The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] Reading. See his biographical page at ” 7 . Garrick Alder alerted me to this. 8 2 Oh, really? I had a look at Crozier’s memoir, Free Agent (HarperCollins, 1993). There is nothing in it about such an operation involving Agee.5 mass propaganda in the context of the First World War and the Russian […]

The World That Never Was by Alex Butterworth

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010)

[PDF file]: […] Rachkovsky, in particular being central to this tale, with infiltration of revolutionary groups; his recruiting of revolutionaries and turning them into informers; the use of his star agent Abraham Hekkelman (aka Landesen, Arkady Harting) to foment violent acts as a pretext for state repression and manipulation of interstate relationships; not to forget his use […]

[PDF file]: […] Rachkovsky, in particular being central to this tale, with infiltration of revolutionary groups; his recruiting of revolutionaries and turning them into informers; the use of his star agent Abraham Hekkelman (aka Landesen, Arkady Harting) to foment violent acts as a pretext for state repression and manipulation of interstate relationships; not to forget his use […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] the Guardian’s journalists.19 But the material is all worthwhile – even the page in which Robin Whittaker presents Chapman Pincher’s case that Roger Hollis was a Soviet agent. I don’t agree with the thesis but it is interesting to meet it again. On the down side, there’s a jokey tone to some of it […]

AFRICOM, NATO and the EU

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014)

[PDF file]: […] again in relation to ‘AQIM’. Abu Qatada was a recruiter for both the EIJ and the Algerian Islamic Group (GIA), and editor of the GIA’s newsletter. MI5 agent Reda Hassaine said: ‘I saw Qatada brainwash young Muslims, living in Britain from Africa, Somalia, 38 MoD, see note 22, p. 16. Center for Strategic and […]

Kelly Bond 007 essay

Lobster Issue

[…] William Donovan, Sir William Stephenson and President Kennedy. He also dwells on the overall popularity of the books and movies. As for the name of his secret agent 007, Shakespeare and others have thrown out dozens of names of real secret agents who they say were the model for 007. Shakespeare even comes up […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] admitted at the beginning of the inquiry – but impressive nonetheless. The list reminded me of a number of things. There was the comment by former BOSS agent, Gordon Winter that, ‘British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement in Britain bigger than a football team our man is the […]

92 Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] my review of Brian Crozier’s memoir in Lobster, I asked Google (generally better and faster than Lobster’s search engine) for ‘Lobster magazine + Brian Crozier + Free Agent’ and got this from Google AI. Lobster magazine, a British publication focused on intelligence and parapolitics, has frequently covered the career of journalist, author, and intelligence […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] charge on this site. *new* SIS obit On 24 November The Times published an obituary of the MI6 officer Paul Ritchie.1 It had the clunky subhead ‘Senior agent at the forefront of transforming an agency focused on espionage into a global organisation capable of tackling modern-day threats dies aged 63’. It included this line: […]

View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] any one time . . .’ At or . In a post below that one he attributes the figure to ‘Warsaw Pact archives’. 14 6 the HVA’s agent network to be established: between the early 1950s and the late 1980s the service ran approximately 6,000 spies in West Germany. The Stasi’s security departments ran […]

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