Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, and, The Haunted Wood

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Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] seems profoundly unlikely to me. These books, with their massive documentation, constitute proof. On the other hand, this is also the story of the most spectacular intelligence coup of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, largely using CPUSA members or sympathisers, the Soviet Union built networks such that by the war’s beginning it had […]

Historical Notes

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] completely and use UNSCOM and sanctions to police the country, at the same time covertly encouraging groups which would be in a position to stage a military coup. This was not enough for some: on 26 January 1998 Clinton received a letter calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a ‘hazard […]

Reflections on the ‘cult of the offensive’

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

Reflections on the ‘cult of the offensive’: pre-emptive war, the Israel lobby and US military Doctrine In our book, Spies, Lies and the War on Terror,(1) a central theme is the ascendancy of pre-emptive war doctrine in US military strategy and its impact on public perceptions and the construction of political narrative. A parallel and […]

Harold Wilson

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Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

Ben Pimlott Harper Collins, London 1992, £20 At one level, this deserves the plaudits it has received. It is a belting good read, such a good read, in fact, that I had got as far as 1967 before I realized that there was no mention of Lord Cromer, the Governor of the Bank of England … Read more

Northern Ireland redux

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

Peter Taylor has made more TV programmes about Northern Ireland since 1969 than other any British journalist. His most recent was the documentary, Loyalists, earlier this year, a series of interviews with Loyalist paramilitaries and politicians. This was followed by a book, Loyalists (Bloomsbury, 1999), which contained some of the interviews in that programme. Like … Read more

The rise and fall of the Bulgarian Connection

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Lobster Issue 13 (1987)

[…] hope to desperate men. Moscow promised not to invade Poland if the Church could dampen the struggle (and, presumably, give the Polish Stalinists time to organise the coup). Some Grey Wolves came to believe that if the infidel Pope would not inflame anti-communist revolt, it would be better if he was assassinated in a […]

Briefly

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein, (Penguin 2007) X Films: true confessions of a radical filmmaker Alex Cox, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2008 Managing Britannia: Culture and Management in Modern Britain Robert Protherough and John Pick, imprint-academic.com, ISBN 978-097645539 Guns for Hire Tony Geraghty, Piatkus, 2008 A People’s History of American Empire: a … Read more

Everything is going to change

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] the 1964 Republican presidential nomination. Lodge would drag his heels at reaching any accommodation with Vietnam’s President Diem, while the CIA’s Lucien Conein was busy organising the coup against him, just as the generals dragged their feet on troop withdrawal. With the CIA engineering ‘Quiet American’ style terrorism, bombing a Buddhist monastery in Hue […]

The Gospel according to Saint Jim

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] he could implement detente with Castro and reform the Agency in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster. The Warren Commission attempted to conceal this treasonous coup behind the lone gunman theory but the truth was smoked out by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in his abortive prosecution of Clay Shaw. Garrison was […]

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