Pieces without an author’s name are by the editor Parish Notices Credit where credit is due Like many other small magazines, Lobster would probably not exist were it not for Central Books, who have been distributing Lobster since issue 16, generating that bit of extra sales revenue to help keep this curious enterprise afloat. To … Read more
As a number of people have pointed out, in the first 5 Lobsters – something like 100,000 words – there has been hardly a mention of the Soviet and Soviet satellite intelligence activities. There are reasons. No-one has offered us anything on this subject, and neither of us (ie Ramsay/Dorril) know much about it. What … Read more
Gecas and Special Branch A wonderful example of the reach and power of intelligence connections was provided in January. Why did the British state refuse to extradite Anton Gecas, the WW2 Lithuanian war criminal, to the Soviet Union in 1976? Turns out not only had Gecas worked for SIS at the end of WW2, he’d … Read more
Harold Pinter defined American foreign policy thus: ‘Kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in.’ William Blum counts the heads that have been kicked. United States foreign policy In 1975, there was a committee of the US congress called the Pike Committee, named after its chairman Otis Pike. This committee investigated the covert … Read more
Philip Willan Constable, London, 1991, £20.00 Hats off. A British journalist, living in Italy, Willan has produced that synthesis of the Italian material on the “strategy of tension’ and related parapolitical activity which people like me, without Italian or access to the Italian press, have been waiting for. This is one of those books that … Read more
In 1953 Dr Drank Olsen, a scientist working for the CIA, was found dead on the pavement outside a New York hotel. The Agency instituted a cover-up of the circumstances of his death. The cover-up survived until 1975 when it was revealed that Olsen had been one of many people who had been unwittingly given … Read more
The Israel Lobby John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt London: Allen Lane, 2007, £25 This account of the relationship between the ‘Israel lobby’ in the US, the US state and Israel should be required reading for anyone with an interest – personal, professional or political – in the troubled affairs of the Middle East. … Read more
[…] Malcolm Christie, an agent both for SIS and for Sir Robert Vansittart, despite the suggestive evidence that they might be connected.(3) Did Chamberlain back an attempt to assassinate Hitler, as the Nazis claimed? It would have been good to have been told more about this episode — not least because it is suggested that […]
James McConnachie and Robin Tudge, London, New York: Rough Guide Ltd (Penguin Books), 2005, p/b £9.99 / $14.99 (US) / $22.99 (Can) This chunky paperback is intended to give readers an introduction to the world of conspiracies and the theories around them, as opposed to works which discuss conspiracy theories as a topic in … Read more
Who’s kidding whom? The September issue of Fortean Times carried a five page article by Robert Irving, ‘The Henry X File’, about Armen Victorian. It was a very strange article, part profile, part smear job. Armen was ‘twice reportedly seen in the back of a Soviet embassy limousine in Ottowa… rumours associated [him] with the … Read more
