By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 March 2024
Cuba Is Still A Major Spy Threat
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Tag Archives: Cuba
The CIA: In Theory and In Practice
Iran Admits Responsibility for the 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing in Beirut
“The American Coup in Chile”: A Myth That Will Never Die
The Devastation of South Africa is What Always Happens When a Soviet Asset Gets to Power
Just What Is Iran Capable Of?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 June 2021
Massive explosion at Khojir in eastern Tehran lights up the night sky, 25 June 2021 [image source]
When Kissinger Met Pinochet
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 14 January 2021
Chile’s ruler Augusto Pinochet meeting U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Santiago, 8 June 1976
The first time U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met Chile’s ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, was at a meeting of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Santiago on 8 June 1976. Kissinger had deliberately kept a public distance from Pinochet because of the myth—which will never die—that he and President Richard Nixon orchestrated the coup d’état that brought Pinochet to power in September 1973. But with the OAS meeting in Pinochet’s capital city, Kissinger finally had to meet Pinochet. Kissinger’s sent two very distinct messages to Pinochet, one public, one private. Continue reading
Women and Terrorism: The Case of the May 19th Communist Organization
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 January 2021
This article was originally published at European Eye on Radicalization
The world has been captivated this week by the scenes of an insurrectionary mob overrunning the United States Capitol at the behest of President Donald Trump. It is unlikely that many people remember or even know that nearly forty years ago, this building—the meeting place of the U.S. Congress, the place where laws are made—was bombed by a Communist terrorist group, a group remarkable for its all-female membership. A new book, Tonight We Bombed the Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America’s First Female Terrorist Group, by William Rosenau, a senior policy historian at CNA and a fellow in the International Security program at New America, examines this forgotten episode. Continue reading
The Soviets’ Bagman in Britain
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 February 2020
Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist) (CPGB-ML) carrying banners and Stalin postsers at a May Day parade // May 2016
Jeremy Corbyn has been dogged throughout his time as leader of the British Labour Party by his associates. Having Seumas Milne, a believing Stalinist and general conspiracy theorist, as his spin-doctor and primary strategist is actually among the least disgraceful things about Corbyn. Corbyn was, despite later attempts at obfuscation, a vocal supporter of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Corbyn was paid £20,000 for pro-Iranian propaganda by the clerical regime. He laid a wreath honouring Black September, the deniable unit of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) responsible inter alia for the mutilation and murder of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972. Then there was Fidel Castro, HAMAS, Hizballah, and on and on.
Thus, when it was revealed, two years ago this month, that Corbyn supplied political and other intelligence to the secret police of Communist Czechoslovakia, it was unsurprising. Corbyn was known to have supported the Soviet side in the Cold War, from Castro’s Cuba to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; had he known of Soviet support to PIRA, it would not have turned him against them. So, it was all taken very much in stride. Putting aside the lament that it should have been a bigger scandal that the Leader of the Opposition was once an “operational contact” for the Soviet Bloc, it was an interesting look at how the Soviet Union, through its satellite states, sought to cultivate sympathisers and exert influence in Britain—and how little is known, even now, about the scale and success of such things.
Somebody who could have shed more light on this was Reuben Falber, a senior official of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and its key liaison with the KGB. When he died on 29 April 2006, he took most of his secrets with him. Still, what is known of Falber’s career gives some insight and such insights are by no means all retrospective. Continue reading
The Shah, the Cold War, and the Islamists
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 March 2019
Abbas Milani’s The Shah gives a portrait of Iran’s last monarch, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, and the impact that his downfall forty years ago continues to have in the Middle East, notably the emboldening of the Islamist movement. Continue reading
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