PR, espionage and language

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

[…] regard for your family, your children or you.'(21) There, too, was that old chestnut: ‘SIS insists it is not dominated by a macho culture – indeed female MI6 officers play on people’s emotions in a way men cannot…’ (22) Yes, some women do. However, only the dated believe this is their unique value to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

Book cover
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 […]

MISC.: Wapping. Gordiefsky. October Surprise. Stone’s JFK. Martin Luther King

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] around the KGB defector Oleg Gordiefsky. Gordiefsky’s public role, the quid pro quo for the pension he is now receiving, is to bolster the key myth of MI6, that while we may be the junior partner in the intelligence relationship with the U.S., we’re the best, the most subtle and the most reliable — […]

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 […]

The View from the Bridge. Psy-ops. Common Cause. Larry Flynt. Hepple/Matthews. John Ware

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] times annually by two British eccentrics with a limited distribution to “about 50 like-minded friends.” N.B. It is anti-intelligence, specifically against the Western intelligence services, particularly MI5, MI6 and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The subject matter is apparently varied, eclectic, and highly interesting and informative for intelligence professionals and buffs.’ While good reviews […]

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