Post by Stallit 2 de Halfo on Feb 15, 2008 19:10:35 GMT
British Intelligence and the Covert Propaganda Front, — and the CIA’s Interference in British Politics
THE BEGINNINGS OF COVERT PROPAGANDA AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
In 1948, a secret political/psychological warfare department known as the Information Research Department (IRD), was set up within the Foreign Office, with the aim of embarking on a ''propaganda offensive'' against the left. To conceal the operation's existence from the public, its funding was obtained from Parliament on the ''secret vote''.
The IRD had two main purposes. It created ''grey'' propaganda for overseas' consumption, which was directed against ''Communism'', a catch-all label that included anything remotely left-wing or anti-imperialist. The primary targets were Western Europe and South East Asia, followed by India, Pakistan and the Middle East. (The Soviet Union was left largely to American intelligence). The IRD's second area of action was the moulding of domestic opinion in Britain. It used anti-Communist material created with government funds to aid right-wing social democrats within the Labour Party and the trade union movement.
Christopher Mayhew, the Foreign Office minister who set up the IRD, later reported to his boss, Ernest Bevin, that he had made arrangements with Herbert Tracey, public secretary of the Trade Union Congress, ''for the dissemination inside the Labour movement at home of anti-Communist propaganda which we are producing for overseas consumption.''
The staff of the IRD were a mixture of émigrés, carefully chosen writers and journalists, and intelligence operatives. The IRD took part in regular liaison meetings in London between MI6 and the CIA. The head of the IRD between 1953 and 1958, John Rennie, was later appointed head of MI6.
At its peak, the IRD had up to 400 staff working at a twelve-storey office block in Millbank, Riverwalk House. The information from IRD fell into two categories, succinctly described by a department head: ''Category A is secret and confidential objective studies re: Soviet policies which are designed for high level consumption by heads of states, cabinet members, etc.…. none of this material publishable or quotable for obvious reasons. Category B is less highly-classified information suitable for careful dissemination by staff of British missions to suitable contacts (e.g. editors, professors, scientists, labour leaders, etc.) who can use it as factual background material in their general work without attribution. Success of Category B operations depend upon the activity of British representatives in various countries.''
The IRD ''ran'' dozens of Fleet street journalists in the 1950s and 60s. To start a particular propaganda campaign, IRD would often individually brief a well-trusted journalist. Once the journalist had published their ''exclusive'' article without even the usual attribution to ''official sources'', IRD would then transmit the story as gospel all around the world.
IRD had arrangements with several British newspapers which allowed it to reprint and distribute articles from them to foreign newspapers. These reprints made no mention that the articles had initially been planted in the papers by British intelligence. IRD also arranged British government funds for foreign newspapers who were finding it difficult to pay the subscription rates to British news services. For instance, a deal with The Observer's Foreign News Service gave IRD the right to distribute articles cheaply or even free of charge to the media of selected countries. In addition, the department hired some of its personnel as ''freelance'' journalists to place material in British newspapers without the editor being aware of the source.
IRD tactics often necessitated the repetition of the same doctored story in several newspapers, in order to ensure its apparent credibility. The most enduring success for the IRD was in misrepresenting the Soviet Union, in the eyes of the British public, as the source of a global conspiracy that threatened the entire Western world. A typical IRD operation was its ''Red Scare in the Indian Ocean'' scheme. In March 1974, two IRD articles appeared, one written by MI5/CIA agent Brian Crozier in The Times and the other by David Floyd in the Daily Telegraph. Both concentrated on the fear of a build-up by the Soviet Navy in the Indian Ocean after the Somali government offered the Soviets a naval base near the Gulf, and described a build-up of Soviet advisers in neighbouring countries. A further article appeared in the Financial Times, followed by the release of spy satellite photos from the U.S. State Department.
By the time the campaign had run its course, a carefully-created illusion had been created that Somalia was a Soviet puppet. (Ironically, this ''Soviet puppet'' actually kicked out all Russian military advisers in 1977 during its war with Ethiopia).
