‘I know nothing about it. I don’t want to say I didn’t at the time, but today I have no knowledge of it.’ Former US Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara on the attack on USS Liberty. ‘As with the assassination of John F. Kennedy four years earlier, the official version [of the attack on … Read more
For some time, the world’s secret services have been making use of loose structures parallel to the official clandestine hierarchies for their more controversial activities. Fred Holroyd’s revelations have shown how the British state employed Loyalist paramilitaries for kidnap and assassination operations in Eire, whilst the Irangate hearings have exposed what is, so far, the … Read more
A man with Friends The Third Secret: the CIA, Solidarity and the KGB’s plot to kill the Pope Nigel West HarperCollins, London, 2000, £19.99 Let’s dispose of the ‘Third Secret’ nonsense. West claims that Pope John – the Polish Pope – was told the ‘third secret’ of the Fatima revelations; and that this ‘third secret’ … Read more
Dick Russell New York: Skyhorse, 2008, h/b, $24.95 Russell wrote The Man Who Knew Too Much, about the late Richard Nagell. A couple of weeks before the assassination of JFK, Nagell walked into a bank, fired two shots into the ceiling and waited for the police to come and arrest him. Years later he claimed … Read more
You might remember the red sofas, leather Chesterfields recovered in quieter fabric. You might remember that the talking didn’t end at any specific time, unique in an era when all television channels closed down at night. You might remember Oliver Reed getting drunk, although he was hardly the only disruptive guest. Reading Norman Baker’s book … Read more
Gecas and Special Branch A wonderful example of the reach and power of intelligence connections was provided in January. Why did the British state refuse to extradite Anton Gecas, the WW2 Lithuanian war criminal, to the Soviet Union in 1976? Turns out not only had Gecas worked for SIS at the end of WW2, he’d … Read more
The assassinations of the sixties JFK Farewell America On the site of The Coalition On Political Assassinations(1) is a very interesting essay by William Turner, ‘RFK, Charles de Gaulle and the Farewell America plot’, about the events leading up to the publication of the book Farewell America about the Kennedy assassination.(2) This may be marginalia … Read more
Malcolm Kennedy believes his telephones, email and post are being interfered with. His attempts to obtain answers have met with brick walls, and his situation has been described as Kafkaesque. Soon his complaint will be one of the first to be heard by the recently established Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Background Last Summer, Lobster drew attention … Read more
