👀 New article in The International History Review Journal.

Latter Day Judas? #Security , Diplomatic Protection, and the Foreign Office Security Department, 1955–1987.

Based on oral transcripts and new files, the article talks protecting 🇬🇧 diplomats.

🆓️ to read ⏬️

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

I’m reliably informed that in North American academia this would now be called a “Subversion Lab”

(I’m not sure if that’s super cool or alarmingly sinister)

Mr Cash, the chief accountant to the UK’s covertly controlled media agencies

Amazing nominative determinism…

…or terrible cover name?

And now for the opposite feeling:

'I intend... to destroy all correspondence..'

“Perhaps you had better destroy this letter”

Finding one of these in the archives always makes my day 🏆

Don’t tell a certain journalist who might claim that academic research has always been used as a fraudulent conduit for commie propaganda!! 😆

👀 that time North Korean intelligence counterfeited what is now the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History to hide communist propaganda messages inside. Here, they added a folded page to a counterfeited journal and inserted prop inside to escape censors 👀

[1965]

Taking the commonwealth relationship seriously!

(Philip Murphy will appreciate this)

My book The President's Kill List is now available for pre-order with Edinburgh University Press. Use code NEW30 for 30% off. Tell your library too. edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-presi…

Fun fact: the Information Research Department lead on propaganda in Northern Ireland was called Margaret Hatcher
(1974)

A bizarre Soviet plot from the late 1960s.

The KGB blocked it on the grounds that it risked death to people and livestock.

plus ca change

1972:

(l) MI5 asking about when 'predictable propaganda' in which the Russians made biased, highly coloured interpretations of events became disinformation

(r) IRD saying it's a very fine line and difficult to differentiate

exhibit no.2142343 showing that 'covert action' was not just an American phrase.

UK, 1955

I am thrilled to be back hosting a Spring Series of 'In Conversations' on Classi Lectures platform, kicking the series off on April 14th talking with Rory Cormac about his book 'Crown, Cloak and Dagger'.