Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)
[…] before 9/11 and that the production of the WMD Dossier was one of the key components of a broader political strategy designed to achieve that aim.(1) Understanding intelligence Andrew Defty considers the role of Parliament and Parliamentary Committees in allowing parliamentarians to develop expertise in particular policy areas and questions whether the Intelligence and […]
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 […]
Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)
Our Secret Servants: the Shayler affair Things had been going rather well for the British security and intelligence services in the 1990s. Under pressure from the Wright-Wallace-Massiter revelations of the 80s, they had conceded a notional form of parliamentary accountability with the creation of the Intelligence and Security Committee. With members who either knew […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]