This is interesting....
 

Okay, I knew about most of them, but The Kenyon Review is new to me:

http://www.theawl.com/2015/08/litera...the-cia-ranked

It should be pointed out, and I am doing just that, that Quadrant is, and always was, a journal of the right. What was the CIA doing there? Still all contributions gratefullyreceived.

The Labour Party's journal, Tribune, was funded directly from Moscow when Michael Foot was the editor. Michael Foot was a disastrous leader of the Labour Party, disastrous if you are a left wing person who would like power, that is. Jeremy Corbyn, bless him, is a chip off the old block.

I thought you didn't like Tony Blair, John! Because you sounded like him just now.

You avoid, Quincy, well of course you do, the substance of what I said. Did Michael Foot take Russian money? Yes he did. Is that OK with you?

Better Soviet than CIA. I mean, they backed the Sandinistas against the Contras, the Afghan secularists against the mujaheddin, etc.

Well, it's a point of view, Quincy. I'm quite pro-Putin really. Better Russians than Germans if you see what I mean.

John,

My understanding is that this was an allegation made in 1995 by the Sunday Times and the News of the World, based largely on a book written by an ex British-Soviet double agent.

Foot issued writs for libel and the News of the World immediately settled out of court for £35,000. The Sunday Times contested and lost and ended up paying out £100,000+. To me this suggests that neither paper had any evidence that would stand up in court.

[1995 story in the Independent Newspaper]

I'm not saying that the libel settlement means it can't be true (as Jeffrey Archer's perjury shows, for example), but the allegation does seem far from proven.

best,

Matt

Isn't it more "better the worst of the Russians than the worst of the Germans," while instead we should be hoping for the best from each, which Putin does not represent?

Ed

Thanks, Matt--

I kind of suspected a degree of bull$#!t but do not withdraw my previous assertion.

And Putin's Russia ain't the Soviet Union. More's the pity. He's right about Crimea, though.

Thanks from me also, Matt. My bullshit detector was honking and wheezing, but there's a limit to how much time I want to spend checking out and knocking down John's statements, particularly with Trump keeping us all so busy on this side of the pond.

Look up Charles Moore (agreed he's one of mine). It was common knowledge that Tribune, always short of funds, received money from Moscow. Back in the forties and fifties the USSR was rather a hero to the British left. Many trade union leaders were communist, either openly (Mick McGahey of the miners' union is one late exampl)e, or covertly, Jack Jones, who was indeed a spy for Moscow, lead the biggest and most powerful Trade Union i the 70s. The eminence grise, incidentally, of the SNP, the poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Doctor C. M. Grieve) was solidly behind the USSR in its crushing of bourgeois revolution in Hungary. I met him when he addressed our school genial and quite barking.,

I can't understand, Michael, why any of you waste your time with the clown, Donald Trump. He is an obvious idiot, just look at the hair, except at making money in very dodgy ways. Jeremy Corbyn, soon to be leader of the Labour Party, is not an idiot. He is a sincere and grovellingly poor (by American standards) man who thinks the USA is the fount of all evil, a view held by many over here. Though not by me. I am solidly pro USA, even including people like you and the redoubtable Quincy, the fellow-traveller, in my remit.

I'd already read this piece by Moore on Foot, but he seemed to have nothing to add, just more Gordievsky stuff, which as he himself points out is "hard to corroborate ... without the benefit of KGB and MI6 files" -- by which I take it he means that Gordievsky's assertions remain uncorroborated.

So, I'd say hearsay ("it was common knowledge"), and guilt by association (other people were) is all you have to add here, John. This still leaves us with nothing that would stand up in court, and were he still alive, anyone making the same allegations in print would presumably still be forced to withdraw them again pretty sharpish and at great cost.

It seems to me that all that can reasonably at this stage is that allegations have been made, and that you believe them. Perhaps at some point you'll be proven right, perhaps not.

best,

Matt

There were always rumors about the CIA and MS magazine, but Gloria Steinem claimed to know nothing about it.