‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s … Read more
A small section of this appeared in Lobster 12. Although this is incomplete and under researched, we thought it worth putting out now. The origins of IRD 1947 saw the creation of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD). It is generally accepted that IRD was the brain-child of the then Labour M.P. Christopher Mayhew, … Read more
See note:(1) Did Staff D feed the Oswald-Kostikov lie to the CIA? Abstract: There exist at least four successive versions (or falsifications) of Silvia Duran’s so-called statement of November 23,1963, to the Mexican DFS (Dirección Federal de Seguridad), about her interviews of Oswald in the Cuban Consulate. The successive changes mirror the shift in the … Read more
Introduction On May 20th this year the San Francisco Examiner ran a story by Kathy Kadane which began, ‘The U.S. government played a significant role in one of the worst massacres of the century by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed … Read more
Introduction Like most dramatic and unsettling political events, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca temporarily captured the imagination of the world’s media and political pundits. Although the initial public outrage and concern generally faded once it became clear that the Pope would survive, certain individuals and groups … Read more
In their recent history of the Information Research Department (IRD), Paul Lashmar and James Oliver discuss George Orwell’s decision to collaborate with that organisation’s anti-Communist propaganda operations. They write that ‘George Orwell’s reputation as a left-wing icon took a body blow from which it may never recover when it was revealed in 1996 that he … Read more
Jeffrey M. Bale In this essay, and the notes and sources that accompany it, there are many words from languages – French, Spanish, Portugese etc – which should have various accents on them. These accents have been omitted to simplify type-setting. This essay was first published in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology and is reprinted … Read more
Many thanks, as always, to Terry Hanstock for contributions. Comments and contributions welcome. My email is ‘War on Terrorism’: Repercussions of 11 Sept. 2001 The Sept 11 2001 attacks on the US and subsequent ‘war against terrorism’ have provided law enforcement/intelligence agencies with an opportunity to push for sweeping new powers, plus fast-tracking of … Read more
We understand that Lord Rothschild was badly shaken last year by the many innuendoes linking him to the Cambridge spy ring of the 1930s. A typical example was Anthony Glees’ book on ‘British intelligence and Communist Subversion’: “Rothschild (was) remarkably intimate with people subsequently proven to be secret Communists, and Blunt was a major Communist … Read more
At the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of non-German workers, mostly from the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, were stranded in Germany, while many thousands more were fleeing from areas overrun by Soviet forces. Most of these workers were anti-communist, anti-Soviet and anti-Russian; some had voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis, … Read more
