John Simkin

William Stephenson, the head of British Security Coordination (BSC) that was based in New York City managed to record the conversations of Japanese special envoy Suburu Kurusu with others in the Japanese consulate in November 1941. Marion de Chastelain was the cipher clerk who transcribed these conversations. On 27th November, 1941, William Stephenson sent a telegram to the British government: "Japanese negotiations off. Expect action within two weeks." According to Roald Dahl, who worked for BSC: "Stephenson had tapes of them discussing the actual date of Pearl Harbor... and he swears that he gave the transcription to FDR. He swears that they knew therefore of the oncoming attack on Pearl Harbor and hadn't done anything about it."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYbsc.htm

Winston Churchill became prime minister in May 1940. He realised straight away that it would be vitally important to enlist the United States as Britain's ally. He sent William Stephenson to the United States to make certain arrangements on intelligence matters. Stephenson's main contactwas Gene Tunney, a friend from the First World War, who had been World Heavyweight Champion (1926-1928) and was a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI. Tunney later recalled: "Quite to my surprise I received a confidential letter that was from Billy Stephenson, and he asked me to try and arrange for him to see J. Edgar Hoover... I found out that his mission was so important that the Ambassador from England could not be in on it, and no one in official government... It was my understanding that the thing went off extremely well." Stephenson was also a friend of Ernest Cuneo. He worked for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and according to Stephenson was the leader of "Franklin's brain trust". Cuneo met with Roosevelt and reported back that the president wanted "the closest possible marriage between the FBI and British Intelligence."

On his return to London, Stephenson reported back to Churchill. After hearing what he had to say, Churchill told Stephenson: "You know what you must do at once. We have discussed it most fully, and there is a complete fusion of minds between us. You are to be my personal representative in the United States. I will ensure that you have the full support of all the resources at my command. I know that you will have success, and the good Lord will guide your efforts as He will ours." Charles Howard Ellis said that he selected Stephenson because: "Firstly, he was Canadian. Secondly, he had very good American connections... he had a sort of fox terrier character, and if he undertook something, he would carry it through."

Churchill now instructed Stewart Menzies, head of MI6, to appoint William Stephenson as the head of the British Security Coordination (BSC). Menzies told Gladwyn Jebb on 3rd June, 1940: "I have appointed Mr W.S. Stephenson to take charge of my organisation in the USA and Mexico. As I have explained to you, he has a good contact with an official (J. Edgar Hoover) who sees the President daily. I believe this may prove of great value to the Foreign Office in the future outside and beyond the matters on which that official will give assistance to Stephenson. Stephenson leaves this week. Officially he will go as Principal Passport Control Officer for the USA."

As William Boyd has pointed out: "The phrase (British Security Coordination) is bland, almost defiantly ordinary, depicting perhaps some sub-committee of a minor department in a lowly Whitehall ministry. In fact BSC, as it was generally known, represented one of the largest covert operations in British spying history... With the US alongside Britain, Hitler would be defeated - eventually. Without the US (Russia was neutral at the time), the future looked unbearably bleak... polls in the US still showed that 80% of Americans were against joining the war in Europe. Anglophobia was widespread and the US Congress was violently opposed to any form of intervention." An office was opened in the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan with the agreement of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI.

Winston Churchill had a serious problem. Joseph P. Kennedy was the United States Ambassador to Britain. He soon came to the conclusion that the island was a lost cause and he considered aid to Britain fruitless. Kennedy, an isolationist, consistently warned Roosevelt "against holding the bag in a war in which the Allies expect to be beaten." Neville Chamberlain wrote in his diary in July 1940: "Saw Joe Kennedy who says everyone in the USA thinks we shall be beaten before the end of the month." Averell Harriman later explained the thinking of Kennedy and other isolationists: "After World War I, there was a surge of isolationism, a feeling there was no reason for getting involved in another war... We made a mistake and there were a lot of debts owed by European countries. The country went isolationist.

