Bilderberg Originally given as a paper at the British Association for American Studies 2002 Annual Postgraduate Conference, this draws on newly available archival evidence to document the origins of the Bilderberg Group. It also considers the various conspiracy theories which have attached themselves to the Group. Is it a CIA plot to undermine socialism or … Read more
Since the storming of the Iranian Embassy in London on 5 May 1980, the Special Air Service (SAS) has become a cultural phenomenon as much as a military one; has become, in the words of its former Director, Peter de la Billiere, ‘a living embodiment of the individualism of the British’. Their heroic exploits have … Read more
The final testimony of George Kennedy Young Introduction When this was published we believed that it had been written by a close friend of his. Subsequently we learned that it had been written by Young himself. As far as we were able to judge, it is accurate. But this is by no means the whole … Read more
One of the aims of this column is to open up new lines of enquiry for parapolitical specialists. It might seem very odd to start with the name of Reinhard Gehlen, long-since dead founder of the BND, the German Security Service. Reinhard Gehlen, to over-simplify a very complex tale, bought his way into the Western … Read more
On 8 March 1985 an attempt was made to assassinate one of the founders of Hizbullah, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, by car bomb in Beirut. The attack failed in its objective, but there was some ‘collateral damage’. While Fadlallah was untouched, some eighty bystanders, men, women and children, were killed and over two hundred injured. … Read more
1. Getting even more ugly I confess: I have given up buying Searchlight. There just isn’t anything that can be believed in it. In any case, other people send me the good bits – if ‘good’ is the right word. In June’s Searchlight this paragraph appeared; ‘Seasoned political observers in Northern Ireland say that the … Read more
Here are a few more web sites that may be of interest. Thanks for contributions to David Guyatt, Terry Hanstock, Daniel Brandt, Chris Atton and Tony Hollick. Further contributions and comments are welcome: my e-mail is Politics and government USA DoE Office of Human Radiation Experiments http://www.ohre.doe.gov/ ‘OHRE, established in March 1994, leads the … Read more
The story of the Ulster Citizens’ Army (UCA for the rest of this essay) is a tiny fragment in the intricate history of Protestant politics in Northern Ireland in the mid 1970s – so tiny that none of the general accounts I have looked at even mention it. But the UCA lingers on: it is … Read more
On the 12th February 1967, Rosemary James of the New Orleans States-Item newspaper discovered that Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans, had spent more than $8,000 on his own investigation of the assassination of John Kennedy. (The story appeared on the front page on February 20th.) Two weeks later the DA’s office announced the … Read more
Korean war biological warfare? Issue 11 of the Bulletin of Cold War International History Project contained what appears to be evidence that the allegations by North Korea and the Chinese that the US were using biological warfare during the Korean War were false – were in fact disinformation. Documents apparently from former Soviet archives seem … Read more
