US deception operation blowback The e-newsletter stuff (1) ran this fascinating piece around 15 March. ‘At the Princeton conference last Saturday, Raymond Garthoff, a distinguished historian now with the Brookings Institute and a former CIA analyst, mentioned that we had recently learned of an FBI-Army double agent operation that may have spurred the Soviets to … Read more
British traditions in decline include a sense of the ridiculous as a weapon of state, jingoism and understatement. The last of these was always a brilliant British con: you only have to look at the gothic majesty of the palace of Westminster (Parliament) to realise we have never really done understatement. ‘A sense of the … Read more
Mark Felt is ‘Deep Throat’. Bob Woodward says so, and his word is law in this particular arena. No matter that Woodward had a dozen sources, some of whom may have been more important than Throat himself. The point is that ‘Throat’ is anyone Woodward says he is, and he says he is Felt. In … Read more
Thanks chiefly to the efforts of the Irish MEP Patricia McKenna, we now know quite a lot about the relationship between the European Union and members of various elite management groups, notably the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. Romano Prodi, now President of the European Commission, was a Steering Committee Member of the Bilderberg … Read more
British ‘USP’ In September 2000 the tragic case of two infants from Malta dominated the headlines.(1) British judges were asked to decide whether it was ‘right’ for doctors to sacrifice one child, joined at the abdomen with her twin, for the sake of the other. As a result of global press coverage, the moral arguments … Read more
The unspeakable Martin Kettle of The Guardian is a political journalist who has been pretty close to, and supportive of, New Labour since the 1990s. His article ‘The special relationship that squandered a noble cause’ (27 May 2006) opened with this: ‘The long arc of Tony Blair’s rise and decline has been punctuated by journeys … Read more
Down Under David Lange may have come and gone and the New Zealand Labour Party may have blazed a rightwards trail for Tony Blair et al to follow, but the New Zealand anti-military, anti-spook campaigns continue. The latest journal to document the activities of the spooks and military in that part of the Pacific is … Read more
Why do they do this? In the previous issue I referred to the fictitious comments attributed by Tony Blair to a doctor in Africa. They’ve done it again. In February Blair’s spin doctor in chief, Alastair Campbell, claimed to have saved a man from being beaten by muggers, The Mail on Sunday (23 February) traced … Read more
Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more
A secret service? In the Guardian of 12 June 2000 David Leigh had an important piece on the relationship between our secret servants and the media. At the core of this was his account of the revelation, via a libel suit in London, of an MI6 operation to plant disinformation in the Sunday Telegraph about … Read more
