Following in Uncle Sam’s dirty footsteps: chemical and biological warfare testing in the UK

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] category which are listed only by name and number, and about which nothing is known, such as; BPL, BHA, blue27/b bomb, freon pe65702a, JEDS, SAEB, tc-83, td-1 agent, nl-1 agent, and many more. In another letter, dated 21 June 1995, in response to my inquiry concerning the use of chemical biological agents in populated […]

After Iraq: some FCO/SIS issues

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] has linked his name to ‘saving’ Africa. Previously it was Palestine.) The ‘benefits’ of torture Meantime, Chief Scarlett is presented to the public as an expert in agent running and recruitment: i.e. the PR ‘legend’ being created is that his ‘strategy’ will be to put the demands of intelligence, rather than what can be […]

Historical Notes: Channel 4 SOE mystery. Venona Decrypts

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££

[…] and died in 1962 as a result of an air accident in South-East Asia. Faulks, in reporting this tale, suggested that Bodington may have been an MI6 agent before the war (he had been a journalist) and that the connection between him and Dericourt involved more than friendship. Curiously, Faulks left it there. But […]

Fiji coup update

Lobster Issue 15 (1988) £££

[…] Bacon, based on a TV programme she did for the Australian SBS company (Somebody’s Man in Fiji, The Listener December 26 1987). Freeman looks like a CIA agent, actually boasts (eg to Bacon) that he is CIA, and he has ex US military and special forces people working for him. He fits the bill […]

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

[…] conspiracy theories: Oswald was involved in the conspiracy to murder the President; and he was an FBI informant and a CIA or Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) agent; but he was also working for the communists as a double agent of the KGB or GRU! Russell proposes that, having been sent to the USSR […]

The Big C: Further notes on ‘conspiracy’

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] shah of Iran and Anwar as-Sadat lost their countrymen’s respect because both were (wrongly) seen as agents of Washington.’ Wrongly, huh? Depends on how he is using ‘agent’. Do I think either the shah or Sadat was an actual case officer-run U.S. intelligence ‘agent’ — no, I don’t. But neither, I’m pretty sure, do […]

One Boggis-Rolfe or two?: Philby: The Hidden Years

Book cover
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] to establish that Philby did more damage to British interests after 1951, when he was partly severed from SIS, than before, when he was an undetected Soviet agent in place. As Robin Ramsay noted in Lobster 37, this idea isn’t very convincing – not in any obvious sense, at least. After 1951, Philby worked […]

Getting it right: the security agencies in modern society

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] it. Not so. A few weeks went by and another person tried to attach himself to me, this time claiming to be to be a former MI5 agent who would spill the beans. But he was ill, so ill, and the NHS in London was so bad…..This goes on for some weeks and I […]

Rebel, rebel

Book cover
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

British Spies and Irish Rebels British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916-1945 Paul McMahon Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008, h/b, £30 First up, I have no specialist knowledge of this area, so if there any howlers in here, I’m unlikely to spot them. However, I know a good book when I see one. This has been … Read more

Northern Ireland Act 1974

Lobster Issue 14 (1987) £££

[…] with some volunteers from the UDF. He had assassinated John Francis Green, an active member of the IRA who was living south of the border. As an agent of the British Government operating across the border as an assassin he had brought back photographs as proof of that operation. When Captain Nairac showed the […]

Accessibility Toolbar