Hitler’s spy chief: the Wilhelm Canaris mystery Richard Bassett London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2005, £20 This is a full and very well researched biography of one of the great enigmatic figures of the spy world in the 30s and 40s. The author, former foreign correspondent of The Times in Berlin and Prague, provides … Read more
How perceptions have changed! In Leveller 51, March 1981, there was this snippet: ‘Why all the fuss about the Panorama programme on British Intelligence? Eventually there was just one cut — Gordon Winter, BOSS agent, former freelance journalist, in a pre-title sequence: “British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement in … Read more
The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America 1947-2000 Sally Denton and Roger Morris London: Pimlico, 2002, pb, £15 John Burnes It’s hardly news that Las Vegas was a city run by the Mob. Or that it was fuelled by financial corruption. Or that both of these … Read more
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave London: Verso, 2003, h/b, £17 The story in brief: before and during WW2 Japan stripped the countries it occupied of its transportable wealth — gold and other precious metals, diamonds, cash, bonds and so on. As the war turned against them this was buried in various locations, many of … Read more
Rogue State: A guide to the world’s only superpower William Blum Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $16.95 Globalize This! The battle against the World Trade Organization and corporate rule eds. Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $15.95 I have lumped these together partly because they are both published … Read more
Searchlight again In the Daniel Brandt essay in this issue there is a section on the scandal in the United States resulting from the discovery that the Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has been found to be collecting data on hundreds of political groups, both right and left, and trading data with agencies of … Read more
Part 1 Issue 24 of the Covert Action Information Bulletin (Summer 1985) is chiefly devoted to recent activities of U.S. government agents and agents provocateurs inside radical and labour organisations: the ‘sanctuary movement’, the Native American movement and one industrial dispute, are analysed as case studies. They are preceded by a long essay, “The New … Read more
Gordon Carr Christie Books, 2003 p/b, £34 (inc. p and p) from www.Christiebooks.com This is a reprint of Carr’s 1975 book on the Angry Brigade (AB), done in an A4 format paperback, to which Stuart Christie has added dozens of photographs of the participants, the scenes of the various bombings, magazine covers and other graphic … Read more
Conference Report by Jane Affleck On November 10 2000 the Freedom Forum’s European Centre in London, in association with Article 19, Index on Censorship and Liberty, hosted a debate on National Security. (1) Three panels spoke on The Nature of National Security, British State Security in Northern Ireland, and The Internet – Circumventing Censorship? The … Read more
U.S. President Bill Clinton has made a number of public references to the impresssion made on him as a young student by Professor Carroll Quigley. (1) As Lobster readers will know, Quigley was the author of Tragedy and Hope (U.S., MacMillan, 1966) in which he described for the first time the role of the Round … Read more
