Coach into pumpkin: some problems with Paget

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

Operation Paget, the investigation by the team led by Sir John Stevens into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, briefly tried to investigate a collision between a white Fiat Uno and Princess Diana’s BMW. The head-on collision happened on 22 March 1996, on Cromwell Road, Kensington, when a casino employee lost control of a … Read more

…MI5 goes on forever

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] March 1981, there was this snippet: ‘Why all the fuss about the Panorama programme on British Intelligence? Eventually there was just one cut — Gordon Winter, BOSS agent, former freelance journalist, in a pre-title sequence: “British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement in Britain bigger than a football team […]

The Strength of the Wolf

Book cover
Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs Douglas Valentine London/New York: Verso, 2004, h/back, £20   This comes garlanded with praise from Jim Hougan and Anthony Summers. The praise is justified: this is, as Hougan says, ‘a ground-breaking work of investigative reporting’; and it is, as Summers says, ‘a … Read more

French vendetta: from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages deal

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] No I’, Georges Abdallah, and who served as a communications channel between the imprisoned FARL leader and his lieutenants, revealed that he had been a salaried DGSE agent since 1984 and had been regularly informing the DGSE of FARL’s exchanges. As if this were not all, Mazurier revealed that in the secret service war […]

Vindication is a dish still edible when cold

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

[…] I had taken from the headquarters of the South African Information Department in Pretoria) proving that he had been framed. Martin Dollinchek, alias Martin Donaldson (a BOSS agent who was captured when the CIA, MI6 and BOSS mounted a joint attempt to invade the Seychelles in an attempt to bring Boss’s agent of influence […]

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

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] in the machinery of the Iranian government.’ In my view the main role in that coup was played by the British. Lieutenant-General Fazlolah Zahedi was a British agent. Major General Hassan Akhavi was the brain behind the Arfaa’s group . The Rashidian brothers were all British agents. The British managed to obtain American support […]

Bits and Pieces

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] competition between agents from the CIA, the Soviet KGB and the Shin Bet to see who could most quickly capture a deer in the wild. The CIA agent entered the forest and returned three days later with a deer on a leash. The KGB agent came back after two days carrying bloody pieces of […]

Maria Novotny: From Prague With Love

Lobster Issue 2 (1983)

[…] took on a distinctly bizarre look. Eddowes’ book, November 22nd: How They Killed Kennedy (3) suggested that Lee Harvey Oswald had been replaced by a look-a-like KGB agent when he went to the Soviet Union. (4) Following this to its logical conclusion, Eddowes reportedly spent over $10,000 in October 1981 on legal fees and […]

Our Secret Servants: the Shayler affair

Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] far right The first was the tale of Andy Carmichael who described in the Sunday Times (27 July 1997) his ‘five years as a fully salaried MI5 agent’ inside the National Front (NF). According to Carmichael, the National Front, in the guise of National Democrats, had planned to disrupt the Referendum Party’s General Election […]

Looking for Trouble: The Life and Times of a Foreign Correspondent

Book cover
Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

Richard Beeston Brassey’s, London and Washington, 1997 no price stated This is worth skimming through, especially for the early 1950s period when Beeston was very close to SIS operations in the Middle East. These early chapters convey very clearly how the patriotic British journalist of the period rubbed shoulders with his country’s ‘secret agents’ and … Read more

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