William Stephenson knew that with leading officials supporting isolationism he had to overcome these barriers. His main ally in this was another friend, William Donovan, who he had met in the First World War. "The procurement of certain supplies for Britain was high on my priority list and it was the burning urgency of this requirement that made me instinctively concentrate on the single individual who could help me. I turned to Bill Donovan." Donovan arranged meetings with Henry Stimson (Secretary of War), Cordell Hull (Secretary of State) and Frank Knox (Secretary of the Navy). The main topic was Britain's lack of destroyers and the possibility of finding a formula for transfer of fifty "over-age" destroyers to the Royal Navy without a legal breach of U.S. neutrality legislation.

It was decided to send Donovan to Britain on a fact-finding mission. He left on 14th July, 1940. When he heard the news, Joseph P. Kennedy complained: "Our staff, I think is getting all the information that possibility can be gathered, and to send a new man here at this time is to me the height of nonsense and a definite blow to good organization." He added that the trip would "simply result in causing confusion and misunderstanding on the part of the British". Andrew Lycett has argued: "Nothing was held back from the big American. British planners had decided to take him completely into their confidence and share their most prized military secrets in the hope that he would return home even more convinced of their resourcefulness and determination to win the war."

William Donovan arrived back in the United States in early August, 1940. In his report to President Franklin D. Roosevelt he argued: "(1) That the British would fight to the last ditch. (2) They could not hope to hold to hold the last ditch unless they got supplies at least from America. (3) That supplies were of no avail unless they were delivered to the fighting front - in short, that protecting the lines of communication was a sine qua non. (4) That Fifth Column activity was an important factor." Donovan also urged that the government should sack Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, who was predicting a German victory. Donovan also wrote a series of articles arguing that Nazi Germany posed a serious threat to the United States.

On 22nd August, William Stephenson reported to London that the destroyer deal was agreed upon. The agreement for transferring 50 aging American destroyers, in return for the rights to air and naval basis in Bermuda, Newfoundland, the Caribbean and British Guiana, was announced 3rd September, 1940. The bases were leased for 99 years and the destroyers were of great value as convey escorts. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the British Chief of Combined Operations, commented: "We were told that the man primarily responsible for the loan of the 50 American destroyers to the Royal Navy at a critical moment was Bill Stephenson; that he had managed to persuade the president that this was in the ultimate interests of America themselves and various other loans of that sort were arranged. These destroyers were very important to us...although they were only old destroyers, the main thing was to have combat ships that could actually guard against and attack U-boats."

Stephenson was very concerned with the growth of the American First Committee. by the spring of 1941, the British Security Coordination estimated that there were 700 chapters and nearly a million members of isolationist groups. Leading isolationists were monitored, targeted and harassed. When Gerald Nye spoke in Boston in September 1941, thousands of handbills were handed out attacking him as an appeaser and Nazi lover. Following a speech by Hamilton Fish, a member of a group set-up by the BSC, the Fight for Freedom, delivered him a card which said, "Der Fuhrer thanks you for your loyalty" and photographs were taken.

A BSC agent approached Donald Chase Downes and told him that he was working under the direct orders of Winston Churchill. "Our primary directive from Churchill is that American participation in the war is the most important single objective for Britain. It is the only way, he feels, to victory over Nazism." Downes agreed to work for the BSC in spying on the American First Committee. He was also instructed to find information on German consulates in Boston and Cleveland and the Italian consulate in the capital. He later recalled in his autobiography, The Scarlett Thread (1953) that he received assistance in his work from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Congress for Industrial Organisation and U.S. army counter-intelligence. Bill Macdonald, the author of The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents (2001), has pointed out: "Downes eventually discovered there was Nazi activity in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland and Boston. In some cases they traced actual transfers of money from the Nazis to the America Firsters."

William Stephenson recruited several businessmen, journalists, academics and writers into the British Security Coordination. This included Roald Dahl, H. Montgomery Hyde, Ian Fleming, Ivar Bryce, David Ogilvy, Paul Denn, Eric Maschwitz, Giles Playfair, Benn Levy, Noël Coward, Sydney Morrell and Gilbert Highet. The CIA historian, Thomas F. Troy has argued: "BSC was not just an extension of SIS, but was in fact a service which integrated SIS, SOE, Censorship, Codes and Ciphers, Security, Communications - in fact nine secret distinct organizations. But in the Western Hemisphere Stephenson ran them all."

Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle reported to Sumner Welles on 31st March, 1941, that "the head of the field service appears to be Mr. William S. Stephenson... in charge of providing protection for British ships, supplies etc. But in fact a full size secret police and intelligence service is rapidly evolving... with district officers at Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, Houston, San Francisco, Portland and probably Seattle."

Over the next few years Stephenson worked closely with William Donovan, the chief of the Office of Strategic Service (OSS). Gill Bennett has argued: "Each is a figure about whom much myth has been woven, by themselves and others, and the full extent of their activities and contacts retains an element of mystery. Both were influential: Stephenson as head of British Security Coordination (BSC), the organisation he created in New York at Menzies's request and Donovan, working with Stephenson as intermediary between Roosevelt and Churchill, persuading the former to supply clandestine military supplies to the UK before the USA entered the war, and from June 1941 head of the COI and thus one of the architects of the US Intelligence establishment."

One of Stephenson's agents was Ivar Bryce. According to Thomas E. Mahl, the author of Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 (1998): "Bryce worked in the Latin American affairs section of the BSC, which was run by Dickie Coit (known in the office as Coitis Interruptus). Because there was little evidence of the German plot to take over Latin America, Ivar found it difficult to excite Americans about the threat."

Nicholas J. Cull, the author of Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American Neutrality (1996), has argued: "During the summer of 1941, he (Bryce) became eager to awaken the United States to the Nazi threat in South America." It was especially important for the British Security Coordination to undermine the propaganda of the American First Committee. Bryce recalls in his autobiography, You Only Live Once (1975): "Sketching out trial maps of the possible changes, on my blotter, I came up with one showing the probable reallocation of territories that would appeal to Berlin. It was very convincing: the more I studied it the more sense it made... were a genuine German map of this kind to be discovered and publicised among... the American Firsters, what a commotion would be caused."

William Stephenson, who once argued that "nothing deceives like a document", approved the idea and the project was handed over to Station M, the phony document factory in Toronto run by Eric Maschwitz, of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). It took them only 48 hours to produce "a map, slightly travel-stained with use, but on which the Reich's chief map makers... would be prepared to swear was made by them." Stephenson now arranged for the FBI to find the map during a raid on a German safe-house on the south coast of Cuba. J. Edgar Hoover handed the map over to William Donovan. His executive assistant, James R. Murphy, delivered the map to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The historian, Thomas E. Mahl argues that "as a result of this document Congress dismantled the last of the neutrality legislation."

Nicholas J. Cull has argued that Roosevelt should not have realised it was a forgery. He points out that Adolf A. Berle, the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, had already warned Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State that "British intelligence has been very active in making things appear dangerous in South America. We have to be a little on our guard against false scares."

Bill Macdonald, the author of The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents (2001) has pointed out: "Although they were called British Security Coordination, the Stephenson people were very much a law unto themselves. They made many separate deals with other countries and distributed information amongst the three Western Allies. They controlled many of the secrets of the three countries, including ULTRA and MAGIC, and also had communication influence in the South Pacific and Asia. There were a number of British appointments at BSC, but essentially, Stephenson contacted his friends, put them to work, and had them find staff... The important work these people accomplished during the war has never been fully explored."

On 13th February, 1942, Adolph Berle received information from the FBI that a BSC agent, Dennis Paine, had been investigating him in order to "get the dirt" on him. Paine was expelled from the United States. Stephenson believed that Paine had been set-up as part of a FBI public relations exercise. He later recalled: Adolf Berle was slightly school-masterish for a very brief period due to misinformation, but could not have been more helpful when factual situation was clarified to him."

William Boyd has argued the BSC "became a huge secret agency of nationwide news manipulation and black propaganda. Pro-British and anti-German stories were planted in American newspapers and broadcast on American radio stations, and simultaneously a campaign of harassment and denigration was set in motion against those organisations perceived to be pro-Nazi or virulently isolationist".

