In 1976 Mary Ferrell discovered a curious CIA document, a telegram that had been sent from the Agency office in London to headquarters in Langley on 23 November 1963, the day after JFK was assassinated. The telegram reads as follows (blacked-out(1) matter shown by brackets, with suppositions in italic): [Paragraph deleted in its entirety] EXPRESSIONS … Read more
Extracts from the memoirs of the late General Fardust on the Iranian Pahlavi dynasty, published in 1978. Translated from the Farsi and introduced by Armen Victorian. Hossein Fardust was perhaps the closest person to the late Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. They went to school together and Fardust became the Shah’s closest friend — … Read more
Christopher Bryson London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, h/back, £17.99 Causes cannot chose their supporters. The anti-EU case isn’t helped by its being associated with the fascist and near-fascist right all over Europe. The animal rights case against halal and kosher slaughtering methods wasn’t helped by it being taken up by the British National Front in … Read more
Books Secret Contenders Melvin Beck (Sheridan Square Publications, US 1984) The CIA Christmas party of 1958 found 48 year old all-American boy, Melvin Beck, getting the offer of overseas work with Clandestine Services. He “struck like a hungry bass” and landed in Havana in 1959, just as the first Russian freighter was arriving. Fairly early … Read more
Robin Ramsay Often referred to in other things is Israeli Foreign Affairs, ‘an independent monthly report on Israel’s diplomatic and military activities world-wide’. It is 8 pages A4 and though this is not a subject I am interested in, this looks very impressive and is thoroughly documented. September 1988 includes (using IFA’s headlines) Jerusalem Christian … Read more
Nexus: postmodernism or what? I wonder what posterity will make of Nexus magazine. It continues to be just about the most fascinating and the most infuriating thing which plops through my letter-box. Take the April-May 2000 issue. On the positive side there is a very interesting and maybe very important piece on the soya bean, … Read more
The following is extracted from the book Sniffing Planes, Extreme Right, Intelligence and J. Violet by Pierre Pean (Editions Fayard, France, 1984). This, in turn, is based on a secret report written by a West German intelligence official, Hans Langemann, which was published in 1980 by Der Spiegel. Langemann was, at the time he wrote … Read more
Re: Harry Newton From Laurens Otter: ‘Back in 1968, as I was leaving one of the big Vietnam demos (I worked as a copy-taker at the Guardian at the time and so worked on Sunday and went into work in the afternoon, so was going work before the demo had finished), I passed a group … Read more
The story ‘The lethal bomb that does not kill’ (Daily Telegraph 27 September 1992) proves that there is military interest in this country in microwaves. The story itself is a plant from the Ministry of Defence. Its purpose is unknown. In the United States the microwave/mind control subject has been taken up by the Association … Read more
Votescam (again) Reading the papers and listening to the radio in the days immediately after Bush’s election victory brought home what a parallel universe we – readers of magazines like Lobster – are living in. Here we had an enormous election surprise: despite many of the pre-election polls in the last few days of the … Read more
