BERR In a profile of John Hutton, the new Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Hutton said that Labour ‘is the natural party of business’,(1) another benchmark (or, in Corinne Souza country, ‘rebranding’) in the shift from old to New Labour. For it was Harold Wilson’s boast that he had made Labour … Read more
James Adams Hutchinson, London, 1994. I first noticed James Adams when he began running some of the MOD’s disinformation lines about Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd in 19867. For a while I collected articles by him which seemed to show the traces of Whitehall briefings. Then I stopped: what was I going to do with … Read more
Hi-tech computer voting is now the order-of-the-day in America. In October 2002 the US Administration passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which authorised $4 billion for states to use the Direct Recording Election system (DRE) equipment which would have to meet certain standards (set by the Act) by the year 2006. At which point, … Read more
Kim Besly Kim Besly died in July. A brief notice appeared in the Guardian on 30 July 1996. Besly was one of the pioneers in this country in the campaign to alert people to the dangers of electromagnetic technology. I met Besly only once but Harlan Girard knew her better and, in response to her … Read more
Matthew R. Simmons London: Wiley, 2005, h/b Ironic, perhaps, that I finished reviewing this book in Calgary, just south of the largest land-based oil project in the American hemisphere, the Athabasca shale tar sands oil recovery projects. Collectively these will realise investment between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the next ten years. Pipelines … Read more
Clockwork Orange 2 Jottings Here is another, previously unpublished section from Wallace’s 1974 jottings for the aborted operation ‘Clockwork Orange 2’. Can Politicians Be Trusted? N. St. Stevas: homosexual – boyfriend of Elton John’s manager – cocaine user at parties Homosexual relationships – Heath, Van Straubenzee, St. John Stevas, Thorpe Child prostitution: William McGrath, Van … Read more
Suffer the innocents? The Stevens inquiry into Britain’s state assassination policy in Northern Ireland in the 1980s began in September 1989. The police officers who signed up for it didn’t think it would take long to do. ‘We thought it was going to be a fairly routine investigation. We didn’t expect to find that there … Read more
The debate about whether the British should have a military presence East of Suez seemed to have been settled under the Wilson-Callaghan Government in the 1960s and 1970s. The process of withdrawal started with the independence of India and Pakistan (widely celebrated in the UK media recently on its sixtieth anniversary), was confirmed by the … Read more
Pat Daly was the prime prosecution witness at the trial of two Irish National Liberation Army men at the Old Bailey in 1993. They were accused of conspiracy to steal explosives, conspiracy to cause explosions and possession of firearms with intent to endanger life. Daly lived in Bristol at Southmead from 1969 to 1989. Before … Read more
Mark Felt is ‘Deep Throat’. Bob Woodward says so, and his word is law in this particular arena. No matter that Woodward had a dozen sources, some of whom may have been more important than Throat himself. The point is that ‘Throat’ is anyone Woodward says he is, and he says he is Felt. In … Read more