Keith Jeffery, the author of MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service: 1909-1949 (2011) has pointed out: "The New York organisation expanded well beyond pure intelligence matters, and eventually combined the North American functions not just of SIS, but of M15, SOE and the Security Executive (which existed to co-ordinate counter-espionage and counter-subversion work): intelligence, security, special operations and also propaganda. Agents were recruited to target enemy or enemy controlled businesses, and penetrate Axis (and neutral) diplomatic missions; representatives were posted to key points, such as Washington, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle; American journalists, newspapers and news agencies were targeted with pro-British material; an ostensibly independent radio station (WURL), with an unsullied reputation for impartiality, was virtually taken over." William Donovan, the chief of the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) has called the British Security Coordination (BSC) "the greatest integrated secret intelligence and operations organization that has ever existed anywhere".

At the end of the Second World War the files of British Security Coordination were packed onto semitrilers and transported to Camp X in Canada. Stephenson wanted to have some record of the activities of the agency, "To provide a record which would be available for reference should future need arise for secret activities and security measures for the kind it describes." He recruited Roald Dahl, H. Montgomery Hyde, Giles Playfair, Tom Hill and Gilbert Hyatt, to write the book. Only twenty copies of the book were printed. Ten went into a safe in Montreal and ten went to Stephenson for distribution.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYbsc.htm

Cleveland C. Cram, Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature (1993)

Epstein, Edward J. Legend: The Secret World of Le Harvey Oswald. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1978 (382 pages)

Epstein is a bright and able writer who took his M.A. at Cornell and his doctorate in government at Harvard. He made a name for himself with his book Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, his master's thesis at Cornell. It was one of the first serious works to expose the shortcomings of that Commission. Epstein became aware of the Yuriy Nosenko case through The Reader's Digest, and this led to his acquaintance with James Angleton. Their association flourished, and Angleton became Epstein's major source on Nosenko and the controversy surrounding his defection. Eventually The Reader's Digest sponsored Epstein's research to the tune of $500,000. Legend, the book that resulted, was a bestseller, projecting the author to the forefront of those who were proponents of Angleton's theories. Following its publication, Epstein wrote numerous articles for New York, Commentary, and other publications, mostly - though not always - supportive of the Angleton theories.

Legend has two parts: the first is about Nosenko and Angleton's belief that he was part of a KGB deception operation; the second is about Oswald's sojourn in the Soviet Union following his service with the Marine Corps in Japan. While in Japan the book suggests that Oswald acquired information about U-2 flights flown from the airfield at which he was stationed.

In brief, Epstein accepted Angleton's conclusion that "Nosenko was a Soviet intelligence agent dispatched by the KGB expressly for the purpose of delivering disinformation to the CIA, FBI, and the Warren Commission." In this scheme, Oswald, the supposed lone assassin of President Kennedy, probably was working for the KGB. (Nosenko said this was not true.) Oswald, having defected to the USSR in 1959 and returned three years later, had been living a "legend," a false biography concocted for him by the KGB.

A central theme in both parts of the book, carefully stated and always present, was that the highest level of the Intelligence Community, and certainly the CIA, was penetrated by a "mole" working for the KGB. Although this mole had not been found by 1978, the best "proof" that one existed, according to the book's argument, was Nosenko's assertion that he knew of no penetration, thereby contradicting statements made by a "Mr. Stone," who subsequently proved to be Anatolelbolitsyn. Epstein thus promoted the twin beliefs of deception and penetration by the KGB, Angleton's theory that came to be called derisively "the monster plot."

Epstein's source notes state that his work is based on interviews with Nosenko and retired CIA and FBI officers. He lists Gordon Stewart, Admiral Turner, Richard Helms, James Angleton and members of his CI Staff, William Sullivan and Sam Papich of the FBI, and others connected with the Golitsyn and Nosenko cases. Epstein carefully camouflaged his sources by never quoting them directly, but clearly a number of CIA officers provided an immense amount of classified information. This leaking about sensitive Soviet cases was on a scale the CIA had not experienced before. But, because Epstein so cleverly refrained from pinpoint sourcing, exactly which CIA or FBI officers provided classified information could not be determined.

