The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] is free All issues of Lobster are now available without charge on this site. *new* SIS obit On 24 November The Times published an obituary of the MI6 officer Paul Ritchie.1 It had the clunky subhead ‘Senior agent at the forefront of transforming an agency focused on espionage into a global organisation capable of […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] agencies and the impact upon people’s privacy as the agencies seek to find the needles in the haystacks that might be crucial to safeguarding national security.’15 Former MI6 officer, Alan Petty, who writes as Alan Judd: ‘Realistically, however, we’ve no alternative but to go on as before. We have enemies, as Andrew Parker reminds […]

The Atlantic Semantic

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Archer’s by-election win, left the job undone, so we tried again, many years later; and this further chance was lost.’ 2 (emphasis added) Cavendish had been an MI6 officer. He worked with George K. Young in the UNISON Committee for Action, a militia formed as one of the ‘private armies’ of the mid-1970s. These […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the covert forum, the Cercle Pinay and its complex of groups. Amongst Cercle intelligence contacts are former operatives from the American CIA, DIA and INR, Britain’s MI5, MI6 and IRD, France’s SDECE, Germany’s BND, BfV and MAD, Holland’s BVD, Belgium’s Sûreté de l’Etat, SDRA and PIO, apartheid South Africa’s BOSS, and the Swiss and […]

Using the UK FOIA

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters’) but, instead, Provision 27 (which covers ‘International Relations’). The argument from the FCO – and, by direct association, from MI6 – is that the release of the additional names would harm current or future relations with other nations and that: ‘The FCO has argued that the […]

Maggie’s guilty secret

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] advisor, and sworn to secrecy. The British cabinet set up a secret sub-committee to oversee the project, with both the Home Office (MI5) and the FCO ( MI6) ordered to support the illegal exports. Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe, Willie Whitelaw, Francis Pym and PM Thatcher all gave the secret project government blessing. During the […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] to capital letters creeping in. Surely it’s British Army not British army. Or did someone abolish proper nouns while I wasn’t watching? 35 the great MI5 vs MI6 battle of the period, the Sunday Times, then edited by Andrew Neil, was on MI5’s side. The lobby In this column below I noted that there […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] attesting to the presence of the foreign bodies.39 After Perrin, have a look at Katherine Horton PhD, another apparent TI, who actually got a legal case against MI6, GCHQ et al, to court. She didn’t win but the transcripts of the proceedings are on-line and illustrate the difficulties such cases present, even with what […]

Sex scandals and sexual blackmail in America’s deep politics

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] TrumpRussia Dossier’, New York Times, 11 January 2017. No evidence has surfaced to corroborate these widely reported allegations, which appeared in an opposition research memos by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s electoral success reflects a sea change in public attitudes or simply his unique ability to flout […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of the border (occasional snippets from) Nick Must *new* From the dim and distant past Reading British spy Greville Wynne’s The Man From Moscow,1 I noticed that MI6 had set him up as a potential traitor. This was presumably done to ensure there was a fall-back position if it were deemed necessary that he […]

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