In this essay I offer some informed speculation on the assassination of John Kennedy. I have called this a new hypothesis, but in fact it is the elaboration of a hunch about the case – but an interesting hunch, I think. I take as proven that there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy and a … Read more
12. Spooks – U.S. After the disastrous Iranian hostage operations, the Pentagon created a new intelligence/covert ops unit called Army Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), also known, apparently, as “the activity”. Augmenting both the CIA and the Pentagon’s own DIA, ISA existed for at least a year without Presidential/Congressional knowledge or approval. The unit is said … Read more
Reflections on the ‘cult of the offensive’: pre-emptive war, the Israel lobby and US military Doctrine In our book, Spies, Lies and the War on Terror,(1) a central theme is the ascendancy of pre-emptive war doctrine in US military strategy and its impact on public perceptions and the construction of political narrative. A parallel and … Read more
The Imperial War Museum book of Modern Warfare: British and Commonwealth Forces at War 1945-2000 Edited by Major General Julian Thompson London: Pan Books, 2003, £8.99 This is the paperback edition of the book published by Sidgwick and Jackson a year ago. It contains 15 essays on conflicts that have involved British armed forces … Read more
Susan. L. Carruthers Leicester University Press, London and New York, 1995 £45 hb, £16.99 pb. This is an important study of British psy-war activities, and the politics thereof, since the war. Almost all of this book was new to me, though I haven’t studied anti-British insurgencies. Originally a PhD thesis, happily, in Carruthers case, this … Read more
The funding of Blair Sometimes chronology implies causality and sometimes not. Consider the following sequence of events: in January 1994 Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary and career-long member of the Labour Friends of Israel, took a four day freebie trip to Israel, with his wife, at the expense of the Israeli government. Two months … Read more
John Rodden Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2003, $20, h/b John Rodden is one of the foremost Orwell scholars, someone with a remarkable knowledge not just of the man and his works, but also of his reception among academics, politicians and the general reading public. In this new collection of essays, he declares himself to … Read more
Feedback Re: the apparent post-war interrogation of Heinrich Muller and the purported German intercept of the Churchill-Roosevelt telephone conversation – in Lobster 35 pp. 20/21Chris Othen reports that the alleged intercept is taken from a book by Gregory Douglas, Gestapo Chief (R.J. Bender Publications, 1998). He writes: ‘This is one of those situations where the … Read more
IRD, home and away The creation of the Information Policy unit in HQ Northern Ireland in 1971 may have been the last occasion on which the classic IRD psy-war operation was created. Evidence of previous examples is hard to find, but skimming through Charles Foley’s Legacy of Strife: Cyprus from rebellion to civil war (Penguin, … Read more
The view from the bridge Bilderberg and the EU The Diaries of former Liberal-Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, (volume one 1988-1997, London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2000) is a pretty uninteresting read with a couple of striking sections. Pages 42-46 contain his account of attending a Bilderberg meeting – by far the longest and most detailed account … Read more
