The British state’s failed attempt to kill off the Freedom of Information Act

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] problem with US FOIA.’16 The CIA Operational Files exemption to which Mr Jones is referring was created in 1984 (appropriately, some might think) and allows the Central Intelligence Agency to withhold anything it claims is ‘operational’ without even requiring the material in question to be reviewed. ‘ the CIA has stretched the definition of […]

The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] its key figure as Dean Godson, a former Daily Telegraph colleague. The author writes: Godson came from a family with a tradition of interest in Cold War intelligence work, propaganda and covert action. His father Joseph Godson was Labour attaché at the United States embassy in London in the 1950s and used his influence […]

Dangerous Hero, and, Boris Johnson

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] because it did not stop Corbyn from being ‘a communist fellowtraveller’. (p. 37) Bower does his level best to assemble evidence that Corbyn was working for Czech intelligence in the late 1980s. They gave him the codename ‘COB’, presumably short for Corbyn and considered him a ‘potential collaborator’. But in the end Bower has […]

Political life in Britain

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] way he has fascinating stories to tell about John Addey, James Sherwood, Joseph Godson, the Gang of Four and many more. He also had experiences of the intelligence services worth reading. This is not an academic work, though academics could learn much from it. Nor is it just a collection of anecdotes from a […]

TO CATCH A SPY: How the Spycatcher Affair Brought MI5 in from the Cold by Tim Tate

Lobster Issue 89 (2024) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] of Pincher’s Their Trade is Treachery. It gets pretty complicated here because another senior retired MI5 officer, Arthur Martin, and James Angleton, former head of CIA counter- intelligence, were also talking to people — notably Jonathan Aitken MP — about Soviet moles in MI5. At this point the British state, in the shape of […]

Using the UK FOIA

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] This is because disclosure of the withheld information would breach the principle that the UK government does not release the names of officials from its own external intelligence agency, and by extension, those of allied intelligence services. Consequently, the 1 FCO has argued that it would seriously compromise such cooperation and thus prejudice the […]

The Mossad Spy It’s not what you’ve done it’s who you are… the transgender spy

Lobster Issue

[…] see what others hadn’t: Olivia’s life spent concealing the fact that she felt she was a woman might have given her the deception skills to be an intelligence officer. At 18 she joined the Israel Defence Force (IDF) as a woman, in preparation for entering Mossad. There are vivid accounts of military engagements and […]

The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right, by Oliver Eagleton

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] I’ve yet seen. It’s almost worth the price of the book in itself. For the author 1 1 relates one example after another in which police and intelligence agency abuse is not prosecuted, lawfare is encouraged and how, in extending the work of the CPS overseas under a Tory government ‘as part of this […]

Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law: Aden and the end of Empire by Aaron Edwards

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] fire, they ‘cowered’ – as opposed to sheltering, which was what white men did. They ‘lounged’ a lot. Instead of shouting, they ‘hollered’. While Britain used ‘covert intelligence’, they ‘spied’ treacherously. Their attacks were ‘heartless’ and ‘cowardly’. They were addicted to ‘fighting, killing and treachery’, usually for lucre, or under the influence of ‘gat’ […]

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