I recall years ago the reaction I received when I told a good friend in London that I was going to “live in Battlefield’. He obviously thought I’d left the ‘a’ out of that sentence because he immediately replied: “why would you want to live in a place that resembles a warzone or is so […]
We like to believe that ‘intelligence is based on objective analysis of hard data, albeit gleaned from secret sources and that the final product of that analysis is a factual account of what is actually happening out there in the real world. And that real world can be a potentially hostile nation (sometimes it can […]
We like to believe that ‘intelligence is based on objective analysis of hard data, albeit gleaned from secret sources and that the final product of that analysis is a factual account of what is actually happening out there in the real world. And that real world can be a potentially hostile nation (sometimes it can […]
Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of JFK, is a larger-than-life character who could easily have walked out of the pages of a spy/espionage novel. Indeed, the creator of such a character as Oswald, might struggle to get him past a literary agent or a publisher as his activities stretch credulity. Oswald had a difficult upbringing […]
RELEASE OF THE JFK FILES: NO END OF CONSPIRACY IN SIGHT Last month over 2,800 files, previously restricted for a variety of reasons, including those of ‘national security,’ were released relating to the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy. These files add to the millions of words and thousands of books which have been written […]
REVIEW OF A LEGACY OF SPIES BY JOHN LE CARRE PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN VIKING £20 I don’t think it’s overstated to say that when his third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, was published at the height of the Cold War in 1963 (the year after the Cuban Missile Crisis) John Le […]
REVIEW OF ‘ON INTELLIGENCE: THE HISTORY OF ESPIONAGE AND THE SECRET WORLD’ BY JOHN HUGHES-WILSON PUBLISHED BY CONSTABLE £10.99 paperback For anyone who has read my three-part series on The Paradoxes of Spying and would like a more in-depth overview of the intelligence world, you can do no better than pick up a copy of this good […]
The recent terrorist attacks in Barcelona, Cambills and Turku in Finland provide a constant reminder of how vulnerable we all are to becoming victims of terrorism. Driving van or cars into people or stabbing them at random on busy city streets is the ‘softest’ of all ‘soft targets.” Although all attacks perpetrated by groups carrying […]
Most people worldwide who have at least a cursory interest in spying and espionage, are familiar with the names MI5 and MI6. And those who have more than a casual interest in the intelligence world are aware that MI5 is the UK’s internal counter-espionage and counter-intelligence service while MI6 is Britain’s foreign intelligence collecting and […]
Imagine the following scenario: A police drugs unit is about to embark on a raid in a major city. They have in their sights a top-level dealer distributing considerable quantities of heroin and other drugs into a deprived community. The case against the dealer has been prepared for months and has involved intensive surveillance, including […]