The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] down mentioned it at every opportunity as proof of the Sandinistas’ immorality. “High level officials” of both Nicaragua and Cuba “have been personally implicated” in drug smuggling, Reagan said during the 1985 debates over contra aid (Reagan 1987:673–76). The State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy, which managed the administration’s public-relations campaign against the Sandinistas, […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] significant on first reading but amounts to little. Pieczenik is willing to swear that X said that Y said . . . . Honegger is a former Reagan era Washington insider, best known for revealing the existence of the so-called ‘October Surprise’, the deal between the Reagan election campaign and the Iranians to prevent […]

Johnson at 10: The Inside Story

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] Johnson’s ‘levelling up and infrastructure’ concerns were ‘emblematic of his desire to rebuild the country and be a Prime Minister in the mould of Presidents Roosevelt or Reagan’. Leaving aside the impossible combination of Roosevelt and Reagan – which only an idiot would make, so one can assume they are unattributively quoting Johnson himself […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 93 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] that reality differed greatly from the view that Soviet intelligence directed all the Warsaw Pact agencies. As for the ‘terror network’ theory invented by those around Ronald Reagan, she writes: . . . the 1980s saw a number of prominent American journalists, practitioners, and politicians advance ideologically driven interpretations of state-terrorism. Most famously and […]

View from 92 copy

Lobster Issue

[…] that reality differed greatly from the view that Soviet intelligence directed all the Warsaw Pact agencies. As for the ‘terror network’ theory invented by those around Ronald Reagan, she writes: . . . the 1980s saw a number of prominent American journalists, practitioners, and politicians advance ideologically driven interpretations of state-terrorism. Most famously and […]

Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] the President would refer to him as ‘Bandar Bush’. Bandar has been a friend of the Bush family ever since working with George HW Bush during the Reagan administration, when Bandar ended up as the middle-man in paying the Nicaraguan contras. Prince Bandar has in fact been in and out of the shadows around […]

Wall Street, the Supermob, and the CIA

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] supporter President Johnson; ‘2 Eisenhower Aides Given Democratic Campaign Jobs’, New York Times, September 21, 1964. (He would switch again and become Ambassador to Italy under President Reagan.) Another key business ally of Chesler was Gardner Cowles of Cowles Magazine & Broadcasting, Inc., who became the second largest investor in General Development, behind only […]

Nixon’s Nuclear Specter by William Burr and Jeffrey P. Kimball

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] the nuclear issue and issued no nuclear threats during his presidency. President Carter raised the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran during the hostage crisis. President Reagan presided over a massive nuclear build-up which came close to accidental thermonuclear war during the misinterpreted Able Archer alert. President Clinton discussed using B61-11 tactical nuclear […]

Gone but not forgotten… (Donald Trump book reviews)

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] 1 2 It’s a formidable achievement’. (pp. 33-34) ‘A formidable achievement’! It would certainly have resulted in the impeachment of any previous president – except perhaps Ronald Reagan. Is Sopel’s response really the right one when a president clearly demonstrates a determination to stay in office by any means necessary? And when Trump turned […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney worked to kibosh detente with the Soviets in the 1970s, preparing the way for the neocon revival of the Soviet ‘menace’ under Ronald Reagan and his successors.52 The actions listed by Sachs have their immediate roots in the mid 1970s and ultimately – diEugenio would argue, I think – on […]

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