IRD also took an interest in books as a propaganda vehicle and a number of leading academics contributed to a series of short books published by the IRD subsidiary company Ampersand Books. Amongst IRD operatives were Alan Hare, who worked for the Foreign Office from 1947 to 1961 and became chairman and chief executive of the Financial Times, Lord Gibson, later chairman of the holding company Pearson Longman, which owns the Financial Times, and Charles Douglas-Home, later editor of the Financial Times.
PSYOPS
The work of the IRD established some of the techniques perfected by the intelligence services and other organisations working on their behalf as part of a concerted campaign to infiltrate and control the media (and hence public opinion). This field of operations is termed psychological warfare.
(...)
Frank Snepp, a CIA field officer in the 1970s, described how British intelligence was ''using journalists as field operatives…. certain MI5 men were operating under deep cover as journalists and we were using them to plant stories favourable to American interests in certain publications that we couldn't reach the same way.''
Intelligence officers may pose as journalists or working journalists may be recruited as agents, either on contract for a fixed spell or pro rata. MI5 holds a dossier on many journalists, noting their abilities, personalities end recommendations on what circumstances they should be used. Malcolm Muggeridge was acting as an MI5 agent while editorial writer of the Daily Telegraph. Alan Pryce-Jones, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, worked in British intelligence during the war. The Daily Telegraph's Foreign Editor, S.R. Pawley, was recruited by MI6 to help run journalist agents for the paper overseas.
MI5 targeted labour correspondents in both newspapers and broadcasting right up to the 1980s; they were recruited in droves for their contacts with a wide range of trade union officials, and with each other. According to Peter Wright, MI5 always had about twenty senior journalists working for it in the national press. ''They were not employed directly by us, but we regarded them as agents because they were happy to be associated with us.''
At the BBC, Brigadier Ronald Stonhem liaised with MI5 and Special Branch and advised the corporation on whether or not to employ people. Names of applicants for editorial posts in the BBC were similarly ''vetted'' by MI5. Reputed journalists such as Isabel Hilton of the Sunday Times and Richard Gott of The Guardian were refused BBC posts because they were not considered suitable. This secret process went on for over forty years until exposure by The Observer in 1985.
On 25th May 1989, the BBC's Nine O'clock News ran a major smear item claiming that eleven Soviet officials had been expelled from Britain because ''they were subjecting Labour MPs to blackmail''. The BBC's chief political correspondent John Sergeant had been at an ''off-the-record'' lunch with William Waldegrave, junior minister at the Foreign Office, who briefed him on the alleged KGB blackmail attempts and links of left-wing Labour MPs with Middle Eastern terrorist states. It was MI5 who had planted the story on Waldegrave. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, was forced to disclaim the smear and acknowledge that there was no truth in the allegations.
In 1991, it was revealed that some 500 prominent Britons were paid by the CIA through the corrupt Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). They included ninety journalists and broadcasters, many in ''senior positions.''
The British Army also has a psychological warfare section. By 1971, there were thirty army psyops staff based at three overseas headquarters and one at the Ministry of Defence.
Psyops training is undertaken at the Joint Warfare Establishment in Latimer. There are two types of course; one for staff officers, which includes lectures on anti-Communist propaganda practice, the urban guerrilla, modern advertising techniques and experience from recent psychological operations; and a unit officer's course which includes propaganda and community relations and the role of a unit within the overall psyops plan.
In 1976, the MoD confirmed that in the previous three years, 1,858 army officers and 262 senior civil servants had been trained to use psychological techniques for internal security purposes. The civil servants were drawn from the Northern Ireland Office, Home Office and Foreign Office. Commissioned officers were also seconded for psyops training at the United States Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg and instructors from the Joint Warfare Establishment made lecture visits to Commonwealth countries.
