Harold Smith (Lobster 25) Observer editor Jonathan Fenby replied to a letter from Harold Smith on 17 June, 1993: ‘I don’t think it is a story we want to go back over.’ Back over? On 4 July the Observer ran a third of a page on the political situation in Nigeria, ‘New rules, new date, … Read more
A Note on MRA, CIA and L. Ron. Hubbard In response to my snippet in issue 38 (p.22) on Moral Rearmament and the CIA, Daniel Brandt (1) sent me the following from Miles Copeland’s, The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA’s Original Political Operative (London: Aurum Press, 1989, pp. 176-177). This is a nice demonstration … Read more
Publications Quite Right, Mr Trotsky! Denver Walker (Harney and Jones, London 1985) The sub-title of this book is “Some Trotskyist Myths Debunked; and how Trotskyists today hamper the fight for Peace and Socialism” To be fair, this is an amusing book at times and easy to read. In view of the fact that the author … Read more
A man with Friends The Third Secret: the CIA, Solidarity and the KGB’s plot to kill the Pope Nigel West HarperCollins, London, 2000, £19.99 Let’s dispose of the ‘Third Secret’ nonsense. West claims that Pope John – the Polish Pope – was told the ‘third secret’ of the Fatima revelations; and that this ‘third secret’ … Read more
Larry Hancock Texas: JFK Lancer Productions and Publications, 2006; $35.00, h/back, ISBN 0-9774657-1-3, Faced with the vast pile of data which now constitutes the JFK assassination literature, an author – a serious author, at any rate; and Hancock is serious – has to chose a path s/he is going to follow through it, a … Read more
A Wapping mystery I noticed with some interest that Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, was described in the Guardian on May 27 as having been labour correspondent of the Economist in the 1970s. Was he, I thought, one of the correspondents recruited by MI5 in the big F branch expansion circa 1973-5? Did that explain … Read more
Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire Anne Norton New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004 $25/£16 What’s the Matter with America? Thomas Frank The Resistable Rise of the American Right London: Secker & Warburg, 2004, £12 Most of us in Europe find it difficult to understand what happened in America on … Read more
British Spooks “Who’s Who” part 2 Steve Dorril See also: Part 1: Forty Years of Legal Thuggery (Lobster 9) Intelligence Personnel Named in ‘Inside Intelligence’ (Lobster 15) Philby naming names (Lobster 16) First supplement to A Who’s Who of the British Secret State (Lobster 19) Spooks (Lobster 22) CABLE, ERIC GRANT CMG (1938) B 25.2.1887 … Read more
Responsibilities, old boy The Big Breach Richard Tomlinson Cutting Edge, Edinburgh, 2000, £9.99 I found it hard to ‘see’ this because so much of its contents have been published in the media. There have been some changes – names altered – since the newspaper versions; and I am told that the original hardback version … Read more
Tony Blair will be remembered not just for the slaughter in Iraq, and the subsequent collapse of Labour in Scotland in face of a resurgent SNP, but as the Labour leader who could have forged common links across Europe but chose to side with one of the continent’s most despised figures. Charles Clarke, one of … Read more
