In this article I amplify and update my account of the crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul which appeared in Lobster 37. Since it was written there have been a number of interesting developments – the publication of Trevor Rees-Jones’ book; James Hewitt’s impromptu recreation of the fatal car … Read more
Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more
Definitions? Or Whoops! A paradigm An American magazine called Mondo 2000 ran an amusing piece called ‘The Conspiracy Top Ten’. In it ‘Zarkov’ offered this definition: ‘Conspiracies may be better understood as organizations pursuing their own ends, who desire no publicity as to their true objectives and methods.’ Which sounds interesting at first then dissolves … 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
Last year, in the search for independent corroboration of some of Colin Wallace’s story, I talked to a number of ‘Irish hands’, journalists who had been in Northern Ireland while Wallace was working there. One was Kevin Dowling, the Sunday Mirror correspondent there from 1970-74. Dowling was reluctant to talk much about that period of … 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
Introduction The ‘Gable memo’ reproduced below originally appeared as the subject matter of a long and extremely interesting article, ‘Destabilising the “decent people”‘ by Nick Anning, Duncan Campbell and Bruce Page in the New Statesman on February 15, 1980. This is still worth digging out, particularly for its detailed account of the context in which … 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
