Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain: Volume 1 edited by Michael David Kandiah and Anthony Seldon Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1996 £29.50 As the title suggests this really contains two separate though not unrelated areas. The first is a series of shortish essays about so-called think tanks in the UK which follow on from … Read more
Larry Tye New York: Owl Books, 2002, pb $16.00 ISBN 0 8050 6789 2 If Edward Bernays hadn’t existed, Edward Bernays would have invented him. And in fact this is more or less what happened. This is the long-awaited paperback edition of the first full-length biography of Bernays, who, like President Harry Truman, added … Read more
I was a student here (1) from 1971-74 doing a social science degree; but more importantly, between 1976 and 1982 I was on the dole much of the time and spent most of my days in the library here, educating myself in post-war history, American history, what was available then about the intelligence services – … Read more
Richard M Bennett London: Virgin Books, 2003 £20 hardback This is 350 pages of summaries of political and historical conspiracies. It starts in 2330 BC but the first 2007 years take up only 84 pages. The content is mostly Anglo-American, especially after WW2. It is done chronologically, so you get odd sequences of subjects: … Read more
Paul Johnson, former editor of the New Statesman turned ‘new right’ Thatcherite, turned his hack hand to KAL 007 in a review of Alexander Dallin’s Black Box KAL 007 and the Superpowers (University of California Press 1985) in the Times Literary Supplement (August 23 1985). Johnson asks the question: “How could a Korean pilot skilful … Read more
Introduction: While my piece on CIA and DoD psychic research was awaiting publication in Lobster 30, the CIA went public on its interest in so-called Remote Viewing (RV).(1) As a result much new information has been obtained. This piece should be read in conjunction with the piece in Lobster 30. At the time of the … Read more
First supplement to A Who’s Who of the British Secret State See also: Part 1: Forty Years of Legal Thuggery (Lobster 9) Part 2: British Spooks “Who’s Who” (Lobster 10) Intelligence Personnel Named in ‘Inside Intelligence’ (Lobster 15) Philby naming names (Lobster 16) Spooks (Lobster 22) The official response to the ‘Who’s who’ Lobster special … Read more
Travesty: The trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the corruption of international justice John Laughland London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press; 2007, £14.99 (UK) $24.95 (US), p/b Laughland is an interesting figure, whose writing appears in media across the ideological spectrum, from the conservative right to The Guardian and here, Pluto Press. It is thus … Read more
Labour Party PLC David Osler Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, £15.99, 2002 Colin Challen MP Having written a history of Conservative Party funding, (1) I had been wondering when somebody would get round to doing a similar job on Labour. However, Labour Party plc is more than a simple history of party financing, it seeks to show … Read more
Gary Murray Simon and Schuster, London, 1993 For twenty five years Gary Murray worked as an RAF policeman and private investigator. In the early 1970s Murray ‘unexpectedly’ (invitation?) joined the Operations Intelligence cadre of 21 SAS, and this led to close contact with people from MI6, Army SIB, the Royal Military Police and the Parachute … Read more
