Clint Eastwood Movies Flags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood and to be released in Britain in December 2006, is an example of post-9-11 PR. It tells the story of the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima and has been described as the first film in which the balance of combat and public relations has … Read more
The apparent re-election of George W. Bush as US President seems to have its roots in a mechanical failure. On 12 March 2004, a car went out of control on a busy highway and propelled itself in front of an 18-wheeler. The driver – an African-American clergyman called Athan Gibbs – was killed outright. Gibbs, … Read more
Miscellaneous Publications Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones’, The CIA and American Democracy, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989, price not stated) is, with Blum’s The CIA: a Forgotten History, the best single volume on the CIA. Of particular interest is the author’s account of the political system’s response to the revelations of CIA archives in the … Read more
It now looks pretty certain to me that Kennedy’s assassination was the work of a local Texas conspiracy on behalf of, and with the knowledge of, the then Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Most of the extant evidence for this can be seen on the web site ‘The Men on the Sixth Floor'(1) which advertises the … Read more
Conjuring Hitler: How the Western Elite Incubated Nazism – 1900-38 Guido Preparata US: University of Michigan Press, 2005; h/b, $90.00; p/b $28.95 UK: Pluto Press, 2005; h/b £60.00; p/b £17.99 I would like to introduce a recently published book that has been overlooked. Guido Preparata’s Conjuring Hitler: How the Western Elite Incubated Nazism-1900-38 reinterprets … Read more
Policing London No 13 July/August Includes 6 pages on the miners, which compliments GLC report (see below); two page summary of recent police harassment of gays; summary of changes to date in Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. Still the best thing of its kind extant. £1 per issue: from Police Committee Support Unit (DG/PCS/602) County … Read more
Some recent JFK literature In front of me is a copy of Guth and Wrone’s The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography 1983-1979 (1980), nearly 450 pages, running to some 5,134 entries covering books, magazine articles, records, TV programmes, and news items from both the New York Times and the … Read more
Sir George Terry’s report on Kincora has at last been made public. But if Terry had hoped to quash further speculation he failed.(1) In a second debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly on Kincora there was widespread criticism of the report, particularly of Terry “stepping outside his brief” in suggesting that the matter needs no … Read more
Russ Kick (ed.), Disinformation, 2001, $19.95, ISBN 0-9664100-7-6. Available from http://store.disinfo.com. I once sat in on an interesting conversation between two well known writers on the underside of politics. At one point, one of them alluded disparagingly to one of the scruffier areas of the conspiracy fringe – UFOs, maybe. The other reacted immediately: ‘Oh, … Read more
Introduction There are a couple of interesting chapters in Chapman Pincher’s recent The Truth About Dirty Tricks, (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1991), especially the one about Harold Wilson’s ‘spymaster’, the late George Wigg; but, despite the usual shower of interesting fragments, mostly it is junk. Pincher’s primary strategy is clear enough. During the mid 1970s bureaucratic … Read more