In 1989 the mystery was solved when Epstein published a second book, Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA, which again dealt with the contentious old cases, including Nosenko and Golitsyn. Angleton, his major source, by then was dead, and Epstein revealed who his informants had been. Although the presentation of these highly classified cases shocked most observers, within a year the entire Nosenko case was opened to the public by the US House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Legend sold well, and conspiracy buffs found it a welcome addition to the growing literature on the Kennedy assassination. Many others, however, found the book confusing, its claims extravagant, and its conclusions unsupported by evidence. One of the chief critics, George Lardner of The Washington Post, wrote: "What Epstein has written... is a fascinating, important, and essentially dishonest book. Fascinating because it offers new information about Oswald, about the KGB, and about the CIA. Dishonest because it pretends to be objective, because it is saddled with demonstrable errors and inexcusable omissions, because it assumes the KGB always knows what it is doing while the CIA does not. It is paranoid. It is naive."

Nevertheless, Legend unquestionably set the tone for the debate that subsequently ensued in the media about the Nosenko affair. It gave Angleton and his supporters an advantage by putting their argument adroitly - if dishonestly - before the public first. Not until David Martin responded with Wilderness of Mirrors was an opposing view presented coherently.

Cleveland Cram was CIA chief of station in the Western Hemisphere. He retired from the CIA in 1975. The following year he met George T. Kalaris and Ted Shackley at a cocktail party in Washington. Kalaris, who replaced James Angleton, as Chief of Counterintelligence, asked Cram if he would like to come back to work. Cram was told that the CIA wanted a study done of Angleton's reign from 1954 to 1974. "Find out what in hell happened. What were these guys doing."

Cram took the assignment and was given access to all CIA documents on covert operations. The study entitled History of the Counterintelligence Staff 1954-1974, took six years to complete. As David Wise points out in his book Molehunt (1992): "When Cram finally finished it in 1981... he had produced twelve legal-sized volumes, each three hundred to four hundred pages. Cram's approximately four-thousand-page study has never been declassified. It remains locked in the CIA's vaults."

Cram continued to do research for the CIA on counterintelligence matters. In 1993 he completed a study carried out on behalf of the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature. This document was declassified in 2003.

In this work Cram looks at the reliability of information found in books about the American and British intelligence agencies. Cram praises certain authors for writing accurate accounts of these covert activities. He is especially complimentary about the books written by David C. Martin (Wilderness of Mirrors), David Wise (Molehunt) and Tom Mangold (Cold Warrior). Cram points out that these authors managed to persuade former CIA officers to tell the truth about their activities. In some cases, they were even given classified documents.

In Of Moles and Molehunters, Cram is highly critical of the work of Edward J. Epstein (Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA). Cram makes it clear that Epstein, working with James Angleton, was part of a disinformation campaign. Cram writes: “Legend… gave Angleton and his supporters an advantage by putting their argument adroitly – if dishonestly – before the public first. Not until David Martin responded with Wilderness of Mirrors was an opposing view presented coherently.”

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcramC.htm

Sounds like an interesting book, I didn't read the end of your post because I want the end of the book to be a surprise.

You can buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Donald+Downes+Orders+to+Kill&rh=n%3A266239%2Ck%3ADonald+Downes+Orders+to+Kill&ajr=0

The award winning film is available from here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_14?url=search-alias%3Ddvd&field-keywords=orders+to+kill&sprefix=Orders+to+Kill%2Cstripbooks%2C288

His co-author, Paul Dehn, who also worked for British Security Coordination (BSC), went on to write the screenplay for the James Bond movie, Goldfinger. Ian Fleming was also a member of BSC. Dehn also wrote the screenplay for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

Sandy Denny - Who knows where the time goes.

Do you think if you read any of their apolitical works their politics would effect your evaluation of them?

Like you I am not really a poetry person. Can you think of a novelist who promoted a right-wing view of society?

Celine and Ayn Rand, I haven't read her either. I'm a lot more tempted to read the the former than the latter. And though he was not a fascist F. Scott Fitzgerald was anti-Semitic. I'm sure there are others that don't come to mind right now.

I first started reading novels when I was fifteen. My sister's new boyfriend had a cousin who worked for a company producing paperbacks. These books helped shape my political views: Ernest Raymond's "We the Accused" (capital punishment), Charles Beaumont's "The Outsider" (racial prejudice), Charles Israel's "The Mark" (reform of criminals), George Orwell's "Animal Farm" (political dictatorships) etc.

