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
MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations Stephen Dorril Fourth Estate, London, 2000, £25 A Life: A. J. Ayer Ben Rogers Chatto and Windus, London, 1999, £20 Many books on intelligence matters simply rehash old ‘facts’, adding a new twist to – a slightly different interpretation of – well-known, if not necessarily well-understood, events. If … Read more
Organisation, History and Politics In the early years of the Thatcher decade, the radical or ‘new’ right was generally treated as though it was a united palace guard for libertarian Conservatism. More recently it has become clearer that the radical right in Britain was, at best, an ‘anti wet’ alliance between authoritarian/ nationalist and libertarian/radical … Read more
Alien baloney In Nexus vol 6 no 2 is another dollop of what seems to me to be obvious disinformation about UFOs and the US government. Another batch of MJ-12 documents have surfaced in America, given to a researcher called Timothy Cooper by a (now conveniently dead) source. Nexus prints some largish chunks from them. … Read more
Kenn Thomas Illuminet Press, Lilburn, GA 30048 USA, 1999, $14.95 www.illuminetpress.com The Crisman in the book’s title is a man called Fred Lee Crisman who is one of only two people who were involved at the beginning of the American UFO saga and who appear in the Kennedy assassination story. The other one is … Read more
In its own communications, evangelical Christianity exists in a delirious present but it has a rich and recoverable history. Evangelical religion can and should be explained in part in terms of the response of the millions of the faithful to the experience of modernity. But while secular intellectuals sometimes see it simply as a mechanism … Read more
Through The Looking Glass: British Foreign Policy In An Age Of Illusions Anthony Verrier (Cape, London 1983) This will probably turn out to be an important book, maybe even a little landmark in the (scanty) literature on British foreign policy since the war. So far it has been largely ignored by the literary/political establishment, receiving … Read more
The rise and fall of the Bulgarian Connection Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead (Sheridan Square Publications, New York, 1986) When the Turkish Grey Wolves hold rallies they howl collectively. So, at times, do journalists of the ‘free press’. In 1979 Edward Herman wrote After the Cataclysm with Noam Chomsky in which they shredded Western … Read more
From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 Mark Garnett (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) Dead Men Don’t Eat Lunch Geoffrey Gilson (self-published) Beyond Bullets Jules Boykoff’s AK Press, 2007: <www.akuk.com> Briefly Mark Garnett’s From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) has had some fairly sniffy reviews but I … Read more
‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s … Read more
