View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: […] days of Elizabeth I and Francis 17 18 Walsingham. This explains the continual presence of the present Queen in the background of many narratives concerning MI5 and MI6. It’s more than simply the ultimate loyalty of the two services to the head of state rather than to her government, it’s a matter of living […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

[PDF file]: […] 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.102 On the other hand, Nick Must noted that the report contains 76 references to ‘MI5’ and 213 to ‘Security Service’ – […]

Suddenly in September?

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the Middle East was reflected in the contribution of Lady Manningham-Buller, the former MI5 deputy chief. She told the Lords that when she and the head of MI6 met the Bush team in Washington shortly after 9/11, ‘the decision was about al-Qaeda, its base in Afghanistan and its close relationship with the Taliban. I […]

The meaning of subservience to America

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the integrity of your justiciary because the appeal papers prove Iran was involved….. I knew this information back then so you can rest assured both MI5 and MI6 knew.’ 6 Don’t you just love Baer’s notion that freeing al-Megrahi was about ‘protecting the integrity of judiciary’? As if it had any left!7 Subservience produces […]

A Spy Alone by Charles Beaumont

Lobster Issue 88 (2024) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Robin Ramsay This is only the second novel I have reviewed in Lobster.1 The cover and the author blurb tells us that author Beaumont is a ‘former MI6 operative’. ‘Operative’? Why not ‘officer’? The author tells me the word was chosen by the publisher. It is set in post–2020 UK, with a recognizable Boris […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] students.5 Among the luminaries are the Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin, who is a Senior Visiting Fellow.6 His profile is light on any detail, especially his relationship with MI6. Enter ‘Coughlin’ into the search engine on Lobster’s home page and you’ll get the fuller drift. Many of the ex-spooks are quite open about their past […]

Hilda Murrell and the FOIA

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018) FREE

[PDF file]: […] fourteen specified intelligence, security and national policing bodies5 – only five of which were in existence at the time of Hilda Murrell’s murder: those five being MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the special forces and the Security Commission. Considering that ‘As the exemption under section 23(5) is absolute; it is not necessary to consider the public […]

And in 5th Place? The long march to Freeport UK

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] – getting as far as meeting Sir John Smith MP, Chair of the Trust. (In Douglas’s account of this meeting, Smith was ‘accompanied by two operatives from MI6’). It all ended in disarray, with it being made very clear that the Douglas/Webber offer was not being entertained. Subsequent to the meeting in the presence […]

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