US General Accounting Office Reports

Lobster Issue 29 (1995)

Compiled by Jane Affleck The US GAO is the investigative arm of the US Congress, and is charged with examining all matters relating to the receipt and disbursement of public funds. It conducts audits, surveys, investigations and evaluations of federal programmes, either at its own initiative or at the request of Congressional Committees or members. … Read more

Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico: new leads

Lobster Issue 6 (1984)

[…] code-named ‘solo’. (12) Childs, a member of the CPUSA, and an informant for the FBI, was sent by Hoover to Cuba in early 1964 as an undercover agent to learn what he could about the assassination from Castro. ‘Solo’ returned to tell Hoover that Castro said Oswald in Mexico City “vowed in the presence […]

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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] MI5 officer: ‘Blair was recruited early on in his career, around the time he stood in the Beaconsfield by-election in 1982. He was just the sort of agent MI5 wanted at the time, a man who appeared to be committed to the Labour Party but who in fact was – to use Thatcher’s phrase […]

Trust no one: the secret world of Sidney Reilly

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)

[…] Intelligence Service) used as cover the name and address ‘2 Whitehall Court c/o Captain Spencer’. There was indeed a Captain Harold Spencer operating as a British intelligence agent at this time. He later cropped up in 1918 peddling the allegations of sexual deviance in the British establishment that Pemberton-Billing used in his libel trial.(4) […]

Crozier country: Free Agent: the unseen war 1941-1991

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] A Single Monstrous Act. This clearly was ‘the line’ of the period. Crozier quotes some 1978 comments from the then Labour MP, Brian Magee, to Iain (CIA agent) Hamilton. Magee wrote, ‘Everything that comes from over there on the subject of social democracy in general and the Labour Party in particular is so inane […]

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

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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

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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

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