The other Bilderberg
Between 1964 and 1966 there was a little-known attempt to establish a new Commonwealth conference modelled on the Bilderberg Group, with Prince Philip lined up to take a leading role. Nothing ever came of it, mainly because of the impact that Rhodesia’s UDI had on Commonwealth affairs. Newly released documents from The National Archives have allowed the academic, Philip Murphy, to compile a detailed account of the Commonwealth Bilderberg’s origins in which he also suggests that the original Bilderberg had assumed a significant degree of importance to senior Labour Party figures.
Philip Murphy, ‘By invitation only: Lord Mountbatten, Prince Philip, and the attempt to create a Commonwealth “Bilderberg Group”, 1964-66’. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33 (2), May 2005, pp. 245-265.
Hilda Murrell case closed?
Twenty-one years after Hilda Murrell’s death, Andrew George was convicted of her kidnap and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment following a four week trial at Stafford Crown Court. ([1]) George, who was 16 at the time, living in a children’s home and described as a ‘known criminal’, was apparently questioned by police a week after the murder. At that time, however, they were unable to connect him to the crime.([2]) Advances in DNA testing finally offered proof that he was in Hilda Murrell’s house and enabled the police and prosecutors to successfully resubmit their ‘burglary gone wrong’ theory.([3])
To add to the general murkiness surrounding the murder, George, whilst admitting that he was involved in the burglary, claimed that his brother Steven was also present and that it was he who had assaulted and abducted Hilda Murrell.([4])Whether Steven George was one of the two men detained by police last year in connection with the murder but later released ‘pending further enquiries” is not known. ([5]) The trial judge, Sir Richard Wakerley died of a heart attack in July. ([6])
Misinformation
A useful website, courtesy of the U.S. Department of State. Identifying Misinformation aims to put paid to rumours and ill-founded tales that might show the USA in a bad light. With sections including Conspiracy Theories (‘Did the US “create” Osama bin Laden?’), Military Misinformation (‘Depleted uranium’), and Deliberate Disinformation (‘Saddam’s disinformation’; ‘Soviet disinformation’), plus guidance on ‘How to identify misinformation’, it certainly puts paid to the theory that the US government has no sense of irony. ([7])
Let us spray
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that a large part of Norfolk was sprayed with zinc cadmium sulphate during 1963 and 1964 as part of an experiment by the then Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment at Porton Down to assess the impact of a biological attack. As one of its possible side effects was to double the national rate of cancer of the oesophagus in Norwich, there have also been calls to investigate health problems in the West Country, where similar experiments were carried out in 1961. ([8])
The official line took a more optimistic view. ‘Risk to the public is…..considered negligible’ and ‘There is no need for public concern over the Ministry of Defence disseminations’ were the comforting conclusions reached by a (Ministry of Defence sponsored) study. ([9])
Down on the farm
Hailed as Britain’s first feature length cartoon, the 1955 production of Animal Farm turns out to have been funded by the CIA, using American newsreel (March of Time), documentary and feature film producer Louis de Rochemont as a conduit.([10]) Having provided the money, the CIA also had ‘psy warrior’ Joseph Bryan ([11]) participate in early script conferences and monitor the filming. Another agent, Carleton Alsop, was on hand to view the film as it neared completion. Little wonder that the film’s ending differed from that of the book. ([12] )
Plus ca change
A previously classified file relating to the security aspects of the Klaus Fuchs case was released by The National Archives in November 2003. Included in it was a memorandum describing the security aspects of Fuchs’s background and arrest which was submitted by the Director-General of MI5, Sir Percy Sillitoe, to the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. According to Goodman and Pincher ‘…..a careful examination reveals that MI5 deliberately misled the Prime Minister to cover their own incompetence. Furthermore, in recommending to Attlee that he make a statement in parliament, the document reveals that MI5 were prepared to allow Attlee to mislead the country.’ ([13])
Moscow gold
According to a recent piece in The Spectator,
‘…any mention of the word “oligarch” [has] the average Russian reaching for a gun. That’s because much of the population is furious at the way the national wealth was passed to a handful of hustlers in a series of sweetheart deals with Boris Yeltsin.’
Not so over here where ‘…some of London’s most blue-blooded and blue-chip bankers, lawyers, art dealers and estate agents are willing to trade their standing for cash.’ Spin doctors are also in on the game, with Lord Bell [aka Tim Bell, Thatcher’s one-time communications director] happy to trouser the odd rouble by advising Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich’s former partner who sought asylum here from Russia a while ago. Money doesn’t buy you peace of mind, though, and security and self-preservation are paramount. Berezovsky, for example, has on occasion ‘…hired six identical limousines, which passed through the gates of his house in Egham, split into three pairs and headed off in different directions to confuse would-be tails.’
Dominic Midgley, ‘Oiling up to the oligarchs: how Britain’s service industries are busy separating London’s free-spending New Russians from their cash’, The Spectator, 8 October 2005, pp. 14-15. (See also Tristram Hunt, ‘Why do we welcome these robber barons to Britain?’, The Guardian, 25 October 2005.)
Ballots rigged in Ohio
Interviewed as he was about to move back to the USA from his long-time home in Italy, Gore Vidal bemoaned the dearth of press freedom in his native country, citing as an example the lack of coverage of congressman John Conyers’ exposure of ballot rigging in Ohio during the last presidential election. ([14] ) ‘Not one review of the congressman’s book has been mentioned anywhere in the papers, or on television, not one. We are tightly censored and controlled and have been for decades.’ ([15])
Well, not quite. Conyers’ book may not have been mentioned, but the report it was based on was picked up in an article by Washington Post writer, William Raspberry and syndicated over newswire services. ([16]) The only other sighting has been an article by Mark Crispin Miller in the August issue of Harper’s Magazine.([17]) Not a vast amount of coverage, admittedly, but it’s still more than the British media have managed.
