[…] strangers to the JFK case. They published Guth and Wrone’s magisterial bibliography The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography 1963-79 (1980). A spook joke (and a good one, at that) Many prisoners do not fare too well in the hands of Shin Bet, an agency with a reputation for […]
[…] of the Association of National Security Alumni’ and is actually a magazine/newsletter run by and for the radical end (sic) of the former U.S. foreign service and spook world. It is edited by David McMichael, who quit the CIA in the mid 1980s over the distortion of the intelligence process forced on the Agency […]
Global Intelligence: the World’s Secret Services Today Paul Todd and Jonathan Bloch, London and New York, Zed Books, 2003 h/back £32.95/ $55.00 p/back £9.99/ $17.50 ‘We lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD program’ Vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Stuart Cohen, December 2003 With the spectacular failure of … 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
Shorts Yorkshire Post (14 March ’92) reported the admission by the Ministry of Defence that in an operation called HORNBEAM, trawlers had been used during the first Cold War to spy on Soviet shipping. But the MOD spokesperson refused to confirm that some trawlers had carried intelligence officers. Statewatch Bulletin (Jan/Feb 1992) includes an important … Read more
See note 1. Introduction We were as surprised as anybody at the furore over Oliver Stone’s movie. When we published the Dean Andrews material and the analysis of the Clay Shaw U.K. contacts in Lobster 20, in November 1990, we did so in the certain knowledge that hardly anybody was still interested in the JFK […]
Iraq – fallout continues ‘Five years on from Hutton and we still haven’t been told the truth about the war based on lies’, fulminated Peter Oborne earlier this year. (1) Also less than happy was barrister Michael Shrimpton who unsuccessfully complained to Ofcom about an interview he gave for David Kelly: the conspiracy files, (2) … Read more
[…] and third books, MI5: A Matter of Trust and MI6 were both something like in-house histories, given – edited no doubt – to Allason in the great spook rivalries of the 1980s. Is this true? Maybe I used to know and have forgotten. In the introduction to his MI5 book he quotes from the […]
SIS is dead – you read it first in Lobster – but the funeral has not been announced. Established in 1909, it will not make its centenary. SIS once offered a global brand operating in a market that had been previously divided along the lines of accepted cartels (market fixing). Its market-share, however, has been … Read more
‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s … Read more
