It is a difficult time for Britain’s security and intelligence agencies. Not only have the old certainties collapsed with the Berlin Wall, Britain’s economy is in increasingly dire shape, and current levels of government funding for the agencies can no longer be taken for granted. (1) As a result, both the major agencies, MI5 and … Read more
[…] (on which see Lobster 11). The parapolitical overlay is suggested by the involvement of Richard Allen in the IDU. (Financial Times 25 July 1985). Allen is a spook. The PDU, funded by the USIS via the so-called ‘Project Democracy’ (on which see National Reporter Summer 1986) has been funding the right in New Zealand […]
McKinney/Africa/covert action Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney sponsored a forum, ‘Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, D.C.’ And this isn’t just cold war history; this is names, people and companies doing it today. The text of the meeting is at www.copvcia.comand Red spiels The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has now posted … Read more
[…] shop staff) ‘That depends what it is. If it’s a long one, I’ll put my glasses on.’ Turner: ‘Can you put ‘To David Turner — from a spook to a subversive?²’ ‘And please can I know what’s on my file?’ Rimington (smiling like an indulgent headmistress) ‘I’m sure you haven’t got one!’ Turner: ‘I […]
Robert Parry Arlington (VA): The Media Consortium, 2004; $22.95 (US); p/b Order from <www.secrecyandprivilege.com> This is the book I have enjoyed most since the last Lobster and it is one of the best books I have read on American politics and parapolitics. Robert Parry really is very good indeed: he has the serious investigative … 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 […]
Intelligence and National Security Started in 1986, Intelligence and National Security is co-edited by Christopher Andrew and Michael Handel, and is the first British academic journal devoted to the area. I’ve seen 3 issues and while the standard of writing and research is extremely high from contributors like Lawrence Freedman, M.R.D.Foot and Bradley Smith, the … 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
Bilderberged again Giles Radici’s Diaries 1980-2001 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004) isn’t terribly interesting but it does contain some snippets about Radici’s activities at the annual Anglo-German Konigswinter conference and one or two on his time at St Antony’s College (as a ‘parliamentary fellow’). There is also a section (pp. 336-7) on his attendance at … Read more
[…] interviews he did for Radio 4 published as Muddling Through; Power, Politics and the Quality of Government in Post-war Britain (Gollancz 1996), he tip-toes up to the spook problem and turns away again. Of Harold Wilson’s second term he writes: ‘There was, too, a trace of paranoia, not this time about Labour rivals but […]