Beaumont's main claim to fame was as the author of many classic Twilight Zone episodes including "the Howling Man", "Long Distance Call", "A Nice Place to Visit" etc. etc.I think I read somewhere he was Rod Serling's favorite author. Yeah "Animal Farm" incluenced me as did "1984", "Brave New World" and "The Jungle"

Another book I read during this period was Donald Chase Downes's Orders to Kill (later made into a great film). Downes worked for British Security Coordination (BSC), Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war.

His story, Orders to Kill, was co-written by Paul Dehn, a former member of the BSC. The story tells of a young American pilot, Gene Summers, who is selected to go on a mission to Nazi-occupied Paris to kill Marcel Lafitte, a man believed to be a double agent working in the French Resistance.

When Summers arrives in Paris he meets his contact, Leonie, who provides information about the man he is to assassinate. Summers befriends Lafitte and the more he finds out about him, the more doubts he has of his guilt. Summers tells Leonie that he does not think Lafitte is a traitor. She becomes very angry, pointing out that Summers has dropped hundreds of bombs on people while he was a pilot. Summers replies that there is a difference between killing a lot of people and one person up close.

Summers eventually agrees to murder Lafitte. After trying to kill him with a blow to the head he is forced to resort to stabbing him with a pair of scissors. He decides to steal Lafitte's money in order to make it look like a robbery. Summers returns to Leonie but discovers she has been captured by the Gestapo. He remains in Paris and after the liberation of the city by the Allies he is told that Lafitte was not a traitor and was really a loyal member of the resistance. Summers seeks out Lafitte's wife and daughter. He tells her that her husband was one of their best agents in the resistance and gives her the money he stole from their home.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYdownesD.htm

It certainly contributes. However for a fuller explanation we have to look closer to home and examine concepts such as 'ideological power'.

In a world where it is glaringly obvious that 'free' markets only deliver inequity, corruption, division and scarcity wherever they are applied, how is it that the vast majority express themselves in a narrative which precludes alternatives?

According to one report Ed Milliband is currently reading his father's book, Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the Politics of Labour:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Parliamentary-Socialism-Study-Politics-Labour/dp/0850361354/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341478445&sr=1-2

"The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist party that gives de-localised capitalist enterprises cheap labour to lower prices and deprive workers of the rights of self-organisation."

Jacques Rancière

I was recently approached by a senior editor at Wikipedia asking me to contribute to their website. I replied:

"I have tried editing some pages at Wikipedia when I noticed mistakes but they were usually reversed. Someone had written an entry for me (taken from my own online biography and other sources). This was then taken down. I got the impression that Wikipedia was hostile to Spartacus Educational (maybe they did not like the fact that I started the site in September 1997)."

He then wrote a rather detailed reply:

"It can be trying getting rolling at Wikipedia, but it goes pretty smoothly once you are. Be sure that you edit as a "signed in" editor, not as an anonymous IP editor - a huge percentage of vandalism comes from anonymous IP editors, so that work is typically watched extremely closely and treated poorly.

Once signed in editors have 12 edits over 3 days, the level of scrutiny drops. It also helps to have a user page attached to your name that indicates you are serious about the Wikipedia project -- that works as a scarecrow against the anti-vandalism people.

As for Spartacus, there are a small circle of people involved with quality control work that do not like Spartacus Educational. I got in a fight with one of them recently who was running around deleting footnotes to the site (in violation of policy). I've found your site generally accurate (in the same way that Wikipedia is generally accurate) and think their concern is grossly misplaced.

The issue relates to the Wikipedia concept of "reliable sources" versus "blog posts." I don't think your date of origin or any notion of "competition" has anything to do with it -- more like a handful of anal-retentive types object because they don't see the published sources of your information showing.

Your own page coming down probably related to a lack of "third party sources." The rule of thumb is that a topic needs to have published, independent coverage in 3 or more places. Even though your own personal biography was accurate, it would not count towards notability since it originated with you. However, if three newspapers did pieces on you or your site, a biography could be written using your web site in part that could be defended from a notability challenge."

