SYNOPSIS


    Vague references to the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘threat to national security’ are
    frequently used by venal politicians to cover-up criminal associations and covert illegal
    activity, ranging from money-laundering, narcotics trafficking, abduction and murder to
    the wholesale slaughter of non-combatant civilians.  Their detritus is glibly dismissed
    or erased from mainstream media coverage of state terror around the world. But an
    awareness of what intelligence agencies are doing in the shadows is necessary if we
    are ever to grasp the true reality of momentous public events we wrongly think we
    understand. .

    The issues in Understanding Shadows include how the bloody and brutal end of
    ‘democratic Islam’ in Algeria  has facilitated the “fear and loathing” which has
    dominated the West’s security agenda  since 9/11.

    The arrogance and political hubris of former British PM, Tony Blair,  and the corrupt use
    of intelligence,  took the UK to war in Iraq, and was a factor in the lonely death of WMD
    specialist, Dr David Kelly, while ‘off stage’ Israel continued its colonization of occupied
    Arab lands and upgraded its collective punishment of Gaza.

    There is an account of the curious journey the CIA’s USSR ‘dangle’, Lee Harvey
    Oswald, made across Cold War Europe in June 1962, while the end of the apartheid
    regime in South Africa provided an opportunity for self-serving, power-hungry ANC
    politicians to ‘feather their own nests’ at the expense of the impoverished majority of
    their fellow citizens – a depressing example of a righteous liberation struggle turned
    sour.

    Meanwhile, the ‘long war’ continued. Operation ‘Banner’ was the codename given to
    the longest British Army deployment since 1945. In the North of Ireland, where the 36-
    year period of active service is referred to as the ‘Troubles’,  clandestine military units,
    including the murderous Force Research Unit ,  waged a ‘dirty war’ against the
    Provisional IRA in particular, and the nationalist community in general. An estimated
    763 British soldiers died and over 6,000 were injured during the ‘Troubles’ that ended
    in a ‘military stalemate’ according to an official British Ministry of Defense report .

    The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, brokered by the successive US, UK and Irish
    administrations after 12-years of often ‘torturous’ negotiations, has been largely
    successful in reconciling communities, and has been cited as a possible template for
    peace in the Middle East.

    An awareness of the ‘back stories’ to these issues is an important factor for the
    understanding of shadows.




    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Chapter 1  SLOUCHING TOWARD JERUSALEM

    "What shocks and worries me is the narrow-mindedness and the short-sightedness of our military
    leaders. They seem to presume that the State of Israel may, or even must, behave in the realm of
    international relations according to the laws of the jungle - the long chain of false incidents and
    hostilities we have invented and the many clashes we have provoked". (from the 'Diary of Moshe
    Sharett' former Israeli prime minister from January 1954 to November 1955).

    This chapter includes the unprovoked assault on the USS Liberty, the Palestinian exodus, driven
    from their homes and villages by Zionist terror organizations header by future Israeli prime
    ministers, the assassinations of Arab activists, and Israeli state officials in the Middle East and
    Europe, low intensity covert operations and the collective punishment of Gaza.

    Chapter 2  ‘LONDONISTAN'

    'Londonistan' is a portmanteau first used by the French media during the GIA attacks in Paris in the
    1990s, referring to the flight of radical Algerians to the UK. Since then there is enough empirical
    evidence to suggest that GIA was infiltrated and manipulated by the Algerian and French secret
    intelligence services following the US/UK/France military coup, in January 1992, in the wake of the
    December 1991 Algerian general election which was won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
    However, in Washington FIS was regarded as "hostile to American hegemonic aspirations in the
    region", tens of thousands of FIS supporters were interned in concentrations in the Sahara, many
    more were tortured and murdered, while an estimated 175,000 died in the campaign of terror
    which followed, which marked the end of democratic Islam.

