Heather Brooke London: Pluto Press, 2005, £12.99 p/b This book is an invaluable guide for anyone thinking of using the new access laws chiefly the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or the Environmental Information Regulations to obtain information from public authorities. It tells you how to go about obtaining information and appealing, and … Read more
eds. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Andrew Lownie Edinburgh University Press, 1992. This worthy, but expensive, anthology of ten essays ranges widely from the obscure ‘secret operations of Spanish consular officials within Canada during the Spanish-American war’ to the useful account of the ‘birth of the Defense Intelligence Agency’. In between are a number of good essays … 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
During the current farcical trial of Ali Agca a most interesting snippet appeared in the press which looks like finally seeing off the alleged ‘Bulgarian connection.’ Signor Giovanni Pandico, a jailed former member of the upper echelons of the Naples-based Camorra, claimed that it had played a part in convincing Agca to accept the role … Read more
Kevin Coogan, Autonomedia, New York, 1999. $16.95 www.autonomedia.org When Francis Parker Yockey met his own personal Ernstfall with his typically vaudevillian suicide by cyanide pill, dressed only in his underpants and a pair of jack boots, it frustrated an eight year FBI manhunt for the ‘mystery man’. The impact of his gesture was no doubt … Read more
Why do they do this? In the previous issue I referred to the fictitious comments attributed by Tony Blair to a doctor in Africa. They’ve done it again. In February Blair’s spin doctor in chief, Alastair Campbell, claimed to have saved a man from being beaten by muggers, The Mail on Sunday (23 February) traced … Read more
Mark Perry William Morrow and Co, New York, 1992 I’m not even sure if this has actually been published in the U.K.: I’d never heard of it until this copy turned up in my local library with a UK price stuck over the dollar price, suggesting a few were imported. This should have been sub-titled … Read more
Bilderberged again Giles Radici’s Diaries 1980-2001 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004) isn’t terribly interesting but it does contain some snippets about Radici’s activities at the annual Anglo-German Konigswinter conference and one or two on his time at St Antony’s College (as a ‘parliamentary fellow’). There is also a section (pp. 336-7) on his attendance at … Read more
Wick the forgotten One of the most prestigious, yet least challenging, posts in British journalism is that of Washington correspondent. Prestigious because of the importance of the United States; but least challenging because the natives speak English, more or less; and there are so many ready-made stories ripe for recycling to Britain, as the Internet … Read more
2. Freedom and the Security Services – a Labour Party Discussion Document (£1.50 plus postage from The Labour Party, 150 Walworth Road, London, SE17 1JT) With this the Labour Party has taken a significant step towards the public recognition that, as far as the spook industry is concerned, the view of this society long held … Read more