I do not have the time to spend time edited Wikipedia pages but I agree with Tom, if you do have the time it might be worth spending it on Wikipedia. It is the place where most people get their information.

Do you think if you read any of their apolitical works their politics would effect your evaluation of them?

Like you I am not really a poetry person. Can you think of a novelist who promoted a right-wing view of society?

I first started reading novels when I was fifteen. My sister's new boyfriend had a cousin who worked for a company producing paperbacks. These books helped shape my political views: Ernest Raymond's "We the Accused" (capital punishment), Charles Beaumont's "The Outsider" (racial prejudice), Charles Israel's "The Mark" (reform of criminals), George Orwell's "Animal Farm" (political dictatorships) etc.

Thankyou, John for the very interesting material on Stephenson, i noticed, as i make so very many myself, that there is an error in the spelling of capital city of Manitoba, it is spelt, Winnipeg, i..peg.....just mentioning it, thanks best b..d

Thank you for that. I have just uploaded some fresh information on Stephenson. By the way, according to the CIA, Thomas F. Troy, died in 2008:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080103282.html

According to Thomas F. Troy, the CIA staff historian who published A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (1981) William Stephenson was the person who developed the idea of "dirty tricks" in the CIA.

Stephenson is one of the most interesting characters of the 20th century. The best book on the subject is Bill Macdonald’s The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents (1998). He argues that the first two biographies, Harford Montgomery Hyde’s The Quiet Canadian (1962) and William Stevenson’s A Man Called Intrepid (1976) are both unreliable as they were written in league with British intelligence.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWstephensonW.htm

Have you read anything by Celine or Ezra Pound? If so what are your views on them and their work? I've read some of the latter's poems but was not especially impressed by them but I'm not much of a poetry person, never read anything by the former.Both however are regarded a genius. And held views that I and I assume find offensive.

No, but I am aware of Ezra Pound's fascist sympathies.

Thank you for publishing these articles. This is indeed a big story in the UK. Hopefully the authorities will be calling for crooks like Bob Diamond (already received £100 million for rigging the market in favour of Barclays) to be extradicted to the USA.

As a young boy I remember being taken to see Aunt Ginnie by my dad. I was told that I should feel sorry for her as she had never been married and did not have any other family. Ginnie was the sister of my dad’s father who had been killed in the First World War. As she was all alone she became part of the family and Stella, my mum’s sister, used to invite her to her home for Christmas. According to Stella, Ginnie spent most of the time sleeping in the armchair or talking about her time working as a live-in servant. Ginny eventually died aged 79 in 1957.

Recently, my brother, David Simkin, has been researching our family history. In the 1911 census he discovered that our grandfather, John Edward Simkin, was living in the home of Aunt Ginnie. However, her name was Fanny Eugene Frost. In other words she lied about never being married. Further research by Christine Trott discovered the Ginnie was the mother of seven children. What is more, they were all living close to their mother in the last few years of their life. Why did lie about never being married? Why did she lose contact with her seven children?

Further research by David indicated that Ginnie’s husband, Thomas Edward Frost, was killed in Italy in the final days of the First World War and is buried at the Faenza Communal Cemetery. War widow’s was poorly treated after the war and even they managed to deal with the officialdom needed to get a pension, the maximum was half of their husband’s earnings before the war. For many women, her husband’s death condemned her to a life of poverty. Did Ginnie desert her children and become a live-in servant? If so, she seems to have completely whipped out all memories of her former life as a mother of seven children. In doing so, she never enjoyed the pleasures of being a grandmother (records show that she had 17 grandchildren).

http://www.spartacus...k/FWWsimkin.htm

http://www.spartacus...o.uk/Wfirst.htm

I agree with your preference for artists who put their vision before profits but am mixed about judging them for their politics etc. Though most were/are progressive a good number of talented artists were racists, sexists, homophobes, anti-Semites etc but I try not to hold it against them if it does not permate their work too much.