    London became a refuge, and radical Islam prospered. Apart from the domestic threat, the
    7/7/2005 London transit bombings, and the failure of MI5 to prevent the carnage and be "fit for
    purpose"when it mattered, this chapter also deals with the 'liquid bomb plot' and several similar
    incidents which have contributed to the 'climate of fear' , the role played by radical clerics,
    including Abu Hamza al-Masri recently extradited and awaiting trial in the US, and the radical
    education of men like Zacarias Moussaoui (the 20th 9/11 hijacker), the 'underwear bomber' Umar
    Farouk, and the 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid. The CIA now has a permanent operative presence in
    the UK dealing solely with radical Islamists because Langley (and Washington) doesn't trust the
    British to contain the 'threat' (despite the 'special relationship')

    Chapter 3   THE ITCHING PALM

    Greed, corruption and murder in South Africa under successive ANC regimes since the collapse of
    the apartheid system, including the illegal practices associated with the 1999 Strategic Defense
    Procurement (SDP) process and BAE Systems, the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation; BAE
    business practices in Europe (Hungary, the Czech Republic and Sweden) Africa and Saudi Arabia
    (the 'Al Yamamah' deal), the FBI investigation of Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan (a
    close friend of the Bush family). The chapter includes the CIEX security risk assessment agency
    report, headed by former MI6 officer Michael Oatley (who was part of the back-channel
    conversation with ex-IRA commander, Martin McGuinness, the current deputy First Minister of
    Northern Ireland, prior to the peace agreement).

    In November 2011 the ANC majority administration passed the repressive Prevention of State
    Information Bill (PSIB) similar to legislation to control the media enacted by the apartheid regime.
    Among other things the PSIB will severely restrict coverage of the judicial inquiry into corruption,
    headed by Appeal Court Judge, Jeff Radebe, due to report in December 2013.

    Chapter 4  SEEING THINGS INVISIBLE

    How and why Britain went to war in Iraq under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, including
    the Blair/Bush relationship, the abuse of intelligence in London and Washington, making a fool of
    Colin Powell at the UN, how the media was used to deceive the public, and the lonely death of
    British scientist and WMD expert, Dr. David Kelly, in woodland near his home in Oxfordshire, in
    July 2003, who had warned that the intelligence was being "sexed-up" to provide an excuse to
    invade Iraq.

    Chapter 5   UNDERSTANDING SHADOWS

    Lee Harvey Oswald was not a defector who fled to the USSR because he had problems with
    capitalism. He was an unproductive US intelligence asset  who spent most of his time  ’
    quarantined’ in Minsk  until recalled by Langley in June 1962. This is an account of the curious
    journey Oswald,  his wife, Marina and 14-week-old daughter, made  from Moscow to Rotterdam,
    an important transit port for the US Army at the height of the Cold War, and - for the same reason -
    an important posting for the Soviet KGB and the GRU. This is an old-fashioned HUMINT story. The
    KGB very likely knew Oswald's covert pedigree from bugged conversations at the US embassy in
    Moscow, and followed him on the two-day train journey from the Soviet capital to the Dutch port
    and a CIA safe house, tailed him around the city and were, in turn, followed by Dutch BVD agents
    working closely with their CIA paymasters, until Oswald boarded the USS Maasdam and sailed into
    history .

    Chapter 6  WITHOUT GRACE OR FAVOR

    Deals with the activities of predatory Roman Catholic clergy in Europe, the US, Australia and
    Mexico, the cover-up of their sexual crimes by local bishops and the current Pontiff. The criminal
    relationship between the Vatican and the Mafia - activities ranging from money laundering and
    drug trafficking to abduction and murder - and the influence of the 'combat monks' of Opus Dei.
    How the Polish trade union, 'Solidarnosc' got its money, and fascist regimes in Central America got
    their guns

    Chapter 7  THE BUTCHER' S APRON

    The long war in the North of Ireland was a laboratory for British counter-insurgency operations
    later used in Iraq and currently employed in Afghanistan. The activities of the Military Reaction
    Force (MRF), 14 Intelligence and Security Company (14ISC) and the murderous Force Research Unit
    (FRU), and the revenge of the 'abandoned' spies - agents employed by British military intelligence
    and MI5 and left behind by their spymasters who were engaged in various criminal practices to
    protect their cover, including the deaths of police officers, arms trafficking for loyalist death squads
    from South Africa (many of the weapons confiscated from the PLO by the Israeli Army) and the
    procurement of high-tech equipment from the US for IRA IEDs.

