Historical Notes (De Courcy, Pilcher and Hess; The 1949 sterling crisis)

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] that such an experienced man as Pilcher should have leaked secret, war-related documents to de Courcy – unless, of course, the whole operation was indeed an arms-length MI6 ploy. De Courcy, it is clear, knew Menzies. He told me that the IPG itself was an ‘MI6 front’. Fanciful self-promotion? The circumstantial evidence is against […]

Enemies of the State

Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££

[…] and private investigator. In the early 1970s Murray ‘unexpectedly’ (invitation?) joined the Operations Intelligence cadre of 21 SAS, and this led to close contact with people from MI6, Army SIB, the Royal Military Police and the Parachute Regiment. In 1980 Murray became increasingly involved in investigating the activities of journalists, TV producers, MPs and […]

The Pinay Circle

Lobster Issue 8 (1985) £££

[…] Finance, Pandolfi; South African, General Fraser; former West German minister, Mertz; and Paris lawyer Jean Violet, director of the circle, with ties to western intelligence agencies, including MI6. The circle met on the 5th and 6th of January, 1980, in Zurich. Attending were: Violet, Count Huyn, Brian Crozier, Nicholas Elliot (ex MI6), General D. […]

Clippings Digest: August – November 1984

Lobster Issue 7 (1985) £££

[…] refused publication by junior defence minister John Stanley (Observer 30 September) Special Branch SB attending Friends of the Earth and NCCL meetings in Manchester. (Guardian 29 November) MI6 Interesting piece on Tony Jones, London solicitor accused of being MI6/MI5 informant, including the information that Michael Bettaney was the source of the information, in Black […]

I am being slagged off, therefore I am

Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££

There have been several notable assaults on the good ship Lobster since number 24. On Thursday, 19 November 1992 a journalist researching a piece on MI6 rang me. He said had been to talk to the KGB defector, Oleg Gordiefsky, who told him that the KGB were big fans of Lobster. Since Gordiefky defected […]

New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain’s Spies Came In From The Cold

Book cover
Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

[…] rob banks and attempt to penetrate the IRA is dismissed in the line, ‘the Littlejohn fiasco (in which a Dublin bank was allegedly robbed on behalf of MI6).’ (p. 224) In a long footnote, however, no. 45 on p. 311, Smith flails around trying to get round the embarrassment of Littlejohn. First he offers […]

Brian Crozier, the Pinay Circle and James Goldsmith

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

[…] has a close relationship with Mr ‘Dickie’ Franks, Director of the British SIS and his closest assistant Mr N. (Nicholas) Elliot who was a department head in MI6. Crozier, Elliot and Franks were recently invited to Chequers for a working meeting. It must therefore be concluded that MI6 is fully aware of, if not […]

The Secret War for the Falklands

Book cover
Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

The SAS, MI6 and the War Whitehall Nearly Lost Nigel West Little Brown and Company, 1996, £16.99 There are two substantial essays in here, one about the SAS raid on the Argentine mainland which didn’t take place, and the other about the SIS operation to prevent the French delivering any more Exocets to the […]

Yo, Blair!

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

The unspeakable Martin Kettle of The Guardian is a political journalist who has been pretty close to, and supportive of, New Labour since the 1990s. His article ‘The special relationship that squandered a noble cause’ (27 May 2006) opened with this: ‘The long arc of Tony Blair’s rise and decline has been punctuated by journeys […]

Our Searchlight problem

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] as Steve Dorril and I tried to elaborate in our book Smear!, the picture of the mid 1970s was more complex than this. People either linked to MI6 or former officers of MI6 were running their own operations during this period. This is the thesis that has always been promoted by Searchlight. From their […]

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