Paddy the spook Since the last issue I have skimmed Paddy Ashdown’s two volumes of diaries. While dominated by his attempt to do a deal with the Blair-led Labour Party, there are some other interesting snippets; and, through Ashdown’s eyes, there is a detailed portrait of Tony Blair which suggests that Rory Bremner’s impersonation […]
[…] Campbell (ABC) trial for example. And these were mostly triggered by the fall-out from Watergate and Vietnam in the United States. The people in London who went spook hunting in 1975/6 did so because the idea had been suggested to them by the example of spook hunters in the United States, notably John Marks. […]
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 of 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
[…] allies share all intelligence with the Soviets. (3) Back to philosophy After demobilisation, Ayer returned to academic philosophy, though he kept his hand in as a spook, working part-time for MI6 at Broadway as a political analyst. In this he was joined by Goronwy Rees, later to have his own difficulties within the […]
On Friday 7 August I was told by a journalist at another paper that the Mail on Sunday had a story that Cabinet Minister Peter Mandelson had worked for the spooks – though which branch was not clear. ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ I said, and described Mandelson’s 1978 Foreign Office (or SIS?)-funded trip to Cuba. … Read more
[…] collection of reports and essays from Intelligence, mostly of single events in the parapolitical calendar. For British readers, there are essays on the murder of junior British spook Jonathan Moyles; Dr Bull and the ‘supergun’ and Bull’s murder; framing Libya for Lockerbie; the Chinook crash which killed a large section of the British intelligence […]
[…] definitely not the invention of ‘British intelligence’. It just looks like one. His use of the term ‘British intelligence’ is revealing. Only those still ignorant of the spook dimension to recent history use that expression. Knowledge entails disaggregation. Bruce’s index includes a reference to a tiny Scottish Protestant group, the Young Cowdenbeath Volunteers, but […]
Weird Web Professor Peter Dale Scott reported the following in March. ‘Four times today I have tried to go to www.counterpunch.org. And four times Netscape was unable to find it. This happens frequently on my computer to websites which share my opinions, or to which I am hotlinked. And when I searched for ‘Alex Cockburn’ […]
[…] Political Economy to 9/11.() As for me, I have to admit to still being puzzled as to why WTC7 collapsed despite not being struck by a plane.() Spook histories Keith Jeffery, Professor of British History at Queen’s University Belfast, has been signed up to write the first official history of the Secret Intelligence Service. […]
Blob of the month Hear the one about the supposedly spook-watching magazine whose editor misspelt the name of the head of MI5? Yep: Rimmington, I had in the last issue: Rimington it should have been. Searchlight News Their campaign against Larry O’Hara has reached new depths. In the March issue they published his picture and […]
