Are spies useless? A Hack’s Progress

Book cover
Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997) £££

[…] with hundreds of times the resources of SIS, a ‘man from the FO ’ replied: ‘Ah yes, but you have to take account of the fact that MI6 is the most professional and efficient intelligence in the world. This is not to criticise the Americans, of course, but….'(13) The third theme has been that […]

Out of the blue and into the black

Book cover
Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

[…] attacks. 11 Peter Taylor, ‘States of Terror’, BBC, 1990. According to one rumour presently circulating in Belfast, the Security Services themselves were deeply divided over tactics once MI6 started talking to the IRA from 1989. 12 According to a former Special Branch officer I have spoken to. 13 Cusack and McDonald, see note 6. […]

Re:

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] counter-terrorism….Examples are drawn from media, political and official sources (some not yet open), and cover not only Defence (including Special Forces), but also the activities of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.’ David Sharrock, ‘D-notice slapped on MoD’s history of censorship, Secrecy and the media, after spat over “turgid” writing’, The Times, 24 October 2008; Jack […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

The once and future king?

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] over a long period of time. The Conservative candidate against him in the February 1974 general election had been George Kennedy Young, the former Deputy Director of MI6. For Young on Young see his ‘The final testimony of George Kennedy Young’ in Lobster 19. A more plausible explanation, given what we now know, would […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

[…] editor of The Spectator. His wife is Sarah Schaefer, a big wheel at the Foreign Policy Centre alongside Stephen Twigg (see Lobster 50), Baroness Ramsay, formerly of MI6, and Blair fundraiser and Middle East envoy Lord Levy. Schaefer previously worked for the pro-Euro campaign, the Social Market Foundation and as adviser to Denis MacShane. […]

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