Conspiracy, Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Research Robin Ramsay ‘The unexpected and dramatic death of the famous, whether statesmen like John F Kennedy, or media stars like Marilyn Monroe, invariably give rise to conspiracy theories.’ Thus Cambridge historian, Christopher Andrew, during his disgraceful hatchet job on Hugh Thomas’ books about Rudolph Hess for BBC2 ‘s Timewatch … Read more
Parapolitics/Intelligence November 1984 – February 1985 The usual invaluable mixture of precis of stories from the world’s press plus reprints of some entire articles and the occasional original piece. November’s includes a long and excellent piece by Jonathan Marshall on the Strange career of Ronald Hedley Stark. PP/Intelligence subscriptions $20 payable to ADI at ADI, … Read more
CIA: read all about it The most striking intelligence story since the last issue was Tim Spicer’s ‘CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US’.(1) It included this: ‘A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of ten CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the … Read more
Articles of note ‘Opium, tungsten, and the Search for National Security, 1940-52’, by Jonathan Marshall, in Journal of Policy History, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1991. (Published at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.) Marshall is the former producer of the wonderful Parapolitics USA, and, most recently that I have seen, co-author with Peter … Read more
As I write this in late May 1998, the world is watching two Indonesian traditions, locked in a dramatic struggle to determine that country’s future. One, representing one of the world’s most tolerant Muslim cultures, seeks a non-violent return towards the democratic civil society that prevailed in the early 1950s. The other apparently hopes to … Read more
Votescam (again) Reading the papers and listening to the radio in the days immediately after Bush’s election victory brought home what a parallel universe we – readers of magazines like Lobster – are living in. Here we had an enormous election surprise: despite many of the pre-election polls in the last few days of the … Read more
“What would they want with me?” Lord Mountbatten had imperiously said to his secretary shortly before his death…… (1) Ulster Unionist M.P. Enoch Powell suggested that the CIA were involved in the murder of Earl Mountbatten of Burma in August 1979…”The Mountbatten murder was a high-level ‘job’ not unconnected with the nuclear strategy of the … Read more
Shorts Yorkshire Post (14 March ’92) reported the admission by the Ministry of Defence that in an operation called HORNBEAM, trawlers had been used during the first Cold War to spy on Soviet shipping. But the MOD spokesperson refused to confirm that some trawlers had carried intelligence officers. Statewatch Bulletin (Jan/Feb 1992) includes an important … Read more
George McT. Kahin London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, £17.95, p/b The late George Kahin was a pioneering US scholar of Southeast Asia in the post WW2 era. This memoir describes some of his travels in the 1945-70 period, when he behaved rather like a CIA officer (for which he was occasionally mistaken), talking to the rising … Read more
