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 […]

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. […]

In camera injustice

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] reliability was questioned by the Defence: he was known to exaggerate and is well-known for seeking publicity. He has also been a public supporter of MI5 and MI6, and he admitted he was paid a pension of £1,500 a month after he defected. The Defence called an ex-CIA Station Chief, referred to as Mr […]

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 […]

The Red Hand

Book cover
Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] history use that expression. Knowledge entails disaggregation. Bruce’s index includes a reference to a tiny Scottish Protestant group, the Young Cowdenbeath Volunteers, but no reference to MI5, MI6, the RUC Special Branch or Information Policy. It’s not that the book isn’t interesting — it is. Like Dillon’s and Urban’s it contains many interesting bits […]

Iraq misc.

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] circulation of the document to various departments. The usual suspects are there: SIS, MI5, GCHQ and MOD get between 7 copies for MI5 and 20 copies for MI6. But also listed are 32 (yes 32) copies for the DTI. Why? I wonder. Some kind of export initiative?’ Or the DTI is full of spooks […]

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. […]

The Malcolm Kennedy Case – Update

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001)

[…] ban on access to personal files have been signed by Jack Straw, Home Secretary, and Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary, on behalf of the three intelligence agencies, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, ‘for the purpose of safeguarding national security’. The validity of such a certificate can be challenged, and all three are being challenged; any person […]

Accessibility Toolbar