Pieces without an author’s name are by the editor Parish Notices For info/help with this issue, thanks to the usual suspects, especially Jane Affleck; and also to Paul Stott. Among the contributors to this issue Jonathan Bloch is co-author of British Intelligence and Covert Action and Global Intelligence and the World’s Secret Intelligence Services Today. … Read more
It has been claimed (in Sunday News 20th Feb. and The Phoenix, 19th Feb.1983) that at the heart of the disclosures over the Kincora scandal is an internal row in the intelligence services. A dissident faction is thought to have formed in the Secret Service. The scuffles over revelations concerning Kincora started with the writing … Read more
The assassinations of the sixties JFK Farewell America On the site of The Coalition On Political Assassinations(1) is a very interesting essay by William Turner, ‘RFK, Charles de Gaulle and the Farewell America plot’, about the events leading up to the publication of the book Farewell America about the Kennedy assassination.(2) This may be marginalia … Read more
Philip Hoare, Duckworth Press, London, 1997, £16.99 The opening of MI5’s archives up to and including 1919 gives historians and researchers the chance to exhume the genesis of the right in British domestic politics as well as the early activities of the secret state. Despite its title (Oscar died in 1900) Hoare dips quite a … Read more
The view from the bridge Bilderberg and the EU The Diaries of former Liberal-Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, (volume one 1988-1997, London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2000) is a pretty uninteresting read with a couple of striking sections. Pages 42-46 contain his account of attending a Bilderberg meeting – by far the longest and most detailed account … Read more
Ed. Jon Melissen London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, h/b, £50.00 Just after World War 1, a group of the liberal-left in Britain began campaigning against orthodox – i.e. secret – diplomacy. It had caused the mind-bogglingly stupid carnage of World War 1, they argued, and had to go. This was the Union for Democratic Control … Read more
Tara, Colin Wallace, ‘Clockwork Orange’, Fred Holroyd and ‘the Dirty War’: a selective bibliography of Irish sources Introduction The Kincora scandal was exposed in 1980. ‘The troubles’ started in Northern Ireland over 20 years ago, resulting in the services of Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd in their respective spheres. ‘Tara’ was originally formed in 1966. … Read more
Stakeknife: Britain’s Secret Agents in Ireland Martin Ingram and Greg Harkin Dublin: The O’Brien Press: 2004, £8.99, p/back Mad Dog: The rise and fall of Johnny Adair and ‘C Company’ David Lister and Hugh Jordan Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2003, £15.99, h/back Stakeknife is a former member’s account of some of the operations of the … Read more
Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies Jim Schnabel Dell (USA) 1997, $5.99 Psychic Warrior David Morehouse Michael Joseph, London, 1996, £16.99 I approached the Jim Schnabel book with some caution. A number of people, including Armen Victorian, are intensely suspicious of Schnabel’s activities in the UFO/paranormal fields: some suspect him of … Read more
The Spy who came in from the Co-op David Burke Woodbridge: the Boydell Press, 2008, h/b, £18.99 The author was conducting a series of interviews with 87-year old Melita Norwood about her childhood among a group of pro-Soviet radical exiles in England in the 1920s and 30s, when it was revealed in the press, via … Read more
