Spinning the European Union: pro-European propaganda campaigns in the British media

Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

[…] the Information Research Department (IRD). This covert unit, established by the Labour Government in 1948, was financed from the Secret Intelligence Services budget, with close links to MI6. The government’s campaign had three stages. The first involved the dissemination of information to the press and public; the second, from the announcement of the terms […]

The Blairs and their Court

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] They present a devastating picture of Blair and his court that brims over with telling detail. Of particular interest to readers of Lobster is the revelation that MI6 head-hunted Charles Clarke when he was Neil Kinnock’s political adviser. It is good to know that the Home Office is in a safe pair of hands. […]

The covert origins of the Biafran War

Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££

[…] Office, bugging, tapping, intercepting mail — as well as producing inept anti-communist propaganda. Then as independence loomed, the Colonial Office/MI5 team were replaced by the Foreign Office/ MI6 people. Smith’s encounter with colonial corruption climaxes with his discovery that among his duties was election rigging for the British. ‘I had been ordered during the […]

Reading Italy

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] itself, involved in them. Christie’s book presents great problems for this reviewer. Who, in this country, is qualified to say anything intelligent about it? Some members of MI6 maybe. This kind of parapolitical research into anything just isn’t practised here: Christie’s book is virtually without precedent in this country. So, the first thing to […]

Spy Wars

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

Spy Wars: Moles, mysteries and deadly games Tennent H. Begley London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, h/b, £18.99   Begley was one of James Angleton’s allies in CIA counterintelligence and this book is the Angletonian view of the Nosenko case, one of the touchstones or causes célèbres of the CIA in the post-war […]

PSYOPS in the 1980s

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

[…] the Centre for Conflict Studies, Washington.’ (Presumably sponsored means paid for by.) It includes a paper by ex ISC Peter Janke, now Director of Research for the MI6 operation, Control Risks. Editor Tucker is a former Deputy Head of IRD. No team like the old team. (Thanks to H. G. in Canada for the […]

The Citizen Smith case or the spy who came in from Oporto

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] Portuguese readers that he came to Oporto in a KGB training mission as it was said in court in November 1993……. And I recall that the ex- MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson saw an MI5 report on the case which concluded that Mr. Smith had not given any important or damaging information to Victor Oschenko. […]

Who’s afraid of the KGB

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] society. On this it is worth looking at Stephen de Mowbray’s Soviet Deception and the Onset of the Cold War in Encounter (July/August 1984). De Mowbray, ex MI6, is one of the quartet who wrote the introduction to Golitsyn’s New Lies For Old, discussed in Lobster 5. He argues that the Soviet Union misled […]

Hacks, pols and PR

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] this small but powerful ‘Political Class’ has, through the practice of ‘manipulative populism’, done to a variety of British institutions, including the Civil Service, the Foreign Office, MI6, the legal system, the monarchy and Parliament. Oborne writes well and his anger-fuelled text carries the reader along at a great lick. One thing that made […]

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 […]

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