The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas, 1939-45 by Max Hastings

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Hastings is sceptical of this, though he corroborates the general view of their brilliance. This stands out particularly by contrast with the stupidity of Britain’s main overseas espionage organisation at that time, MI6 (SIS), staffed by ‘men of moderate abilities, drawn into the organization by the lure of playing out a pastiche of Kipling’s […]

Wilson, MI5 and the rise of Thatcher

Lobster Issue 11 (April 1986) £££
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[PDF file]: […] another defector, Lyalin. (111). Wilson said later that Kagan had let Vaygauskas approach him as part of a scheme to assist Sir Arthur Young investigate Soviet commercial espionage. Young had been placed in Kagan’s company as ‘cover’. (h) Harold Wilson was involved in a series of corrupt land deals This presumably refers to the […]

Misc reviews

Lobster Issue

[…] Powers doesn’t. These essays are mostly about the CIA. The problem is that there are two CIAs. There’s the CIA which does analysis, gathers information and conducts espionage and counter-espionage. This is a central intelligence agency. But there’s another one, which kills, bribes, corrupts, overthrows. This is not an intelligence agency: it is a […]

The Shadow Man: At the Heart of the Cambridge Spy Circle by Geoff Andrews

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] with Bob Stewart, a senior official, at the Party’s King Street headquarters, to discuss his future role in the organisation.3 He complained about his unwilling involvement in espionage, telling Stewart that this was ‘the only time I’ve really been unhappy in the Party’. MI5 had Stewart’s office bugged (‘Operation Table’) and heard all the […]

The Dungavel Handicap Scotland, Churchill and Rudolf Hess, 1941

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] receiving payments from the Japanese government in June 1941. His office was raided on 13 December 1941 and various confidential documents found. Rather than face prosecution for espionage, he agreed to retire from public life. See or . 8 The American historian Carrol Quigley stated in two books, Tragedy and Hope and The Anglo-American […]

Ring of Spies: How MI5 and the FBI brought down the Nazis in America by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] may have stayed so had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbour. As indicated in the title, there was some US-UK collaboration on this matter and various German espionage activities in the US were thwarted. But the involvement of MI5 was actually quite limited. In 1937-1938 they monitored the activities of a Mrs Jordan who […]

Some agent protection issues and more comment on SIS PR

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] 2011 Development of SIS novelists T he SIS has also had the good sense and patience to encourage youngish men to establish careers as novelists – like espionage, PR is a long game. The authors I have noticed with SIS connection now maintaining the brand by feeding the espionage fiction habit are Charles Cumming […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 76 (Winter 2018) FREE

[PDF file]: […] where reports from sources (both overt and covert) would be read, assessed and collated. Considering that it uses techniques that are so close to those of state espionage, it should come as no surprise that Palantir Technologies has Sir Mark Allen (the ex-MI6 officer who is a suspect in rendition cases) as ‘a senior […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] of it even has reassuring Eastern European labels on it. If the former Soviet bloc can no longer be plausibly portrayed as exporting revolution, terrorism, subversion and espionage to Britain, the remnants of the Soviet empire are now (we are told) engaged in money laundering, drug-running, gunrunning and – the holy grail – nuclear […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] of it even has reassuring Eastern European labels on it. If the former Soviet bloc can no longer be plausibly portrayed as exporting revolution, terrorism, subversion and espionage to Britain, the remnants of the Soviet empire are now (we are told) engaged in money laundering, drug-running, gunrunning and – the holy grail – nuclear […]

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