Classified: Secrecy and the state in modern Britain by Christopher Moran

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] subsequent modifications. Before WW2, in practice the state was willing to clobber little people – e.g. the novelist Compton MacKenzie who revealed a handful of secrets about MI6 in a book in the 1930s – but unwilling to do anything when prime minister Lloyd George took van loads of official (and thus secret) papers […]

Angles Morts

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Mirror, if he thought that Bonnett could possibly have been inserted into Belfast in the crisis of 1972 at the request or even command of MI5 or MI6. News gathering in Ireland was traditionally handled from the Manchester offices of the nationals. I put it to Leo that a reporter sometimes needs trade in […]

View from Bridge copo

Lobster Issue

[…] children wept bitter tears on camera and no-one mentioned UK military aid to radical Islamists fighting Gaddafi. There are no references in the official report to SIS, MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service.59 On the other hand, Nick Must noted that the report contains 76 references to ‘MI5’ and 213 to ‘Security Service’ – […]

Murder in Cairo

Lobster Issue 90 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Chase, (Little Brown, New York, 2009) 1 ‘controversial topics on which verifiable evidence was scarce’.3 A former telex operator related how he had been grilled by an MI6 officer about Holden’s last telexes. Later, McCormick told him some telexes relating to Holden were missing. ‘Christ! Is there a spy in the department?’ the operator […]

Misleading Parliament – a case to answer

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

See also: Misleading Parliament – Appendices

[PDF file]: […] file. 19 19 undisclosed allegations. It is also significant that Field Marshal Sir John Stanier and Sir Maurice Oldfield, former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service ( MI6), contacted Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, expressing their view that I had been badly treated by the MoD.20 At my disciplinary hearing at the MoD in 1975, […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] it more carefully, I was struck by the omission from this account of the role played by Oleg Penkovsky, the GRU colonel who was providing SIS ( MI6) – and thus the Americans – with detailed information on Soviet nuclear weaponry. Crucially, Penkovsky told SIS how few missiles the Soviets actually had and that […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] controversy in October1 9 showed Campbell among many New Labour pals. Those linked to bid backer Morgan Stanley included current Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, ex-head of MI6 John Scarlett and ex-Blair chief of staff Jonathan Powell. Portland figures in addition to Campbell and Allan were Powell’s brother Chris; Martin Sheehan, a Gordon Brown […]

Murder in Cairo

Lobster Issue

[…] Chase, (Little Brown, New York, 2009) 1 ‘controversial topics on which verifiable evidence was scarce’.3 A former telex operator related how he had been grilled by an MI6 officer about Holden’s last telexes. Later, McCormick told him some telexes relating to Holden were missing. ‘Christ! Is there a spy in the department?’ the operator […]

The Clandestine Lives of Colonel David Smiley: Code Name ‘Grin’ by Clive Jones

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the sabotaging of ships carrying Jewish refugees to Palestine,. Limpet mines were attached to vessels in Italian ports, disabling five of them and showing, as far as MI6 were concerned, ‘how clandestine operations could achieve results at relatively little cost’. (p. 216) After this, he was involved One reason for this interest in Smiley’s […]

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