How perceptions have changed! In Leveller 51, March 1981, there was this snippet: ‘Why all the fuss about the Panorama programme on British Intelligence? Eventually there was just one cut — Gordon Winter, BOSS agent, former freelance journalist, in a pre-title sequence: “British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement in … Read more
This piece by Daniel Brandt began as a short letter commenting on my review of Right Woos Left by Chip Berlet (Lobster 23 p. 34). I wrote back and asked if he would like to expand it. And so he did, writing almost the whole thing at one long sitting. Anyone who joined the U.S. … Read more
Searchlight again In the Daniel Brandt essay in this issue there is a section on the scandal in the United States resulting from the discovery that the Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has been found to be collecting data on hundreds of political groups, both right and left, and trading data with agencies of … Read more
Gemstone In Lobster 19, I noted the incremental addition of disinformation to the original Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File. As it turned out, the process was further down that road than I had imagined. From Owen Wilkes, New Zealand’s leading parapolitics researcher, comes the news that a version is in circulation there. Now described … Read more
The Observer is a pale shadow of what it once was but it still has a lively Business section. Every fortnight Business carries a column from the American investigative journalist Greg Palast who is about as good as it gets these days on the interface between corporate interests and politicians. (1) In that Business section … Read more
Some recent JFK literature In front of me is a copy of Guth and Wrone’s The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography 1983-1979 (1980), nearly 450 pages, running to some 5,134 entries covering books, magazine articles, records, TV programmes, and news items from both the New York Times and the … Read more
eds. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Andrew Lownie Edinburgh University Press, 1992. This worthy, but expensive, anthology of ten essays ranges widely from the obscure ‘secret operations of Spanish consular officials within Canada during the Spanish-American war’ to the useful account of the ‘birth of the Defense Intelligence Agency’. In between are a number of good essays … Read more
Peddlars Of Crisis Jerry W. Sanders (Pluto, London 1983) With this book research into clandestinism and Cold War revisionism take another big step towards meeting. It is the story of the Committee on the Present Danger, the Cold War think-tank that prepared the way for the election of Reagan and provided the administration with Jeanne … Read more
This arrived from David Guyatt, prefaced by the following message: ‘Robin: This is being published on a couple of Internet sites shortly. I’ve given up trying to sell it or get any responsible journo/editor to carry my work forward. They all have chickened out, mostly without an explanation or even a courtesy call/reply. Fuck ’em … Read more
See note (1) David Phillips, the former CIA officer considered by the Select Committee on Assassinations as a possible candidate for the true identity behind the cover name ‘”Maurice Bishop” -(2)- reacted strongly when this book was published in the summer of 1980. He contacted top executives in newspapers and television, making himself available to … Read more
