Body of Secrets and Echelon

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Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

[…] In liberalised free markets, the successful nation or company is the one which has a competitive advantage. In the ‘knowledge-based’ economy, one might reasonably expect to find intelligence agencies playing a leading role in securing that advantage. As with the supermarket shelf, where things can literally be stacked in one manufacturer’s favour, so too […]

The death of Italy’s military intelligence chief in Iraq and some examples of persuasion

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

Nicola Calipari’s death If the tragic death of ‘Nicola Calipari’, the international oper-ations chief of Italy’s military intelligence service, in March 2005, was, as has been alleged, a deliberate act rather than misadventure, it is one of the most recent examples of extreme PR ‘message management’ I can think of. () ‘Public relations’ is […]

The Assassination of John Kennedy: An Alternative Hypothesis

Lobster Issue 2 (1983)

[…] apparently perceived by some of those who have studied the case. Not that the idea of a meta-conspiracy isn’t attractive. Faced with a cover-up extending across the intelligence services, the mass media, and the political establishment, many of the JFK researchers made the not unreasonable assumption that it was co-ordinated, and that its purpose […]

Willy Brandt: the “Good German”

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] the some of the same characters playing a role in these machinations. David Leigh writes that the Brandt Affair “had involved at least four of the West’s Intelligence agencies, working in partnership with each other — the West Germans, the French, MI5 and the CIA’.(1) A Sunday Times “Insight” article informs us that MI5’s […]

A Who’s Who of Appeasers, 1939-41

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] the tip of an iceberg whose full extent would reveal a very considerable network, or networks, of bankers, industrialists, landowners, service officers, members of the security and intelligence establishment, and politicians. Some of these were genuinely pro-Nazi, many more were committed to Anglo-German detente so that the wealth of the country would not be […]

Beyond The Da Vinci Code

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] of Reinhard Gehlen, long-since dead founder of the BND, the German Security Service. Reinhard Gehlen, to over-simplify a very complex tale, bought his way into the Western intelligence fraternity by handing over extensive files on anti-Soviet intelligence networks behind enemy lines in 1945/6. (1) What brought Gehlen to mind was a mischievous little article […]

Philby naming names

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] Kim Philby In the 1940s I had the opportunity to become well acquainted with the most protected and, therefore, the most dangerous operations of the BIS. (British Intelligence Service). I have to say that the mania to fabricate libellous statements against the Soviet Union is nothing new in leading circles of the British Government. […]

Kincoragate: parapolitics

Lobster Issue 6 (1984)

[…] the Duke of Norfolk to clear Wallace of the ‘It’s A Knock Out’ murder. Mrs Anne Wallace met her husband Colin whilst she was assistant in Conmower intelligence office of MI6 in Belfast. She is now personal secretary to the Duke of Norfolk, who retired as Director of Military Intelligence, M.O.D. in 1967. The […]

Cloak and Dollar, and, Know Your Enemy

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones London: Yale University Press, 2002, £22.50 Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World Percy Craddock London: John Murray, 2002, £25   Jeffreys-Jones is Professor of American History at Edinburgh University and writes on the American intelligence services. His book’s […]

Vindication is a dish still edible when cold

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

[…] the following: ‘Gordon Winter is an Englishman who was recruited by BOSS. His 1981 book Inside BOSS, was the first (and only) inside account of South Africa’s intelligence agency. We still think this is one of the most important political memoirs. Even if elements of the book were included to disinform, as some believe, […]

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