THE INVOLVEMENT OF U.S.INTELLIGENCE
In 1974, Sir Colin Crowe submitted the secret Crowe Report, recommending that IRD should take control of the Counter-Subversion Fund (a Foreign Office fund used to finance propaganda operations). The department was then merged with the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), a right-wing propaganda group set up by the CIA and British intelligence in 1970, and run by Brian Crozier.
Crozier was a journalist who worked for both MI6 and the CIA. He was also head of Forum World Features, a commercial news agency which sold weekly packets of news stories to newspapers all over the world. At its peak, Forum supplied over 250 newspapers world-wide. The CIA used it as a conduit for propaganda and also as a cover to send agents posing as ''journalists'' around the world. Forum received backing from the CIA through Kern House Enterprises, a publishing firm which was a front for the Agency. Further backing came from British companies such as Shell and BP.
A 1968 memorandum from CIA headquarters to CIA director Richard Helms described Forum as having ''provided the United States with a significant means to counter propaganda, and it has become a respected feature service well on the way to a position of prestige in the journalism world.'' Hand-written at the bottom was a note stating that Forum functioned ''with the knowledge and co-operation of British intelligence''.
Forum was suddenly closed down in 1975, shortly before its exposure as a CIA /British intelligence front. Forum's library and some of its research staff were absorbed into the ISC. Files removed from the offices of research director Peter Janke in 1975 showed extensive contacts between ISC and the British police and military establishments.
In June 1972, Janke visited the Police College at Bramshill at the invitation of its commandant, John Alderson, who later became Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall. Alderson wanted ISC to assist in developing a training programme on subversion and terrorism for the police. ISC members have since lectured on numerous occasions at the college and the police make use of the ISC's Manual on Counter Insurgency. The ISC also provides lecturers for several military establishments, including the National Defence College, where courses on psyops are taught.
The ISC has produced a series of special studies on subversion. The first such report was written by Nigel Lawson in 1972, entitled Subversion in British Industry. The report was not for the general public; it was aimed at the heads of industry itself. Brian Crozier noted that the Lawson report ''unlocked doors, gave courage to the timid and opened purses''.
Amongst the ISC's converts and allies were John Dettmer, chairman of the Economic League (a right-wing private vetting agency for British industry, which kept intelligence files on left-wingers), Michael Ivens, director of Aims of Industry (a right-wing pressure group) and John Whitehorn, Deputy Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
Conservative MP Geoffrey Stewart- Smith (who was funded by MI5) arranged distribution of the group's anti-left propaganda in the run-up to the 1974 general election. Just before polling day, the ISC's report Sources of Conflict in British Industry (which blamed left wing militants for industrial unrest) was published with unprecedented publicity in the national press.
The ISC encouraged the use of pre-emptive surveillance and other measures against a broad range of ''subversives'', a term which easily included law-abiding trade unionists and anti-establishment intellectuals. Crozier wrote articles advocating military intervention to crush ''left-wing insurgency'' in Britain.
THE NETWORK WIDENS
The ISC's impact extended far beyond its base in Britain. In France, the Pinay Circle, a group of right-wingers formed around former Prime Minister Antoine Pinay, helped pay for an ISC study European Security and the Soviet Problem. The Pinay Circle members were so delighted with the report that they personally showed it to President Nixon, Pompidou, Kissinger and the Pope. In the Netherlands, Crozier worked closely with the East West Institute and its International Documentation and Information Centre, which recorded left-wing activities in Europe.
The ISC's records also show close contacts with top politicians in South Africa and other right-wing leaders around the world. Crozier helped set up a Washington-based Institute for the Study of Conflict in 1975, despite a supposed congressional ban on any CIA-backed propaganda campaigns within America.
Despite supposedly closing down in 1990, the ISC still functions today under the name of the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism (RISCT), based at 136 Baker Street, London W1N 1FH. The Institute's director is Paul Wilkinson, a leading government advisor on counter-terrorism.
