French vendetta: from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages deal

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] also come in for criticism for low productivity in intelligence-gathering. Its information on the Soviet Union or China is scanty and basic in comparison with CIA or MI6 material, and a report indicating a Libyan withdrawal from Chad in 1984 proved embarrassing when it became apparent the following year that the Libyans had actually […]

The view from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004)

[…] the other hand, maybe he didn’t trust Mr Blair and went to the meetings wired. In Lobster 9, in 1985, Ashdown was named as having been in MI6 by Steve Dorril, in the first batch of what eventually became the Who’s Who of the British Secret State. Though I cannot remember why Dorril thought […]

SAS

Lobster Issue 5 (1984)

[…] both owned by the Property Services Agency, Whitehall’s accommodation bureau. The CTT’s valuable services are available only to serving members of Her Majesty’s forces, including MI5 and MI6, and to non-national serving soldiers. They have trained Irish, Belgian and other continental ‘special forces’. CTT instructors/talent scouts include Lucien Ott, one of the older hands, […]

The influence of intelligence services on the British left

Lobster Issue

[…] Chair of British Youth Council. The British Youth Council began as the British section of the World Assembly of Youth, which was set up and financed by MI6 and then taken over by the CIA in the 1950s, created to combat the Soviet Union’s youth fronts. By Mandelson’s time in the mid1970s under a […]

Puppet Masters: the political use of terrorism in Italy

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] journalist in Italy and came across what appeared to be evidence in 1972 that Roberto Calvi and the assistant British Military Attache in Rome — presumably an MI6 officer under cover — were funnelling money to the Italian far right. No, Peace for the Wicked is £4.50 from Hale at 31 Ada Road, Canterbury, […]

The British Right

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] right’ Young Tory, Hoiles made a highly publicised visit to Central America in 1985 where he went ‘on patrol’ with the ‘freedom fighters’, was photographed holding an MI6 rifle and so forth. Hoiles is fronting the UK end of an American operation. The original idea of CFN came from one Charles Moser of the […]

Curried Knight: Maxwell Knight and the MI5 in-house history

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000)

[…] matters inside this country came under the control of the Security Service, where it was later known as the M Section .’ So he was working for MI6 from 1924/5 to 1931. MI5’s Fishy Official Curry (as I like to call it) was originally intended to be a survey of MI5’s wartime work, but […]

Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confrontation 1946-1989

Book cover
Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] then the reputations of such featured icons as the ‘golf balls’ at Fylingdales and Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, the Greenham Common airfield in Berkshire, and the MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross in central London. Many English landscapes – particularly but not exclusively at airfields east of the Pennines, closest to our expected foes […]

Another Pinay sighting

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] as a mixture of fact and fiction. I invited him to correct any errors we had made but have heard nothing.) Fielding’s account of McLean’s life makes it plain that McLean was an MI6 officer for most, if not all, of the post-war period. If true, Fielding’s claim above about Julian Amery is new. RR

The Angolan hostages episode, and more …

Lobster Issue 5 (1984)

[…] some British hostages. In some reports, in Private Eye in particular, it has been claimed that the whole affair was orchestrated by an alliance of right-wingers in MI6, the Foreign Office, Unita, and Lonrho. There is no direct evidence of this but it is clear that some people are highly embarrassed by Britain’s support […]

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