Plotting for Peace and War

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] were abducted from Holland into Germany, is only mentioned in passing; and there is no reference to the simultaneous discussions between Max Hohenlohe and Malcolm Christie, an agent both for SIS and for Sir Robert Vansittart, despite the suggestive evidence that they might be connected.(3) Did Chamberlain back an attempt to assassinate Hitler, as […]

The Cecil King coup plot

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] Blair and Gordon Brown, have been Thatcherite. Cusack and McDonald, The UVF, (Dublin: Poolbeg, 2000) White, B., John Hume: Statesman of the Troubles (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1984) Ulster, October, 1986 The title of the article was ‘John Hume: CIA agent’. In Lobster 33. David Trimble savaged the Jonathan Powell memoir in a review in The Guardian

JFK, the FBI and the Cambridge phone call

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995)

[…] New Orleans when ordering Fair Play for Cuba literature. And there are other intriguing connections and coincidences.Eddowes thought that Osborne was either a freelance or Soviet intelligence agent, The Oswald File, op cit, p. 65. I’m not sure what freelance means in this context, but for the Soviets? No. Osborne was pro-Nazi during the […]

Like books we should have so many witnesses?: Some recent JFK literature

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] so much the story of Nagell as materials for a study of him. The book’s 800-odd pages leave nothing out. A massive work. Nagell, a CIA contract agent, went into an El Paso bank in September 1963, fired a couple of shots into a wall, and got himself intentionally arrested — thus ensuring he […]

The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune?

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] its creation, it always seemed likely that Bilderberg was a British enterprise; and Wilford concludes this, citing a C. D. Jackson comment that Retinger was a British agent, an opinion ‘pretty well shared by some other people who are in a position to know better than I ’ – reference, presumably, to the CIA […]

More views from the bridge

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

Crime fighting? There must many candidates for the title ‘The most damaging thing I have read about this government’. My current candidate is a piece by Simon Jenkins, ‘A Keep Police off the Streets Strategy Unit’ (The Times 2 February 2002). After reminding the reader that in the UK the police are a local service, … Read more

Children and the Official Secrets Act

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

Some of the spook recruitment pitches in the media of the last two years have gone out of their way to impress upon prospective candidates the family-friendly credentials of the major state spook employers.(1) But such measures, no matter how sincere and/or necessary, are for the most part aimed at a parent’s convenience – and … Read more

Clippings Digest

Lobster Issue 9 (1985)

Phone-tapping Phone-tapping of CND (Observer 9 December 1984; Daily Telegraph 10 December.) Telegraph piece includes claim that people phoning CND office have been connected to Ministry of Defence and local police stations. Police Review (15 February 1985) quotes “a source inside British Telecom” on the question of warrants for taps: ‘When it is a police … Read more

Hugh Gaitskell

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Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996)

[…] the 1954-55 internal party battles ‘Dirty Work’, we get no idea just how murky this actually was. For example, we know that Gaitskell worked closely with National Agent Sara Barker, but we are told nothing on how she came by the detailed information on members she kept in her bulging files. Indeed, in the […]

Morningside Mata Haris: How MI6 deceived Scotland’s great and good

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

Douglas Macleod Edinburgh: Birlinn; £9.99, p/b <www.birlinn.co.uk>   Twenty years ago, before the current torrent of information about ‘the secret world of intelligence’, we were scratching about looking for clues to our secret history. One was given in the John Loftus book The Belarus Secret (Penguin 1983) which contained a single reference to the Scottish … Read more

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