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

Wallace on Pincher on Wallace

Lobster Issue 21 (1991)

[…] the Directorate of Army Security at that time had joined the Directorate from Northern Ireland where he had worked closely with MI5. In particular, he ran an agent named James Miller, who infiltrated Tara, the Loyalist paramilitary group linked with the Kincora child sex scandal. Last year, the BBC’s Public Eye programme broadcast details […]

Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] is that it was (indirectly) linked to the forced retirement of over 2000 CIA employees which may have been a way of getting rid of a Soviet agent inside the CIA. (The Company, it appears, was extremely worried about a mole in the ‘W.H.’ – the White House or Western Hemisphere division of the […]

Mind control

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994)

Is your journey really necessary? The Guardian ‘Weekend’ section of August 13, 1994, carried a piece called ‘The Seeds of Madness’, about Mark Purdey, the dairy farmer who has opposed the British agro-chemical industry, believing that the so-called ‘mad cow disease’, BSE, was the result of organo-phosphate poisoning. Life became complicated for him and the […]

Philby: The Hidden Years

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Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] around in certain sections of the British Right for about 45 years since the late and unlamented Kenneth de Courcy first alleged that Rothschild was a Soviet agent. But apart from that – I basically don’t ‘get’ this book. If there is someone reading this with more knowledge – and more interest – in […]

The Pinay Circle

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] of activity around current political questions. The success of Brian Crozier (transnational security) has already been discussed.” Der Speigel (Spring 1982) noted that Crozier was a CIA agent for several years. Moreover, none of his activities are unknown to the agency in Langley. He is acquainted with most important former members of western intelligence […]

Terror Within

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

Terror Within: Terrorism and the Dream of a British RepublicClive Bloom Stroud, Glos.: Sutton, 2007, h/bk, 297 pages, h/b, £20.00   This sets out to provide a narrative describing the range of ‘attempts’ to set up a republic in Britain from the time of the French revolution until the present day. (Although the bulk of … Read more

Big Boys Rules

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Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] with photocopied police and intelligence files on the IRA, and we have learned that the UDA’s ‘intelligence officer’ in the 1980s, Brian Nelson, was an Army Intelligence agent, this is a pretty stupid line to defend. Nonetheless this line is at the heart of both of the Bruce and Urban books. Urban is an […]

Letter from America

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994)

[…] functioned as an army intelligence officer during Vietnam, turning to civilian spookery in the late 70s. In 1982 he met Oliver North, who posed as a CIA agent named John Cathey. North coveted Reed’s Piper turboprop airplane for use in the contra war. Reed was asked to give up the plane, report it as […]

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

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Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

Michael Smith Gollancz, London,1996, £20 This is a curious and rather pointless book. In short chapters Smith attempts potted histories of MI5, SIS, signals and military intelligence. These are quite well done, but covering half a century in 20 pages, say, the chapters are barely more than sketches. (The Information Research Department gets a page!) … Read more

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