Ann Rogers Pluto Press, 1997 £35.00 h.b. £10.99 p.b On page 2 the author announces that she is going to use a ‘Foucauldian approach’. To wit: ‘It focuses on the effects of power rather than its mechanism; that is, it attempts to analyse visible manifestations of power as outputs rather than intentions. Foucault argues … Read more
In this essay I offer some informed speculation on the assassination of John Kennedy. I have called this a new hypothesis, but in fact it is the elaboration of a hunch about the case – but an interesting hunch, I think. I take as proven that there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy and a … Read more
Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust Ed. David Bankier New York: Enigma Books, 2006. p/b, $23 US Intelligence and the Nazis Richard Breitman et al New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p/b, £16.99 On 11 January 1943, the British intercepted ‘one of the most extraordinary messages’ of the war at Bletchley Park: it referred ‘to … Read more
The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners Seumas Milne London: Verso, 2004, p/back, £8 GB84 David Peace London: Faber & Faber, 2004, p/back, £12.99 On the 20th anniversary of the most significant power struggle in post war Britain, two very different books on the miners’ strike of 1984-85, read alongside each other, … Read more
An extraordinary claim in The Times by the Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, that Arthur Ransome has been identified in KGB documents as ‘the most important secret source of intelligence on British foreign policy’ for the Cheka, the terror organisation of Bolshevik Russia, has infuriated lovers of Ransome’s work. Unlike Michael Foot, similarly traduced, Ramsome … Read more
Stephen Dorril Heinemann, London, 1993 It turns out that the ‘silent conspiracy’ of the title is a conspiracy which ‘has surrounded Britain’s secret state’ — a blindingly obvious tautology. Dorril has done as much as any other to lift the veil of secrecy from the British secret state, so it is somewhat disappointing to read … Read more
GEHEIM (“SECRET”) is West Germany’s representative in the international stable of state research publications. Geheim has appeared three or four times a year since 1983, and its editors are experienced state research journalists in the Federal Republic – Rudolf Gossner, author (with Geheim contributor Uwe Herzog) of an exhaustive work on the undercover activities of … Read more
A Channel 4 SOE mystery In January and February this year Channel 4 broadcast a history of the war-time Special Operations Executive, SOE, written and presented by the novelist Sebastian Faulks, called Churchill’s Secret Army. It was an interesting series with some excellent first-hand material and footage. But there were two mysteries. The first, and … Read more
The Cecil King coup plot as precursor to Gordon Brown’s ‘government of all the talents’ Students of parapolitics are divided as to the seriousness of the Cecil King coup plot of 1968 to establish what he called a ‘businessman’s government’, a permanent coalition government dominated by the right of the Labour Party but with unelected … Read more
Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA Jim Hougan (Random House, US 1984) Those who read Hougan’s last book Spooks will know that the arrival or a new one is something of an event. As expected, his latest has so many trails to follow, intriguing little titbits to ponder that one read is insufficient … Read more
