Training other people’s police forces

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

This is the text of a paper read by Jonathan Bloch at a meeting of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade in London in June 1985. The purpose of this paper is to examine selected aspects of British involvement in the training of foreign police personnel both here and abroad. Not much research has been […]

The Faber book of Espionage

Book cover
Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££

[…] Faber, London, 1993 The title isn’t to be taken seriously. This is 610 pages of short extracts from some of the books written by British MI5 and MI6 personnel, with short biographical sections by ‘West’. Some of this is quite interesting — lots of it was new to me — but as ‘West’ approaches […]

Historical Notes (De Courcy, Pilcher and Hess; The 1949 sterling crisis)

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] that such an experienced man as Pilcher should have leaked secret, war-related documents to de Courcy – unless, of course, the whole operation was indeed an arms-length MI6 ploy. De Courcy, it is clear, knew Menzies. He told me that the IPG itself was an ‘MI6 front’. Fanciful self-promotion? The circumstantial evidence is against […]

Enemies of the State

Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££

[…] and private investigator. In the early 1970s Murray ‘unexpectedly’ (invitation?) joined the Operations Intelligence cadre of 21 SAS, and this led to close contact with people from MI6, Army SIB, the Royal Military Police and the Parachute Regiment. In 1980 Murray became increasingly involved in investigating the activities of journalists, TV producers, MPs and […]

The Pinay Circle

Lobster Issue 8 (1985) £££

[…] Finance, Pandolfi; South African, General Fraser; former West German minister, Mertz; and Paris lawyer Jean Violet, director of the circle, with ties to western intelligence agencies, including MI6. The circle met on the 5th and 6th of January, 1980, in Zurich. Attending were: Violet, Count Huyn, Brian Crozier, Nicholas Elliot (ex MI6), General D. […]

Clippings Digest: August – November 1984

Lobster Issue 7 (1985) £££

[…] refused publication by junior defence minister John Stanley (Observer 30 September) Special Branch SB attending Friends of the Earth and NCCL meetings in Manchester. (Guardian 29 November) MI6 Interesting piece on Tony Jones, London solicitor accused of being MI6/MI5 informant, including the information that Michael Bettaney was the source of the information, in Black […]

I am being slagged off, therefore I am

Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££

There have been several notable assaults on the good ship Lobster since number 24. On Thursday, 19 November 1992 a journalist researching a piece on MI6 rang me. He said had been to talk to the KGB defector, Oleg Gordiefsky, who told him that the KGB were big fans of Lobster. Since Gordiefky defected […]

New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain’s Spies Came In From The Cold

Book cover
Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

[…] rob banks and attempt to penetrate the IRA is dismissed in the line, ‘the Littlejohn fiasco (in which a Dublin bank was allegedly robbed on behalf of MI6).’ (p. 224) In a long footnote, however, no. 45 on p. 311, Smith flails around trying to get round the embarrassment of Littlejohn. First he offers […]

Brian Crozier, the Pinay Circle and James Goldsmith

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

[…] has a close relationship with Mr ‘Dickie’ Franks, Director of the British SIS and his closest assistant Mr N. (Nicholas) Elliot who was a department head in MI6. Crozier, Elliot and Franks were recently invited to Chequers for a working meeting. It must therefore be concluded that MI6 is fully aware of, if not […]

Our Searchlight problem

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] as Steve Dorril and I tried to elaborate in our book Smear!, the picture of the mid 1970s was more complex than this. People either linked to MI6 or former officers of MI6 were running their own operations during this period. This is the thesis that has always been promoted by Searchlight. From their […]

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