Shorts
Yorkshire Post (14 March ’92) reported the admission by the Ministry of Defence that in an operation called HORNBEAM, trawlers had been used during the first Cold War to spy on Soviet shipping. But the MOD spokesperson refused to confirm that some trawlers had carried intelligence officers.
Statewatch Bulletin (Jan/Feb 1992) includes an important update to their paper on Gladio network, quoting from the Belgian parliamentary commission into the subject. The update describes the network’s origins and some of the later developments in Belgium. The Gladio paper is available from Statewatch at £2.00 from PO Box 1516, London N16 0EW.
Covert Action Information Bulletin No 39 (Winter 91/92) contains two important essays on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) operations of the 1980s, particularly those directed at the erstwhile Soviet Union. Among the British organisations NED funded was Keston College, which received $50,000 in 1988. CAIB is now at 1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW, room 732 Washington DC 20005.
The Guardian (3 February 1992) reported on the discovery of yet another South African propaganda operation, the International Association for Co-operation and Development in Southern Africa (ACODA). The story was based on a 4-page briefing paper on Acoda. This can be obtained free with a stamped, addressed envelope from ELTSA, 56 Camberwell Road, London SE5 0EN.
Going through the old Lobsters recently I noticed this in issue 7, February 1985. ‘One of the problems facing any future Labour/socialist government in this country will be what to do about our spooks. A sort of answer is being given in Greece where the (nominally) socialist administration is sacking large numbers of its security personnel. (Daily Telegraph 8 October 1984). With this and Papandreou continuing to make anti-NATO noises, somewhere in the Pentagon the Greek-coup computer model will be getting a spin.’
In the event it was not the Greek coup program but the financial scandal model, previously used in Australia (against Cairns-Whitlam) and New Zealand, which was eventually used. This, anyway, is one interpretation of the collapse of the case against former Greek President Papandreou in January. (See, for example, The Independent, 22 January ’92.) The mainstream British press has paid little attention to the events in Greece, but there was a pretty sustained press campaign against Papandreou in the press here in late 1984, early 1985. See, for example, Telegraph 19 December ’84; Guardian 8 January ’85; Times 23 February ’85; Sunday Telegraph February 24 ’85; Daily Telegraph, February 16 and 2 March ’85; Times 14 March ’85.
Is there a detailed analysis of these events somewhere in English?
Lies of Our Times (November 1991) ‘Stacking the Deck on the Bulgarian Connection’ by Edward S. Herman and Howard Friel reported that at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Robert Gates, Melvin Goodman former division chief of the Office of Soviet Analysis at the CIA said: ‘There was very good, sensitive DO [Directorate of Operations] evidence that suggested the Soviets were not linked to the assassination attempt on the Pope.’ The CIA, said Goodman in the early 1980s ‘had very good penetration of the Bulgarian secret services’ and that these clandestine CIA sources had found no Soviet or Bulgarian involvement in the shooting.’ Significant, though not quite conclusive.
laissez faire (their lower case) is one of the stable of publications from the International Freedom Foundation in London. Volume 1 number 3 contained a feature, ‘Espionage after the Cold War’, reports from the proceedings of a conference on 15 November 1991 at which former KGB and former CIA officers spoke together in public for the first time. Among those taking part were former CIA Director William Colby and former KGB General Oleg Kalugin. Also participating were former CIA officer Donald Jameson, Uncle Brian Crozier and Hans Graf Huyn from Germany.
Colby, Jameson, Crozier and Huyn are all present or former members of the Pinay Circle. It’s almost enough to make you wonder if Pinay is the still unidentified source of IFF’s funds, isn’t it? IFF(UK) Suite 500, Chesham House, 150 Regent St, London W1R 5FA.
I have it on reliable authority that in 1987 — when the Wallace and Holroyd story was at its first peak — MI5 approached IFF(UK) and suggested that they take legal action against Lobster using MI5 money. IFF refused. It should be said that IFF Director, Marc Gordon, denies this.
David Owen’s memoir, Time To Declare (Michael Joseph, London, 1991) will be remembered for chapter 15, ‘MI6, GCHQ and the Falklands’. For the first time a senior British politician acknowledges the existence of these agencies and talks (a little) about their work. Owen’s views on the spooks are about as banal as his views on anything else, and he adds a new adjective to the vocabularly of homophobia, describing Tom Driberg as ‘a florid homosexual’. (p. 347)
A longer version Jeff Bale’s piece on the Turkish right and the shooting of the Pope, published in Lobster 19, has been published in the United States in Volume 15, number 1 of the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin. This version, while similar to that in Lobster, includes a new 14- page section describing the ideological background to the Turkish far-right’s hostility to Catholicism.
New Clarion Press
A Conflict of Loyalties. GCHQ 1984 – 1991
Hugh Lanning and Richard Norton-Taylor
This is the first full account of one of the most controversial disputes of the Thatcher era — the removal of trade union rights at the GCHQ intelligence base in Cheltenham and the campaign for their restoration.. The authors, one a trade union official, the other a journalist, have followed the dispute throughout and have had access to an unprecedented array of sources. They provide a fascinating account of the union ban and of the personal courage of the workers who resisted it.
‘… this detailed and impressive study’ Paul Routledge
‘… a fascinating, accurate and able presented documentation’ Glocestershire Echo
A Conflict of Loyalties is available at £14.95 from bookshops and from New Clarion Press, 8 Evesham Road, Cheltenham, Glos. GL52 2AB. Post and Packaging: UK free, Europe £1.75, elsewhere £4.00. Please make cheques payable to new Clarion Press.
Public Record Office New Openings
British Government files are generally secret for thirty years; thirty one years from the closure of the file it becomes available for public inspection in the Public Record Office. Thus 1961 files were opened this January. Every January I read the entries on all newly available index pages (which may be informative on still closed files) and from these many thousands extract those of a parapolitical, security and military interest.
This forms a rich fund of sources for further investigative research and articles. For example this year files are referenced on Evacuation of Nuclear Accident Casualties; Proposed Long Range Submarine Detection Programme; USAF FERRET flights; the Mail of Rudolf Hess; Calouste Gulbenkian; Defection of Rudolf Nureyev; Civil Defence Water Suppy; Wartime Emergency Radiation Doses; Death Duty Sir Oswald Moseley; Statistics on Safe Blowing…. about 700 similar.
Invaluable for freelance journalists on the look out for new idea — send £10 for 1992 openings or £5 for each year from 1989-91 to:
Roger J Morgan
15A Kensington Court Gardens
London W8 5QF