    There is also focus on the bombing of Dublin and Monaghan bombings in May 1974, the greatest
    single atrocity of the 'Troubles,' the border war, and the judicial inquiry into alleged collusion
    between the IRA and the Irish Garda Siochana, carried out by Judge Peter Smithwick, which is
    expected to report in July 2013. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, rejected a similar
    inquiry, recommended by Canadian Appeals Court Justice, Peter Cory, into the assassination of
    Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane, facilitated by British agents and carried out by loyalist gunmen
    because he feared it would open a Pandora's box of lies, deceit, blackmail, abduction and murder
    more reminiscent of death squads in Central and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, than a
    supposedly law-abiding and democratic European state

    Much of the information about the clandestine criminal activity comes from ex-British agents -
    including Peter Keeley (aka 'Kevin Fulton') Ian Hurst (aka 'Martin Ingram') Martin Garland (aka
    Agent 'Carol') and Sam Rosenfeld (aka Agent 'Rosebud') several of whom are currently suing the
    British Defense Ministry.

UNDERSTANDING
SHADOWS
The Corrupt Use of
Intelligence

/ Michael Quilligan

ISBN: 978-0-9853353-9-7
$21.95  2013

FOR US ORDERS ONLY








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    AUTHOR

    Michael Quilligan is a Dublin-born journalist, former European correspondent with the Paris-
    based Association pour de droit a I'information (ADI). Contributor to several Irish and Dutch
    publications, including BRES (Amsterdam), the Security and Intelligence Research Bureau
    (OVIB) 1999 book, "Operation Homerus: Spying for the BVD" and the ADI's "The Intelligence
    Files" (Clarity Press, 2005).


    REVIEWS

    "... Michael Quilligan's focus is on the weapons of mass deception
    which elites and states use to keep us ignorant. His book is a
    meticulously researched and corroborated survey of how
    'intelligence' is used to hide, distort, and bury the truth of great
    events, and instead implant a 'version', a narrative, which reflects
    the requirements of the rulers of the world and serves to conceal
    reality. Intelligence services and their linked military, criminal, and
    undercover 'assets', do a lot of things, of which spying is
    perceived as the most exciting and glamorous. But they do more.
    For example, they murder. The French secret service's
    assassination of a Greenpeace photographer in New Zealand is an
    egregious example, another the almost incessant stream of
    doorstep killings and public executions by Israel's Mossad. And
    now we have daily murder by drone and missile on the orders of a
    former law professor who became President of the United States,
    carried out from secret bunkers by agents of one or other of the
    plethora of intelligence agencies which have been so expanded
    since 9/11 as to constitute a state, an unanswerable state, within a
    state..."


    "... The readers of this book should understand that hardly any
    international crisis happened without the involvement of secret
    agencies or their shadowy contractors. A stimulating reading
    matter."
                     Ludwig Watzal, Media with Conscience (MCW News)


    "From the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, to war crimes in  Iraq,
    the plundering of South Africa, the assassination of JFK,
    institutional abuses and financial intrigues at the Vatican, and the
    Troubles in Ireland, Michael Quilligan shines a bright light into
    some of the most secretive and misunderstood events and issues
    of our times.  With a keen and often literary eye, he connects the
    dots and reveals the hidden hand and modus operandi of the
    power elite.  Extensively researched, Understanding Shadows is
    must reading for those familiar with intelligence agencies and
    their intrigues.  For the uninitiated, it is a valuable introduction
    and summary."
    Douglas Valentine,
    author of The Phoenix Program and
    The Strength of the Wolf.


    "Current history has its mainstream chroniclers and the corporate
    media to let you know what you should think has been happening,
    but here - based on extensive documentation and research work -
    you will learn what is actually behind the glossy print and public
    facade of these major events...".
                                            Olivier Schmidt, ADI journal, Intelligence

    "Michael Quilligan has written a fascinating book on some of the
    most serious social and political ills of our time.  Understanding
    Shadows penetrates the surface and takes us  inside major
    political scandals...  A cogently written, intricately researched, and
    thought provoking work about the abuses of government secrecy
    and the dirty work of  intelligence agencies."
                                          James DiEugenio,
    author of The Assassinations and Destiny Betrayed
    and  co-Founder, Coalition on Political
    Assassinations