Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££
The Spycatcher’s Encyclopedia of Espionage Peter Wright Heinemann, Australia, 1991 The cover-blurb says this is ‘the rest of the story’. It feels more like the out-takes from Spycatcher spiced with a few more fragments of interesting gossip. And I do mean fragments: the interesting bits of 260 pages — largish print and much white space … Read more
Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££
See note(1) The Conventional Wisdom It is generally assumed that the economist J. M. Keynes was instrumental in establishing the post-war Anglo-American economic relationship. The argument is that, along with the US Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Harry Dexter White, Keynes created the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now […]
Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££
Iraqi documents Iraq on the Record (<http://democrats.reform.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord>) is a searchable collection of over 200 specific misleading statements made by Bush administration officials about the threat allegedly posed by Iraq. The collection would be even larger if it also included statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. However, if a statement was ‘…an accurate reflection of … Read more
Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££
Richard M Bennett London: Virgin Books, 2003 £20 hardback This is 350 pages of summaries of political and historical conspiracies. It starts in 2330 BC but the first 2007 years take up only 84 pages. The content is mostly Anglo-American, especially after WW2. It is done chronologically, so you get odd sequences of subjects: … Read more
Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££
[…] Affair, Verso, London, 1994, p. 103. Milne, p. 215 Milne, Ch. 4 ‘The Strange World of Roger Windsor’. It suggests that Windsor may have been an MI5 agent, and that his Libyan contact, Mohammed Altaf Abbasi, also worked for the security services. E.P.Thompson, Mary Kaldor et al, Mad Dogs:US Raids on Libya, Pluto, London, […]
Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££
[…] book, like all the others, does not explain the Reagan phenomenon. RR Deadly Deceits Ralph McGeehee (Sheridan Square Publications Inc. USA 1983) Ralph McGeehee was a CIA agent for 25 years operating mainly in South East Asia. He is now a bitter opponent of his old firm and the anger comes through clearly in […]
Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££
Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy Phillip Willan Phillip Willan’s Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, (Constable, London, 1991) is a detailed and interesting book, dealing in a thorough (if partially flawed) way with a fascinating subject. It covers a wide array of interlocking subjects including the infamous P2 … Read more
Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££
[…] officer in charge of the case admitted that MI5 were involved. The prosecution’s view of Green Anarchist was that it became dangerous with the issue in which agent provocateur Tim Hepple was first published. Hepple was not interviewed by the police. Operation Washington, the name of the state operation against GAndALF, was the first […]
Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££
Bilderberg Originally given as a paper at the British Association for American Studies 2002 Annual Postgraduate Conference, this draws on newly available archival evidence to document the origins of the Bilderberg Group. It also considers the various conspiracy theories which have attached themselves to the Group. Is it a CIA plot to undermine socialism or … Read more
Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££
Counter-insurgency in Rhodesia J. K. Villiers (Croom Helm, London, 1985) An expanded Masters thesis, full of descriptions of psychological operations by the Rhodesian forces (which failed utterly: and no wonder, they were useless), and rather less about pseudo-gang activities which, like their equivalents in the British operations in Kenya, were a success – i.e. they … Read more