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

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[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’ – […]

Hilda Murrell and the FOIA

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[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 […]

Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’ and praises Corbyn having ‘been proven correct when the foreign policy establishment – the Foreign Office, the RUSI, Chatham House, MI6 etc – have led us to calamity in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere’.4 Oborne’s political trajectory is fascinating and one can only look forward hopefully to […]

A Hack’s Progress by Phillip Knightley

Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[PDF file]: […] failed 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 […]

Knightley

Lobster Issue

[…] failed 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 […]

Hack Attack: How The Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] damaging the war effort in Afghanistan. In an unprecedented step, he arranged for Murdoch and Brooks ‘to be given an off-the-record briefing by the then head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett….. Sir John warned them that the Taliban were using Sun stories as propaganda and that they were damaging British military morale’. Brooks apparently […]

Knightley

Lobster Issue

[…] failed 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 […]

Beaumont novel copy

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

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