MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations Stephen Dorril Fourth Estate, London, 2000, £25 A Life: A. J. Ayer Ben Rogers Chatto and Windus, London, 1999, £20 Many books on intelligence matters simply rehash old ‘facts’, adding a new twist to – a slightly different interpretation of – well-known, if not necessarily well-understood, events. If … Read more
Crime fighting? There must many candidates for the title ‘The most damaging thing I have read about this government’. My current candidate is a piece by Simon Jenkins, ‘A Keep Police off the Streets Strategy Unit’ (The Times 2 February 2002). After reminding the reader that in the UK the police are a local service, … Read more
MI6: Fifty years of Special Operations Stephen Dorril Fourth Estate, London, 2000, £25 hb Harold Smith As I can testify from personal experience, having in 1960 been summoned to Government House in Lagos, Nigeria, to have my death sentence pronounced by the Governor General, MI6 is brutal, cruel, merciless and totally unforgiving. Dorril’s courage, … Read more
The big news in this field is the announcement that the distinguished scientist, Dr Rosalie Bertell, is apparently involved, assembling data on microwave or electromagnetic harassment. This is on the Web at http://www.calweb.com/~welsh/bertell.htm Preliminary conclusions were due to be announced in September but I understand those in the study are extremely busy and the September … Read more
The state in politics: Wallace, Holroyd and Lobster Colin Wallace’s 1980 conviction for the manslaughter of Jonathan Lewis was quashed on 9 October 1996. Considering the size of the political iceberg beneath that little tip, with the notable exceptions of the Guardian and Channel Four News, the response of the media on mainland UK was … Read more
‘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
At 00:20 on Sunday 31 August 1997 a black Mercedes S280 carrying four people left the Ritz Hotel in central Paris. Shortly afterwards at 00:25 it crashed into the thirteenth pillar of the Concorde-Boulogne lane of the Pont d’Alma Tunnel in central Paris. The driver – Henri Paul – was killed instantly. The front passenger … Read more
Close Quarter Battle (CQB) training is undertaken by an unusual group calling itself the CTT or Combat Training Team. The CTT group has two centres near London where it trains people in the art of silent killing and similar accomplishments. It poses as a commercial organisation, but its two centres at Fort Pilgrim and at … Read more
JFK: The two Oswalds Anthony Frewin Those of you who missed the two articles by John Armstrong on ‘the two Oswalds’ in recent issues of Probe magazine, don’t despair: Armstrong has rewritten and considerably enlarged them as a two volume DTP work. Armstrong’s finding may be the most significant research breakthrough in years. But we’re … Read more
On 1 January 2005 several new laws and regulations governing access to information come into force: the Freedom of Information Act 2000, covering England, Wales and N. Ireland; the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002; new Environmental Information Regulations 2004/5; Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004; and an extension of the Data Protection Act 1998 to … Read more
