[…] 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 […]
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
Votescam (again) Reading the papers and listening to the radio in the days immediately after Bush’s election victory brought home what a parallel universe we – readers of magazines like Lobster – are living in. Here we had an enormous election surprise: despite many of the pre-election polls in the last few days of the … Read more
All four of Tony Blair’s new political appointees at the Ministry of Defence are part of Labour’s Atlanticist network. Three of them, George Robertson, Lord John Gilbert and John Speller, are members of two interrelated bodies, the Atlantic Council and its labour movement wing, the Trades Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding (TUCETU). The … Read more
A new royalty? A few weeks before former BBC political editor Andrew Marr received two Broadcasting Press Guild awards – one as ‘best TV performer in a non-acting role’ – his journalistic colleagues were quietly made aware of a little drama in his own life. Typical of the message from editorial lawyers circulated among Britain’s … Read more
A Wapping mystery I noticed with some interest that Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, was described in the Guardian on May 27 as having been labour correspondent of the Economist in the 1970s. Was he, I thought, one of the correspondents recruited by MI5 in the big F branch expansion circa 1973-5? Did that explain … Read more
Nicky Hager Craig Potton Publishing Box 555, Nelson, New Zealand $25 (New Zealand) 1996 Sample chapters at http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/ This was mentioned briefly in the Guardian some months ago. Hager has done a Duncan Campbell and stitched together, in incredible detail, New Zealand’s contribution to the NSA-run global network of communications interception. But his work goes … Read more
[…] One journalist working on the story has heard variations of the “Wallace as Walter Mitty” theme from 5 different sources, only one of them definitely a British spook. How far this campaign has penetrated the Palace of Westminster I just don’t know. The major sub-theme in these whispers is about the Ulster Citizens’ Army. […]
‘They’re blanks!’ Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin? Barry Chamish Brookline Books, PO Box 1046, Cambridge, MA 02238, USA, $15.95 This is an interesting and important book. To its content I will return. But who is the author? Chamish is one of those names you cannot avoid if you potter around in the American conspiracy sections […]
[…] Norton, London and New York, 1986) . This current CAIB also includes more from the splendid Herman and Brodhead on disinformation surrounding the “Bulgarian connection” and the best biographical essay I know of a super- spook, Frank Carlucci. CAIB – $5 (US) with $2.50 (US) for foreign airmail, from PO Box 50272, Washington DC 20004.
