Spookaroonie!

Lobster Issue

Contents Lobster 58 Spookaroonie! Inside British Intelligence 100 years of MI5 and MI6 Gordon Thomas London: JR books, 2009, £20 Page 132 Winter 2009/10 Lobster 58 Spooks The Unofficial History of MI5 Thomas Hennessy and Claire Thomas Stroud (Glos.): Amberley, 2009, £30 I haven’t properly read either of these books and cannot really review […]

View from Lob 73

Lobster Issue

[…] context of the alleged Russian hacking of the presidential election, the American website Politico ran a story about the large operation run in the United States by MI6 during WW2. Under the light cover of British Security Coordination, with the permission of the then President Roosevelt, they attacked the isolationist opposition to American’s entry […]

Apocryphylia

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] 10 Attlee, too, went full term in 1950, and almost lost. In 1963 the US (specifically the CIA) lost patience with the British old boy network running MI6, following the imprisonment of John Vassall, Philby’s defection and the news that John Profumo MP had, possibly, shared a girl friend with the Soviet naval attaché […]

Using the UK FOIA, part III

Lobster Issue 76 (Winter 2018)

[PDF file]: […] one of whom was a representative on the Committee and two of whom were members of the Committee’s Jeffery’s book contains a total of 196 names of MI6 officers, 10 MI6 staff (administration), 57 agents of MI6 and 30 officers of foreign intelligence organisations. 2 secretariat, the FCO sought to rely on section 23(1) […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[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 […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 76 (Winter 2018)

[PDF file]: […] it uses techniques that are so close to those of state espionage, it should come as no surprise that Palantir Technologies has Sir Mark Allen (the ex- MI6 officer who is a suspect in rendition cases) as ‘a senior adviser’.34 Sir Mark is an honorary fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, specialising in Arabic […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] was conducted by the father of Labour Shadow 1 2 3 Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander and attended by, among others, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale, the former senior MI6 figure who advised John Smith. Smith’s widow was for a time on the board of Hakluyt, run by several ex-MI6 people (Lobsters passim).4 When I read […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] extension of SIS, this appointment added some little credence to the notion that John Smith, like his Glasgow University contemporary Baroness ‘Meta’ Ramsay, had been recruited by MI6 while a student. It might also help make intelligible Smith’s role on the Bilderberg steering group. What is The Guardian? An interesting piece on The Guardian […]

The British state’s failed attempt to kill off the Freedom of Information Act

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] 16 See note 13. 17 See note 13. this hydra’s tail. Unlike the CIA, the security and intelligence agencies of the UK (better known as MI5 and MI6 respectively) are protected by Britain’s FOI Act with an all-encompassing clause 23(1) concerning ‘Information supplied by, or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters’, which is […]

Asil Nadir: another victim of the arms-to-Iraq conspiracy?

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] include the late Stephan Adolphus Kock, a former officer in the Rhodesian Special Air Service, consultant to the Midland Bank and putative agent of both MI5 and Mi6; and Sir John Cuckney, a former MI5 officer. Both died in 2008. The document also describes the actions taken by HMG to cover-up its arms dealing […]

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