Kitson, Kincora and counter-insurgency in Northern Ireland

Lobster Issue 10 (1986)

[…] and intelligence between the Army and the RUC at all levels up to Brigade. However, some of the successful operatives were recruited by Mr Craig Smellie of MI6, to operate on cross-border duties. Holroyd was one of this small group. John Colin Wallace, an Ulsterman from Ballymena, was a civil servant employed at Headquarters […]

The Searchlight saga continued

Lobster Issue 27 (1994)

[…] either to be put into the hands of a special police unit attached to the Police National Intelligence Bureau, or to be turned over to MI5 and MI6…. this proposal might astonish some of our readers. But it is clear that Special Branch’s head office in London had failed to comprehend the dangerous nature […]

More views from the bridge

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] The Gordon Logan story In Lobster 41 I referred to some articles on the Cryptome website by Gordon Logan. Another has appeared on Cryptome since then, ‘ MI6, Bush and Foot and Mouth.’ (6) This begins with one of Logan’s most striking and most implausible claims: ‘The author, Gordon Logan, triggered the premature Moscow […]

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 […]

The Great Betrayal

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] is just a poor effort on Bethel’s part. One can’t deny that it is useful – after all, it is the first book written solely about an MI6 operation – but one is disappointed by its thinness and its viewpoint. Bethel’s (partly legitimate) excuse is that documentation is unavailable because of Kim Philby’s involvement […]

Web Update

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

[…] provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 on the grounds of safeguarding national security. Similar certificates were signed (by Robin Cook, then Foreign Secretary) on behalf of MI6 and GCHQ. In October 2001, Norman Baker MP won a Data Protection Tribunal appeal; the National Security Appeals Panel of the Tribunal ruled that a blanket […]

Obituaries

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] what the British Left assumed Catholic Action in Britain was up to (but for which it never produced the evidence). Frank Steele (obit Guardian 5 January 1998) MI6 officer sent into Northern Ireland in 1971. Involved in 1972/3 attempts to resolve the conflict. C. Gordon Tether (obit Financial Times 3 December 1997) FT writer […]

Iraq

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

[…] is the memorandum written by Matthew Rycroft, dated 23 July 2002, after a meeting at Downing Street to discuss Iraq. In that Rycroft reports ‘C’, head of MI6, as saying, ‘There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable.’ A CIA analyst at the time, Paul Pillar, dates the […]

Vindication is a dish still edible when cold

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

[…] the South African Information Department in Pretoria) proving that he had been framed. Martin Dollinchek, alias Martin Donaldson (a BOSS agent who was captured when the CIA, MI6 and BOSS mounted a joint attempt to invade the Seychelles in an attempt to bring Boss’s agent of influence James Mancham back to power, to rid […]

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