The RISCT's council is composed entirely of figures from academia, politics and the military, including former Defence Intelligence chief Sir Louis Le Bailly; counter-insurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson; former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Sir Henry Tuzo; Thatcher speech-writer Robert Moss; and ex-diplomat Sir Edward Peck. The calibre of its personnel, with their intimate knowledge of the workings of the state, makes the institute an influential part of the right-wing lobby in Britain.
Brian Crozier also helped set up the National Association for Freedom (NAFF), along with Norris McWhirter, Lord De L'Isle, Michael Ivens of Aims of Industry, Winston Churchill MP, merchant banker John Gouriet, and Robert Moss.
NAFF was a network of senior military and intelligence figures, senior industrialists and cabinet ministers; its members included Churchill, Jill Knight, David Mitchell, Rhodes Boyson and Nicholas Ridley.
When Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister (amidst allegations of an MI5 smear campaign), NAFF's journal Free Nation carried a lead article written by Crozier entitled Affront to the Queen, which stated that the Queen would be within her constitutional rights in refusing to see a new left-wing Labour prime minister and in ordering a dissolution of Parliament and fresh elections.
NAFF changed its name to The Freedom Association (FA) in January 1979, under the chairmanship of Norris McWhirter.
THATCHER AND PSYOPS
In 1976, Brian Crozier set up a covert advisory committee called Shield, in order to brief Margaret Thatcher and her closest colleagues on security and intelligence. Crozier met secretly with Thatcher on many occasions, at the Thatchers' London home at 2 Flood Street, Chelsea, in her room in the House of Commons, and later at Chequers and 10 Downing Street. The Shield Committee was composed of Crozier, MI6 agent Stephen Hastings MP, Conservative backbencher Nicholas Elliott and Harry Sporborg of Hambros Bank.
With the resources of the ISC at their disposal, Shield produced some twenty papers on various aspects of ''subversion'' which were made available to Thatcher and three other members of her shadow cabinet: Lord Carrington, William (later Lord) Whitelaw and....................
www.jackgrantham.blogspot.com/
THE BEGINNINGS OF COVERT PROPAGANDA AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
In 1948, a secret political/psychological warfare department known as the Information Research Department (IRD), was set up within the Foreign Office, with the aim of embarking on a ''propaganda offensive'' against the left. To conceal the operation's existence from the public, its funding was obtained from Parliament on the ''secret vote''.
The IRD had two main purposes. It created ''grey'' propaganda for overseas' consumption, which was directed against ''Communism'', a catch-all label that included anything remotely left-wing or anti-imperialist. The primary targets were Western Europe and South East Asia, followed by India, Pakistan and the Middle East. (The Soviet Union was left largely to American intelligence). The IRD's second area of action was the moulding of domestic opinion in Britain. It used anti-Communist material created with government funds to aid right-wing social democrats within the Labour Party and the trade union movement.
Christopher Mayhew, the Foreign Office minister who set up the IRD, later reported to his boss, Ernest Bevin, that he had made arrangements with Herbert Tracey, public secretary of the Trade Union Congress, ''for the dissemination inside the Labour movement at home of anti-Communist propaganda which we are producing for overseas consumption.''
The staff of the IRD were a mixture of émigrés, carefully chosen writers and journalists, and intelligence operatives. The IRD took part in regular liaison meetings in London between MI6 and the CIA. The head of the IRD between 1953 and 1958, John Rennie, was later appointed head of MI6.
At its peak, the IRD had up to 400 staff working at a twelve-storey office block in Millbank, Riverwalk House. The information from IRD fell into two categories, succinctly described by a department head: ''Category A is secret and confidential objective studies re: Soviet policies which are designed for high level consumption by heads of states, cabinet members, etc.…. none of this material publishable or quotable for obvious reasons. Category B is less highly-classified information suitable for careful dissemination by staff of British missions to suitable contacts (e.g. editors, professors, scientists, labour leaders, etc.) who can use it as factual background material in their general work without attribution. Success of Category B operations depend upon the activity of British representatives in various countries.''
