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
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
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
See note(1) Like some Russian high official come to treat with Chechen rebels, CIA Director John Deutch arrived in force — by heavily-armed motorcade, and with helicopter cover. SWAT teams swarmed over the building that was Deutch’s destination. But on November 15, 1996, Deutch’s destination was in fact only the auditorium of Locke High School … Read more
At 00:20 on Sunday 31 August 1997 a black Mercedes S280 carrying four people left the Ritz Hotel in central Paris. Shortly afterwards at 00:25 it crashed into the thirteenth pillar of the Concorde-Boulogne lane of the Pont d’Alma Tunnel in central Paris. The driver – Henri Paul – was killed instantly. The front passenger … Read more
Here are a few more web sites that may be of interest. Thanks for contributions to David Guyatt, Terry Hanstock, Daniel Brandt, Chris Atton and Tony Hollick. Further contributions and comments are welcome: my e-mail is Politics and government USA DoE Office of Human Radiation Experiments http://www.ohre.doe.gov/ ‘OHRE, established in March 1994, leads the … 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
Introduction The ‘Gable memo’ reproduced below originally appeared as the subject matter of a long and extremely interesting article, ‘Destabilising the “decent people”‘ by Nick Anning, Duncan Campbell and Bruce Page in the New Statesman on February 15, 1980. This is still worth digging out, particularly for its detailed account of the context in which … Read more
Secret Nazi Technology which could have changed the course of WWII Gary Hyland and Anton Gill, Headline Books, 1998, £18.99 Thirty years ago schoolboys built model aeroplanes. The most common and popular were, for the Airfix generation, the main combat types of the last great war – Spitfires, Me109s, Mustangs, Zeros, Lancasters, Flying Fortresses etc … 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
