Jonestown. The secret life of Jim Jones: a parapolitical fugue

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] political, as well as ministerial, agenda. At the time of his visit, the former British colony was wracked by covert operations being mounted by the CIA and MI6. By way of background, the most important political group in the country was the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), established by Dr. Cheddi Jagan during the 1940s. […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001)

[…] Times article of 29 October 2000 Labour MP Tam Dalyell wrote: ‘I can now reveal that in 1967, I talked at some length to the head of MI6, the late Sir Maurice Oldfield, who helped to persuade Wilson not to accede to Lyndon Johnson’s request to send a battalion of bagpipers (sic) to Vietnam. […]

The rise of warfare capitalism

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] their own experts have to tell them. We saw this with Bush and Blair either ignoring or ‘sexing-up’ the evidence on WMD provided by the CIA and MI6. This process can only be fueled by defective intelligence derived from the privatised torture of hapless goat-herders and taxi-drivers who have been flown around the world […]

Coach into pumpkin: some problems with Paget

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] (Northern Ireland) Report that the term “agents” is used to refer to informants or sources and not “agents” as it is sometimes colloquially understood to be, “ MI6 spies”. Thus the reference to “agents being involved in murder” was a reference to actions of informants rather than the authorities.’ Paget concludes with the cosmically […]

Books forthcoming

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] own man in the White House. It may be interesting to read C. M. Woodhouse’s The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels (Granada). Woodhouse worked for MI6 after the war in Greece and Iran, then became a Tory MP. William Keegan’s column in the Observer is the most informative economic view of Britain […]

Following in Uncle Sam’s dirty footsteps: chemical and biological warfare testing in the UK

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)

[…] reference in Peter Wright’s Spycatcher. He notes that ‘the whole area of chemical research was an active field in the 1950s’, and refers to a joint MI5/ MI6 ‘program to investigate how far the hallucinatory drug lysergic acid diethyalmine (LSD) could be used in interrogation, and extensive trials took place at Porton.'(21) Wright gives […]

Tittle-tattle 1

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] was assistant editor of The Economist. Lloyd and Leonard Jr. keep interesting company at the FPC. Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (see above) is ‘senior researcher’ and career MI6 officer Meta (now Baroness) Ramsay is on the advisory council. Alongside Lloyd and Ramsay are Sir Michael Butler, the former British permanent representative to the European […]

Joseph K and the spooky launderette

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)

[…] forms of academic ID I had shown him – only about my name. I later learned that Marks had often used various fictitious names and had serious MI6 connections. I had given the man who took us to the club no personal details about myself, not even in the conversation in the Half-Way House. […]

Spinning the Spies: Intelligence, open government and the Hutton Inquiry

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] subtle than that. In any case, the JIC precisely certified as ‘genuine’ intelligence which was ‘false and dubious’: it has almost all had to be ‘withdrawn’ by MI6. () Indeed, as the Australian analyst Rob Barton has told us, the JIC Chair, John Scarlett was still trying to get ‘false and dubious’ intelligence put […]

Brands and Britannia: Some aspects of national image and identity

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] intelligence force, answerable to the Home Secretary, freeing SIS to continue with its core functions, answerable to the Foreign Secretary’. This would avoid a ‘wholesale take-over of MI6 priorities by MI5-led anti-terrorism operations,’ which, he said, many intelligence operatives fear.Note: In the ‘old’ days spook lobbying and territorial warfare were invisible. Given other associations […]

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