The IRD ''ran'' dozens of Fleet street journalists in the 1950s and 60s. To start a particular propaganda campaign, IRD would often individually brief a well-trusted journalist. Once the journalist had published their ''exclusive'' article without even the usual attribution to ''official sources'', IRD would then transmit the story as gospel all around the world.
IRD had arrangements with several British newspapers which allowed it to reprint and distribute articles from them to foreign newspapers. These reprints made no mention that the articles had initially been planted in the papers by British intelligence. IRD also arranged British government funds for foreign newspapers who were finding it difficult to pay the subscription rates to British news services. For instance, a deal with The Observer's Foreign News Service gave IRD the right to distribute articles cheaply or even free of charge to the media of selected countries. In addition, the department hired some of its personnel as ''freelance'' journalists to place material in British newspapers without the editor being aware of the source.
IRD tactics often necessitated the repetition of the same doctored story in several newspapers, in order to ensure its apparent credibility. The most enduring success for the IRD was in misrepresenting the Soviet Union, in the eyes of the British public, as the source of a global conspiracy that threatened the entire Western world. A typical IRD operation was its ''Red Scare in the Indian Ocean'' scheme. In March 1974, two IRD articles appeared, one written by MI5/CIA agent Brian Crozier in The Times and the other by David Floyd in the Daily Telegraph. Both concentrated on the fear of a build-up by the Soviet Navy in the Indian Ocean after the Somali government offered the Soviets a naval base near the Gulf, and described a build-up of Soviet advisers in neighbouring countries. A further article appeared in the Financial Times, followed by the release of spy satellite photos from the U.S. State Department.
By the time the campaign had run its course, a carefully-created illusion had been created that Somalia was a Soviet puppet. (Ironically, this ''Soviet puppet'' actually kicked out all Russian military advisers in 1977 during its war with Ethiopia).
IRD also took an interest in books as a propaganda vehicle and a number of leading academics contributed to a series of short books published by the IRD subsidiary company Ampersand Books. Amongst IRD operatives were Alan Hare, who worked for the Foreign Office from 1947 to 1961 and became chairman and chief executive of the Financial Times, Lord Gibson, later chairman of the holding company Pearson Longman, which owns the Financial Times, and Charles Douglas-Home, later editor of the Financial Times.
PSYOPS
The work of the IRD established some of the techniques perfected by the intelligence services and other organisations working on their behalf as part of a concerted campaign to infiltrate and control the media (and hence public opinion). This field of operations is termed psychological warfare.
(...)
Frank Snepp, a CIA field officer in the 1970s, described how British intelligence was ''using journalists as field operatives…. certain MI5 men were operating under deep cover as journalists and we were using them to plant stories favourable to American interests in certain publications that we couldn't reach the same way.''
Intelligence officers may pose as journalists or working journalists may be recruited as agents, either on contract for a fixed spell or pro rata. MI5 holds a dossier on many journalists, noting their abilities, personalities end recommendations on what circumstances they should be used. Malcolm Muggeridge was acting as an MI5 agent while editorial writer of the Daily Telegraph. Alan Pryce-Jones, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, worked in British intelligence during the war. The Daily Telegraph's Foreign Editor, S.R. Pawley, was recruited by MI6 to help run journalist agents for the paper overseas.
MI5 targeted labour correspondents in both newspapers and broadcasting right up to the 1980s; they were recruited in droves for their contacts with a wide range of trade union officials, and with each other. According to Peter Wright, MI5 always had about twenty senior journalists working for it in the national press. ''They were not employed directly by us, but we regarded them as agents because they were happy to be associated with us.''
