Korean war biological warfare? Issue 11 of the Bulletin of Cold War International History Project contained what appears to be evidence that the allegations by North Korea and the Chinese that the US were using biological warfare during the Korean War were false – were in fact disinformation. Documents apparently from former Soviet archives seem … Read more
Defector Politics: or, grooving with Mr G. The six months since the last Lobster have been the most interesting period in defector politics – the attempted political exploitation a Soviet defector – that I can remember. Oleg Gordievsky has really been having himself a time and putting himself about! Even I have a Gordievsky anecdote. … Read more
The idea that the Security Service, MI5, colluded with British fascism in the inter-war years is not to be found in the existing literature on the subject. On the contrary the fascists are depicted as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries of MI5’s attentions. MI5, it is generally argued, viewed fascism as a potential danger … Read more
Tons of documents and tape recordings recovered from an old manor house in Lancashire reveal the true depths of corruption in English provincial life at the end of the twentieth century. Owen Oyston was the British Labour Party’s biggest private financial contributor in the Thatcher years. The millionaire owner of radio stations and glossy magazines … Read more
When I began studying the Kennedy assassination, back in 1983, my naivety was considerable. It would be a few years before I fully hooked into the diffuse network of assassination researchers, and my hit-and-miss efforts to locate that fraternity produced some bizarre results during the 1985-87 period. Consulting periodical directories and other sources, I collected … Read more
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave London: Verso, 2003, h/b, £17 The story in brief: before and during WW2 Japan stripped the countries it occupied of its transportable wealth — gold and other precious metals, diamonds, cash, bonds and so on. As the war turned against them this was buried in various locations, many of … Read more
MI5 and the Wilson Plot The MI5 website (www.mi5.gov.uk) has a section called ‘myths and misunderstandings’, which features, among other things, ‘the Wilson Plot’. The paragraph it devotes to this episode is worth studying. It refers the reader to Spycatcher and Peter Wright’s allegation that ‘up to 30 members of the Service had plotted to … Read more
Parapolitics: “Generally, covert politics, the conduct of public affairs not by rational debate and responsible decision-making but by indirection, collusion and deceit.” – Peter Dale Scott The Watergate tag is appropriate to Kincora because, like that epic affair, an initial minor offence was the key that unlocked many secret doors. As James Angleton noted: “A … 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
The Diana inquest – the people’s verdict? Well we now know who didn’t do it. It wasn’t the Royals. Not that they and their associates don’t have past form when it comes to helping family members into the next world. George V was given a fatal injection on his deathbed in order that news of … Read more
