[…] questionable indeed. This is not just due to bizarre fantasies, and guesswork and/or wish-fulfilment masquerading as fact, there is also what appears to be the passing of disinformation on behalf of MI5 and possibly others. Where possible, I have not relied on Searchlight’s analysis. That said, it always makes for amusing (and often informative) […]
David Aaronovitch London: Jonathan Cape, £17.99, h/b In his introduction Aaronovitch tells us he became interested in conspiracy theories when someone he was working with introduced him to the they-didn’t-go-to-the-moon theory; and this offended his ‘sense of plausibility’ He’s right: we all have a kind of plausibility threshold, beyond which a proposition about the world … Read more
[…] and Pershing missiles in Western Europe. Ledeen was likewise part of the Neocon network that formed the Congressionally-funded National Endowment for Democracy in 1983.(3) Landis describes Ledeen’s disinformation themes in the few years between the first Jonathan conference and his involvement in Iran-Contra as follows: ‘The notion that the CIA was destroyed under Carter; […]
[…] hysteria on the British right in the 1970s about the threat from the left and the belief of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson that there was a disinformation campaign against him and his government. He was right: the hysteria and the campaign were largely the work of serving or former intelligence officers. We had […]
[…] Hard Right, Ernest B. Ferguson (W. W. Norton, London and New York, 1986) . This current CAIB also includes more from the splendid Herman and Brodhead on disinformation surrounding the “Bulgarian connection” and the best biographical essay I know of a super-spook, Frank Carlucci. CAIB – $5 (US) with $2.50 (US) for foreign airmail, […]
[…] unclear. Wright offered at least four versions of his role in the so-called ‘Wilson plots’. Livingstone states that: ‘ Neave himself privately employed Colin Wallace to spread disinformation and black propaganda.’ Colin Wallace did no work for Airey Neave. However, he did send him an article he had written, ‘Ulster, a state of subversion’, […]
[…] the loony James Angleton, came to believe that Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent; and CIA counter-intelligence was the ultimate source of much of the disinformation and smears about him and those around him in the middle 1970s. This may have been pay-back for Wilson’s temerity in refusing to bend. It is […]
[…] Ireland say that the UDA and parts of the IRA are jointly controlling some of their criminal activities and use the same drug traffickers.’ This is classic disinformation (see also ‘IRA Godfathers’ et al, ad nauseam) that the British state has been running since about 1971. The story continued: ‘Now they are exporting their […]
[…] were responsible for millions of deaths from starvation in a terror-bombed economy. This time Herman, with Brodhead, targets ‘the Bulgarian connection’, and in particular a clique of disinformation agents starring the ‘Big Three’ – Claire Sterling, Paul Henze and Michael Ledeen. Not only did these three have access to the most widely viewed TV […]
[…] unclassifiable mixture: some new research on the bombing of Earth First’s Judi Bari; Kenn Thomas on attempts to get Timothy Leary’s FBI file via the FOIA; a disinformation operation by South African intelligence (the non-existent FAPLA); a memoir of radical politics in the mid-West of the 1930s; interview with Flatland editor Jim Martin; plus […]
