At the end of a very long and well publicised trial for corrruption, the former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council, Derek Hatton, was acquitted earlier this year. (See U.K. daily papers on 13 and 14 March 1993. The Independent of that date had as the heading to its second Hatton story, ‘Prosecution hung on … Read more
Portland Free Press Portland Free Press, edited by Ace R. Hayes, with the legend ‘Tell the Truth and Run’ on its masthead, contains to produce important parapolitical material. The January/February issue had an extract from the 1991 deposition of Richard Brenneke, a pilot who claims to have flown missions for the Contras (which has not … Read more
Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the quest for legitimacy Nigel Copsey Palgrave/Macmillan 2004, £47.50, h/b The Radical Right in Britain Alan Sykes Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005, £16.99, p/b Modern British fascism has been poorly served by academic research, especially when it comes to coverage of the last two decades. These books attempt to … Read more
Hitler’s spy chief: the Wilhelm Canaris mystery Richard Bassett London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2005, £20 This is a full and very well researched biography of one of the great enigmatic figures of the spy world in the 30s and 40s. The author, former foreign correspondent of The Times in Berlin and Prague, provides … Read more
The American boomerang In America, Mayor Bloomberg has banned smoking in public places, especially in restaurants, inadvertently turning New York into an unlikely but almost spook-free zone. (1) American intelligence officers may not smoke, but some of their overseas contacts will. If meeting in the West, they will prefer to do so in London; or, … Read more
From Garrick Alder Re: John Newsinger’s ‘Orwell and the IRD in Lobster 38 The appearance since Lobster 45 of further details of Orwell’s dealings with the IRD has reminded me how very interested I was by Mr Newsinger’s admirable reappraisal of the Orwell/IRD incidents. Two things have struck me that seems to have escaped comment … Read more
Counter-insurgency in Rhodesia J. K. Villiers (Croom Helm, London, 1985) An expanded Masters thesis, full of descriptions of psychological operations by the Rhodesian forces (which failed utterly: and no wonder, they were useless), and rather less about pseudo-gang activities which, like their equivalents in the British operations in Kenya, were a success – i.e. they … Read more
Wensley Clarkson Blake Publishing, London 1998, £16.99 Remember Jonathan Moyle, the ex-RAF officer, editor of Defence Helicopter World, who was found dead, hanging in a wardrobe in his hotel room in Chile in 1990? This is about him – and about his death. It is done in the most irritating manner possible, written as a … Read more
In its own communications, evangelical Christianity exists in a delirious present but it has a rich and recoverable history. Evangelical religion can and should be explained in part in terms of the response of the millions of the faithful to the experience of modernity. But while secular intellectuals sometimes see it simply as a mechanism … Read more
George Gregory Korkala was the ‘soldier’ in the activities of ‘lieutenant’ Frank Terpil and ‘leader’ Edwin Wilson. Wilson and Terpil are both ex-CIA, though when their relationships with the ‘company’ ended is not known. Korkala was arrested in February 1982 at a trade fair on security devices in Madrid. Spanish police carried out the arrest … Read more
