The accountability of the intelligence and security services

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

[…] intelligence services in the context of civil liberties and their relationship with the public. For most of their existence the British Intelligence Services, namely MI5, GCHQ and MI6 were not governed by any statutory law. They were established by the use of the Royal Prerogative backed up, in the case of MI5, with an […]

Web Update

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)

[…] dossier on UK Press Freedom, about British Intelligence Service whistleblowers and attempts by Blair’s administration to cover up accusations of British Govt sleaze and incompetence. Includes former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson’s allegations about MI6, contained in letters to his solicitor, John Wadham of Liberty, describing a 1992 proposal to assassinate President Slobodan Milosevic of […]

Gone but not forgotten

Lobster Issue 19 (1990)

[…] him — to have been a regular informant to Washington.’ (4) According to David Leigh’s sources the MI5 officer Arthur Martin told friends before his tranfer to MI6 in November 1964, ‘I did hear that —— was a spy.’ An MI5 officer from K branch confirmed to Leigh that ‘We knew that —— was […]

Into the Whitehall maw

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] policy (NCND). Exemption certificates authorising a blanket ban on access to personal data processed by the organisations were signed on behalf of the three intelligence agencies, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.(30) Subject access requests made to the agencies have met with a response referring to these certificates, and claiming exemption from the subject access and […]

The limits of accountability

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

[…] going on in secret and not so secret prisons. We know thanks to the excellent research done by that elements of the British government, be they MI5, MI6 or diplomats from the FCO, have been involved. Yet we seem unable to stop it. Civic society raises its voices in anger, yet nothing changes. As […]

The 1953 Coup in Iran: an Iranian insider’s view

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] with the Shah. In Teheran, Musadegh was also in constant contact with the Americans about any developments. Finally the parties reached an agreement. On a yacht the MI6 station chief told me… Later the MI6 station chief in Iran told me that at the beginning the Shah did not agree to return to Teheran, […]

Kincoragate: parapolitics

Lobster Issue 6 (1984)

[…] Norfolk to clear Wallace of the ‘It’s A Knock Out’ murder. Mrs Anne Wallace met her husband Colin whilst she was assistant in Conmower intelligence office of MI6 in Belfast. She is now personal secretary to the Duke of Norfolk, who retired as Director of Military Intelligence, M.O.D. in 1967. The Duke is a […]

My encounter with George K. Young and Tory Action, 1979-1988

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

In 1978 I read a report of a speech on subversion by a Mr G. K. Young (‘GKY’) a former ‘deputy director’ of MI6. It said that he was a banker. I had been a student at LSE 1972-1975, my tutor was an expert on the Soviet Bloc and I had studied Soviet politics. […]

Philby naming names

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] (Operation Gold) 1956 F.O. 1957 1st Sec.Bonn 1962 1st.Sec. Beirut – Chief of Station 1968 1st Sec. F.C.O. 1972 Retired (wrote official – secret – history of MI6) MCNAUGHT, Eustace Arthur Born 18/2/22 1942-47   H.M.forces 1948 Control Commission, Germany 1953 F.O. 1956 2nd Sec. Tripoli 1959 F.O. 1962 1st.Sec. Beirut 1967 F.O. 1968 […]

The Perfect English Spy

Lobster Issue 29 (1995)

Tom Bower, Heinemann, London This is the biography of Dick White, the only man to have been head of both MI5 and MI6 (SIS) and it is a massive breach of the new Official Secrets Act. For Bower not only had access to White’s memoir of the period, with White to vouch for him, […]

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