At the BBC, Brigadier Ronald Stonhem liaised with MI5 and Special Branch and advised the corporation on whether or not to employ people. Names of applicants for editorial posts in the BBC were similarly ''vetted'' by MI5. Reputed journalists such as Isabel Hilton of the Sunday Times and Richard Gott of The Guardian were refused BBC posts because they were not considered suitable. This secret process went on for over forty years until exposure by The Observer in 1985.
On 25th May 1989, the BBC's Nine O'clock News ran a major smear item claiming that eleven Soviet officials had been expelled from Britain because ''they were subjecting Labour MPs to blackmail''. The BBC's chief political correspondent John Sergeant had been at an ''off-the-record'' lunch with William Waldegrave, junior minister at the Foreign Office, who briefed him on the alleged KGB blackmail attempts and links of left-wing Labour MPs with Middle Eastern terrorist states. It was MI5 who had planted the story on Waldegrave. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, was forced to disclaim the smear and acknowledge that there was no truth in the allegations.
In 1991, it was revealed that some 500 prominent Britons were paid by the CIA through the corrupt Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). They included ninety journalists and broadcasters, many in ''senior positions.''
The British Army also has a psychological warfare section. By 1971, there were thirty army psyops staff based at three overseas headquarters and one at the Ministry of Defence.
Psyops training is undertaken at the Joint Warfare Establishment in Latimer. There are two types of course; one for staff officers, which includes lectures on anti-Communist propaganda practice, the urban guerrilla, modern advertising techniques and experience from recent psychological operations; and a unit officer's course which includes propaganda and community relations and the role of a unit within the overall psyops plan.
In 1976, the MoD confirmed that in the previous three years, 1,858 army officers and 262 senior civil servants had been trained to use psychological techniques for internal security purposes. The civil servants were drawn from the Northern Ireland Office, Home Office and Foreign Office. Commissioned officers were also seconded for psyops training at the United States Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg and instructors from the Joint Warfare Establishment made lecture visits to Commonwealth countries.
THE INVOLVEMENT OF U.S.INTELLIGENCE
In 1974, Sir Colin Crowe submitted the secret Crowe Report, recommending that IRD should take control of the Counter-Subversion Fund (a Foreign Office fund used to finance propaganda operations). The department was then merged with the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), a right-wing propaganda group set up by the CIA and British intelligence in 1970, and run by Brian Crozier.
Crozier was a journalist who worked for both MI6 and the CIA. He was also head of Forum World Features, a commercial news agency which sold weekly packets of news stories to newspapers all over the world. At its peak, Forum supplied over 250 newspapers world-wide. The CIA used it as a conduit for propaganda and also as a cover to send agents posing as ''journalists'' around the world. Forum received backing from the CIA through Kern House Enterprises, a publishing firm which was a front for the Agency. Further backing came from British companies such as Shell and BP.
A 1968 memorandum from CIA headquarters to CIA director Richard Helms described Forum as having ''provided the United States with a significant means to counter propaganda, and it has become a respected feature service well on the way to a position of prestige in the journalism world.'' Hand-written at the bottom was a note stating that Forum functioned ''with the knowledge and co-operation of British intelligence''.
Forum was suddenly closed down in 1975, shortly before its exposure as a CIA /British intelligence front. Forum's library and some of its research staff were absorbed into the ISC. Files removed from the offices of research director Peter Janke in 1975 showed extensive contacts between ISC and the British police and military establishments.
In June 1972, Janke visited the Police College at Bramshill at the invitation of its commandant, John Alderson, who later became Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall. Alderson wanted ISC to assist in developing a training programme on subversion and terrorism for the police. ISC members have since lectured on numerous occasions at the college and the police make use of the ISC's Manual on Counter Insurgency. The ISC also provides lecturers for several military establishments, including the National Defence College, where courses on psyops are taught.
The ISC has produced a series of special studies on subversion. The first such report was written by Nigel Lawson in 1972, entitled Subversion in British Industry. The report was not for the general public; it was aimed at the heads of industry itself. Brian Crozier noted that the Lawson report ''unlocked doors, gave courage to the timid and opened purses''.