Notes
[1] George has now been granted leave to appeal. His lawyers are said to be ‘…speaking to new witnesses who did not come forward before his trial.’ Anon., ‘Hilda’s killer to appeal’, Birmingham Post, 19 May 2005; David Burrows, ‘Killer George set to appeal’, Shropshire Star, 20 October 2005.
[2] Nick Britten, ‘Life for burglar who left peace campaigner to die’, The Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2005.
[3] For a critical examination of the ‘burglary gone wrong’ theory see Lobsters 16, 27 and 28. Hilda Murrell’s nephew, Robert Green, was not totally convinced that the verdict was correct. After attending the trial he felt that ‘questions remained’, saying ‘…I still believe today’s conviction might be unsafe.’ He also believed that other intruders were involved. Rod Chaytor, ‘Monster…He should be kept with the beasts says his own brother’, The Mirror, 7 May 2005; Stewart Tendler, ‘Peace Campaigner’s killer trapped by DNA evidence’, The Times, 7 May 2005.
[4] Anon,’ “My brother killed Hilda”: Court claim by burglar accused of murder’, Birmingham Evening Mail, 21 April 2005.
[5] Richard Warburton, ‘Murrell mystery: two held by police’, Birmingham Post, 17 February 2004; Anon, ‘Murrell murder suspects released’, Birmingham Post, 18 February 2004.
[6] As a barrister, Wakerley was also involved in the Birmingham Six and Carl Bridgwater trials. Anon, ‘Sir Richard Wakerley’, The Times, 27 September 2005.
[7] Also high in the irony stakes is the RAND Corporation’s recent report, Establishing law and order after conflict, <http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG374.pdf> which contains the results of research on ‘…reconstructing internal security institutions during nation-building missions’ [sic] and analyses ‘…the activities of the United States and other countries in building viable police, internal security forces, and justice structures.’ As Iraq is one of the case studies a revised edition may be necessary.
[8] ‘Chemical tests carried out in West…’, Western Daily Press, 16 September 2002; Anon, ‘Demands for probe into secret chemical drops on the West’, Western Daily Press, 25 August 2005; Jane Denny, ‘Experts weigh into our campaign’, Norwich Evening News, 16 September 2005; Adrian Shaw, ‘Toxic gas tested on Norwich: biological war trial is “linked to double normal cancer rate”‘, The Mirror, 3 October 2005.
[9] P. J. Elliott and others, ‘The risk to the United Kingdom population of zinc cadmium sulphide dispersion by the Ministry of Defence during the “cold war”‘, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 59 (1) 2002, pp. 13-17.
[10] There’s an exhaustive account of the film’s gestation by Daniel J. Leab, ‘Animators and animals: John Halas, Joy Batchelor, and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”‘, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 25 (2), June 2005, pp. 231-249 plus an informative interview with the filmmakers’ daughter, Vivien Halas, in Ian Johns, ‘More equal than others’, The Times, 6 January 2005.
The DVD of the film released in the US includes an essay by Karl Cohen which claims that Howard Hunt was one of the two CIA agents who helped secure the film rights to the book and then hired Louis de Rochemont as producer. Cohen also wrote a lengthy article on the film for Animation World Magazine. ‘Animated propaganda during the Cold War’ in the issue dated 21 February 2003. (Also available at <http://mag.awn.com/?article_no=1611>). An edited version was published in The Guardian 7 March 2003 under the title ‘The Cartoon that came in from the cold’.
[11] Could this be William Joseph Bryan, identified in Peter Evans’ book Nemesis: the true story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the love triangle that brought down the Kennedys (New York: Regan Books, 2004) as having worked on the CIA mind-control programme, MKULTRA? The same source also reveals another Hollywood link, claiming that Bryan acted as a technical adviser on The Manchurian Candidate. More significantly, it also alleges that he used mind control techniques to hypnotise Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s supposed assassin. See also John Hiscock, ‘The Real Manchurian candidate?’ The Independent,18 January 2005, pp. 24-25.
[12] ‘The CIA solved [the] problem of the symbiotic relationship between capitalism and Communism by eliminating the farmers from the final scene…..When the barnyard animals attack the new ruling class… capitalist exploiters are as invisible on the screen as was the CIA behind the camera.’ Michael P. Rogin, ‘When the CIA was the NEA’, The Nation, 270 (23), 12 June 2000, pp. 16-19. Also available at < www. thenation.com/doc/ 20000612/rogin >
[13] Michael S. Goodman and Chapman Pincher, ‘Clement Attlee, Percy Sillitoe and the security aspects of the Fuchs case’, Contemporary British History, 19 (1), Spring 2005, pp. 67-77.
[14] Conyers was the driving force behind the U.S. House of Representatives report, Preserving democracy: what went wrong in Ohio. Status report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff (Washington: U.S. House of Representatives, 2005. Available at <http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohiostatusrept1505.pdf>)
The report was also published as a trade paperback under the title, What went wrong in Ohio: the Conyers Report on the 2004 presidential election, (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005). Further details at <http://www.academychicago.com/conyers.html>.
[15] Emma Brockes, ‘Age cannot wither him’, The Guardian, 21 September 2005.
[18] William Raspberry, ‘What happened in Ohio’, The Washington Post, 10 January 2005. The only other newspapers to run the story were the Charleston Gazette of West Virginia and the Herald News of New Jersey.
[16] Mark Crispin Miller, ‘None dare call it stolen: Ohio, the Election, and America’s servile press’, Harper’s Magazine, August 2005, pp. 39-46. (Also available at <www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html>)