copy of this, a bi-monthly newsletter/book review. If the June 1985 issue is typical, this is pretty dull stuff. The lead story is the recent case of ‘Jane’s’ acquiring and printing three photographs taken from a US satellite, and the subsequent prosecution of the individual who supplied them. There are shorter pieces on the official reception of Carter Administration CIA Chief Admiral Stansfield Turner’s recent book Secrecy and Democracy: the CIA in transition, the origins of the ‘Enigma’ machine used in WW2, and a series of assorted book reviews.
The fact that three of the reviewers are retired US intelligence officials tells you the stance of FILS: no secrets, no current (or even recent) operations are going to be revealed here. It’s rather like Nigel West’s new journal (reviewed L 9) but cheaper, bigger and, on the basis of having seen one of each, better.
Subscriptions are $25 for 6 and the publisher is University Publications of America, 44 North Market Street, Frederick, MD 21701, USA. In the absence of any other information to the contrary, subs should be sent, and cheques made payable, to them.
Robin Ramsay