Amongst the ISC's converts and allies were John Dettmer, chairman of the Economic League (a right-wing private vetting agency for British industry, which kept intelligence files on left-wingers), Michael Ivens, director of Aims of Industry (a right-wing pressure group) and John Whitehorn, Deputy Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
Conservative MP Geoffrey Stewart- Smith (who was funded by MI5) arranged distribution of the group's anti-left propaganda in the run-up to the 1974 general election. Just before polling day, the ISC's report Sources of Conflict in British Industry (which blamed left wing militants for industrial unrest) was published with unprecedented publicity in the national press.
The ISC encouraged the use of pre-emptive surveillance and other measures against a broad range of ''subversives'', a term which easily included law-abiding trade unionists and anti-establishment intellectuals. Crozier wrote articles advocating military intervention to crush ''left-wing insurgency'' in Britain.
THE NETWORK WIDENS
The ISC's impact extended far beyond its base in Britain. In France, the Pinay Circle, a group of right-wingers formed around former Prime Minister Antoine Pinay, helped pay for an ISC study European Security and the Soviet Problem. The Pinay Circle members were so delighted with the report that they personally showed it to President Nixon, Pompidou, Kissinger and the Pope. In the Netherlands, Crozier worked closely with the East West Institute and its International Documentation and Information Centre, which recorded left-wing activities in Europe.
The ISC's records also show close contacts with top politicians in South Africa and other right-wing leaders around the world. Crozier helped set up a Washington-based Institute for the Study of Conflict in 1975, despite a supposed congressional ban on any CIA-backed propaganda campaigns within America.
Despite supposedly closing down in 1990, the ISC still functions today under the name of the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism (RISCT), based at 136 Baker Street, London W1N 1FH. The Institute's director is Paul Wilkinson, a leading government advisor on counter-terrorism.
The RISCT's council is composed entirely of figures from academia, politics and the military, including former Defence Intelligence chief Sir Louis Le Bailly; counter-insurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson; former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Sir Henry Tuzo; Thatcher speech-writer Robert Moss; and ex-diplomat Sir Edward Peck. The calibre of its personnel, with their intimate knowledge of the workings of the state, makes the institute an influential part of the right-wing lobby in Britain.
Brian Crozier also helped set up the National Association for Freedom (NAFF), along with Norris McWhirter, Lord De L'Isle, Michael Ivens of Aims of Industry, Winston Churchill MP, merchant banker John Gouriet, and Robert Moss.
NAFF was a network of senior military and intelligence figures, senior industrialists and cabinet ministers; its members included Churchill, Jill Knight, David Mitchell, Rhodes Boyson and Nicholas Ridley.
When Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister (amidst allegations of an MI5 smear campaign), NAFF's journal Free Nation carried a lead article written by Crozier entitled Affront to the Queen, which stated that the Queen would be within her constitutional rights in refusing to see a new left-wing Labour prime minister and in ordering a dissolution of Parliament and fresh elections.
NAFF changed its name to The Freedom Association (FA) in January 1979, under the chairmanship of Norris McWhirter.
THATCHER AND PSYOPS
In 1976, Brian Crozier set up a covert advisory committee called Shield, in order to brief Margaret Thatcher and her closest colleagues on security and intelligence. Crozier met secretly with Thatcher on many occasions, at the Thatchers' London home at 2 Flood Street, Chelsea, in her room in the House of Commons, and later at Chequers and 10 Downing Street. The Shield Committee was composed of Crozier, MI6 agent Stephen Hastings MP, Conservative backbencher Nicholas Elliott and Harry Sporborg of Hambros Bank.
With the resources of the ISC at their disposal, Shield produced some twenty papers on various aspects of ''subversion'' which were made available to Thatcher and three other members of her shadow cabinet: Lord Carrington, William (later Lord) Whitelaw and....................
www.jackgrantham.blogspot.com/