Paul Lashmar and James Oliver Sutton Publishing, Stroud (UK) £25.00 hb This is a really interesting and important book – perhaps the most important book about the British secret state since Fitzgerald and Bloch’s British Intelligence and Covert Action in the early 1980s. The incremental uncovering of the Information Research Department (IRD) story has been … Read more
Books The Secret War: an account of the sinister activities along the border involving Gardai, RUC, British Army and SAS Patsy McArdle (Mercier Press, Dublin 1984) McArdle is a journalist with Downtown Radio in Northern Ireland. Journalists sometimes write really good books, but McArdle’s is a stinker, little more than a jumbled collection of recycled … Read more
Introduction Greenwood Press in the USA have just published Anthony Frewin’s’ The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: An Annotated Film, TV and Videography, 1963-1992 (ISBN 0-313-28982-4). The book is divided into 12 chapters covering such subjects as Oswald in New Orleans, Dealey Plaza (some 40 entries, no less), Dallas post-assassination, TV programs and compilations, documentaries, … Read more
Books Secret Contenders Melvin Beck (Sheridan Square Publications, US 1984) The CIA Christmas party of 1958 found 48 year old all-American boy, Melvin Beck, getting the offer of overseas work with Clandestine Services. He “struck like a hungry bass” and landed in Havana in 1959, just as the first Russian freighter was arriving. Fairly early … Read more
Just ten years ago the issues were so simple, the arguments so clean. The concept of hackers was cute and quaint, best understood through Hollywood thrillers like ‘War Games.’ The major media had yet to use the word ‘cyberspace,’ a term just then created by William Gibson in Neuromancer, his first masterpiece in a strange … Read more
As Steve Dorril shows in his essay on Permindex, the lack of a satisfactory resolution to the assassination of Kennedy allowed Soviet intelligence to use the event to their own ends. The French also had a go with the pseudonymous book Farewell America which made public considerable information about the CIA’s activities while pretending to … Read more
The Kennedys: The Conspiracy to Destroy a Dynasty Matthew Smith Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, h/b, £16.99, 2005 State Secrets: The Kent-Wolkoff Affair Bryan Clough Hove: Hideaway Publications, 2005, £15 (US $27.50) <www.statesecrets.co.uk/index.html> Matthew Smith has written several books covering the tribulations of the Kennedy family and is described on the book jacket as a screenwriter … Read more
Olivier Schmidt Atlanta (USA): Clarity Press, 2005, $14.95, p/b www.bookmasters.com/clarity/currenttitles.htm Here’s a new name to me, the publisher Clarity; and a familiar one, Olivier Schmidt. In the 1980s Schmidt was producing a very good newsletter in Paris, Intelligence and Parapolitics. This got expensive, professionalised and eventually went on-line for subscribers as Intelligence.(1) This is … Read more
Secrets and Lies: A history of CIA mind control and germ warfare Gordon Thomas JR Books (www.jrbooks.com) 2007, h/b, £20 Gordon Thomas has written a number of books on the intelligence services and this has a glossy cover, voluminous appendices and some admiring quotes. But it adds little to what we already know about … Read more
Iraq – fallout continues ‘Five years on from Hutton and we still haven’t been told the truth about the war based on lies’, fulminated Peter Oborne earlier this year. (1) Also less than happy was barrister Michael Shrimpton who unsuccessfully complained to Ofcom about an interview he gave for David Kelly: the conspiracy files, (2) … Read more
