Dominic Streatfeild London: Hodder and Stoughton 2006, £20, h/b One of the gaps in the parapolitical library has been a great pull-together of the material on ‘mind control’. And Streatfield has done it, and done it rather well. He is a documentary film-maker and some of the chapters here read rather like scripts. All … Read more
Introduction: Lee Harvey Oswald and New Orleans Lee Harvey Oswald, like his mother Marguerite Oswald (née Claverie), was born in New Orleans, on 18th October 1939, and spent his first five years in the Crescent City. In early 1944 Mrs Oswald moved to Dallas with Lee and his half-brother, John Pic. She changed addresses frequently … Read more
Is the picture on the right that of the old Spycatcher himself, Peter Wright? It has been used as if it is three times, in the Sunday Times on 12 July 1987 and 16 October 1988; and more recently, the version shown, heavily cropped to illustrate Wright’s obituary in the Independent, 28 April 1995. It … Read more
How often does the conspiracy buff/ parapolitics connoisseur stumble upon a new, all-colour, glossy parapolitics magazine at W. H. Smith’s at Euston Station? Not that often. When I called Private Eye to mail order a copy of Paul Foot’s fascinating report on the Lockerbie trial, I was assured that I could buy a copy at … Read more
When Labour narrowly won the October 1964 election they were greeted by dismal balance of payments figures. An external deficit in the region of £800 million was forecast, twice what had been expected (although the actual figure has since been revised down to £372 million). The government attempted to manage the crisis by a package … Read more
Most, if not all police forces already have, or are in the process of acquiring, information handling computers of some kind. The background to the present situation is best described in the pamphlet The Police Use Of Computers, parts of which were reproduced in State Research No 29, and were used by the National Computer … Read more
Christopher Mayhew I.B. Tauris, London, 1998, (hb) £25. Christopher Mayhew died recently thinking he set up the Information Research Department. As I have shown elsewhere, he was thoroughly manipulated by the Foreign Office – just like his boss at the time, Ernest Bevin, come to that. This short (142 pages) book contains 47 pages of … Read more
Harold Pinter defined American foreign policy thus: ‘Kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in.’ William Blum counts the heads that have been kicked. United States foreign policy In 1975, there was a committee of the US congress called the Pike Committee, named after its chairman Otis Pike. This committee investigated the covert … Read more
Straw Wars: Full Spectrum Sycophancy Jack Straw’s briefing with a response by Ken Coates Socialist Renewal, new series, number 8, £3.00 ‘Jack Straw’s briefing’ is a document, written by a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official, justifying UK support for the US ‘star wars’ missile defence system. Coates’ title comes from current US military ‘doctrine’, … Read more
Sean McPhilemy Roberts Rinehart, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1998, $24.95 Sean McPhilemy was the producer of a Channel Four documentary, ‘The Committee’, shown in 1991, which made a series of startling allegations about collusion between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland in the killing of Catholics. The programme — which I … Read more
