The Third Decade The Third Decade, “a journal of research on the John F. Kennedy assassination” keeps appearing with impressive, not to say stunning, frequency. 6 in a year so far, and that’s 26 plus pages per issue. With The Third Decade the Kennedy assassination researchers have finally got, as near as makes no difference, … Read more
In October the US Government hired advertising doyenne Charlotte Beers as Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.(1) She intended ‘commissioning research into the Arab mentality’, confirming what we already knew: the American Government has so little respect for its many Arab/Muslim citizens, it has had to commission research into who they are. … Read more
One of the aims of this column is to open up new lines of enquiry for parapolitical specialists. It might seem very odd to start with the name of Reinhard Gehlen, long-since dead founder of the BND, the German Security Service. Reinhard Gehlen, to over-simplify a very complex tale, bought his way into the Western … Read more
Mark Felt is ‘Deep Throat’. Bob Woodward says so, and his word is law in this particular arena. No matter that Woodward had a dozen sources, some of whom may have been more important than Throat himself. The point is that ‘Throat’ is anyone Woodward says he is, and he says he is Felt. In … Read more
Are raw prawns pink? Fun and games Down Under where a great brouhaha developed over allegations that Australia’s most famous – and left-wing historian, the late Manning Clark, was a Soviet agent. It started when the Australian poet Sid Murray reported that 26 years before he had seen Clark at a dinner wearing the Order … Read more
MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations Stephen Dorril Fourth Estate, London, 2000, £25 A Life: A. J. Ayer Ben Rogers Chatto and Windus, London, 1999, £20 Many books on intelligence matters simply rehash old ‘facts’, adding a new twist to – a slightly different interpretation of – well-known, if not necessarily well-understood, events. If … Read more
Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin Gollancz, London 1991 Pat Nixon, wife of Richard Nixon, died in June. The obituarist in the Independent of 23 June 1993, commented that ‘she stood by him loyaly, convinced that he was the victim of an international plot involving double agents and the CIA.’ Well, something like that. Mrs Nixon’s … Read more
The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 1 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Pan Books, 1998, £7.99 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 2 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Macmillan, 1999, £25 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 3 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Macmillan 2000, £25 Woodrow Wyatt’s diaries are quite remarkable. Any normal persons would have tried … Read more
How public relations became the cutting edge of corporate power David Miller and William Dinan London: Pluto, 2008; £45 h/b and £14.99 p/b This is big stuff, ambitious and wide-ranging with an enormous amount packed into 180 pages of text (with 50 pages of notes, tables and index). Many books are too long: this is … Read more
Kevin Coogan is the author of the study of the American fascist Francis Parker Yockey, Dreamer of the Day, reviewed in Lobster 39. He sent me an essay primarily about the American far-right group the Defenders of the American Constitution. The essay, while fascinating, is too big (about 20 pages) for these columns. However within … Read more