I recently gave a talk on Oscar Wilde in Worthing. I pointed out that that in 1895 he was charged with having sex with a 14 year-old newspaper boy Alphonso Conway and his friend Stephen from the town. At the same time he was writing his greatest play, The Importance of being Ernest in a Worthing hotel. The audience was divided on whether these facts should influence their opinion on him as a writer.

http://www.spartacus...o.uk/Jwilde.htm

I thought we could start a thread on who you consider is the world's greatest artist. My first contender is Käthe Kollwitz.

Interesting article, I'd never heard of her before. Is your assessment based on her life/politics or her art or do you consider all these inextricably linked?

I judge artists (and writers) by their quality and their politics. That is why I tend to like artists who did not sell out. Norman Rockwell might seem a strange choice but I do like his idealism and he always campaigned for equal rights.

A true artist has to ignore market pressures. It usually means that they do not make much money from their art. This is the message of this great song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbJySXTcf7o

According to this report Jack Caulfield published his memoirs a few months ago. I found it here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Caulfield-Shield-911-NYPD-John/dp/1469799790/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340520168&sr=1-3

http://www.change.or...n-records#share

http://www.facebook....acusEducational

Jack Caulfield died last week. Unlike most of the other figures in the story, he never wrote his account of the Watergate Scandal. I suspect he was behind setting up Edward Kennedy at Chappaquiddick.

In April, 1969, Caulfield was appointed as Staff Assistant to Richard Nixon. Soon afterwards Nixon decided that the White House should establish an in-house investigative capability that could be used to obtain sensitive political information. After consulting John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman the job was given to Caulfield.

Caulfield now appointed an old friend, Tony Ulasewicz, to carry out this investigative work. Ulasewicz's first task was to investigate the links between Bobby Baker and leading Democratic Party politicians. Was this the way Nixon discovered who was behind the assassination of JFK?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcaulfieldJ.htm

Jack Caulfield died last week. Unlike most of the other figures in the story, he never wrote his account of the Watergate Scandal. I suspect he was behind setting up Edward Kennedy at Chappaquiddick.

In April, 1969, Caulfield was appointed as Staff Assistant to Richard Nixon. Soon afterwards Nixon decided that the White House should establish an in-house investigative capability that could be used to obtain sensitive political information. After consulting John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman the job was given to Caulfield.

Caulfield now appointed an old friend, Tony Ulasewicz, to carry out this investigative work. Ulasewicz's first task was to investigate the links between Bobby Baker and leading Democratic Party politicians. Was this the way Nixon discovered who was behind the assassination of JFK?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcaulfieldJ.htm

Thank you for this information. I have updated my page on him.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcaulfieldJ.htm

I have updated my page on Jack White to include details of his death. The biography was actually written by Jack and I see some of the obituaries have quoted from it.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwhiteJ.htm

This is what Jack wrote on 2nd April 2004:

On 11-22-63 I was certain it was LBJ and cronies. For the next 30 years I read every book and watched every TV show, and considered... the CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans, the Russians, the Secret Service... you name it, I considered it. But I knew it was not a lone nut kid named Oswald. By about 1990 I was back where I started. I was certain it was LBJ and friends.

Over the years, logic prevailed. Who benefited most? Who had the motive, means, opportunity? Who could cover up the crime? Who could control the autopsy? Who could control the investigations and the investigators? Who could control the evidence and suppress or change it? Who could fabricate evidence in the hands of the FBI? Who could control the media? Who could control the public? Who could control the patsy? Who could fabricate the Zabruder film? Certainly not Dulles... Giancana... Castro... Kruschev... etc.

ANSWER: THE POWER OF THE PRESIDENCY.... especially a venal and corrupt president and his friends, backers, and cronies. Lyndon Baines Johnson. He controlled Texas. He controlled Dallas. He controlled Hoover. He controlled Dulles. He controlled the military. He controlled Warren and the commission. He had alliances with the mafia and the media. He and Hoover used BLACKMAIL and murder to control those he could not control. Hoover fabricated evidence for him. Hoover was his next door neighbor. He allied himself with Hoover, Dullles, Nixon and his backers in the oil/military industrial complex/CIA/military to carry out the murder.

That is the truth. It was so obvious all along. One of the most corrupt men in all of history... LBJ.

Members might be interested in this article on QR Codes.

http://www.spartacus...o.uk/TECHqr.htm

http://www.squarecode.biz/