The British state’s failed attempt to kill off the Freedom of Information Act

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] problem with US FOIA.’16 The CIA Operational Files exemption to which Mr Jones is referring was created in 1984 (appropriately, some might think) and allows the Central Intelligence Agency to withhold anything it claims is ‘operational’ without even requiring the material in question to be reviewed. ‘ the CIA has stretched the definition of […]

Newton on Keynes

Lobster Issue

[…] wealthy since the late 1950s.33 In the British case it was given a helping hand by elements embedded within the state, notably the military and security and intelligence agencies, reluctant to embrace the end of Empire.34 Using allies in the press, politics and higher education, these forces have fought a war for the accumulation […]

Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form by Robert Guffey

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012)

[PDF file]: […] or false is a handicap. He tells us that H. G. Wells was a member of the Round Table and spent WW2 as the head of British intelligence. Neither claim is true; and the fact that on this he cites the late Jim Keith, one of the less reliable people in this area, for […]

Apocryphylia

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] with spying on their own government at the request of the US and privately told Wilson – hence his actions and concern at the possibility of the intelligence services machinating to remove him from office. Basically, Harold was right, and (presumably with Heath) he remains the only UK prime minister spied on by his […]

Dark Quadrant: Organized Crime, Big Business, and the Corruption of American Democracy From Truman to Trump by Jonathan Marshall

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] As a result, 120 of So that is one ‘invisible government’. Six years later David Wise and Thomas Ross published their ground-breaking book about the world of intelligence and also called it The Invisible Government. The text is online at or . 1 I write ‘allegedly’ here because not everyone thinks there was a […]

The Story of British Propaganda Film by Scott Anthony

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] or a seascape, engaged in propaganda? He also goes on to describe Orwell as ‘an anti-Stalinist socialist whose work has been appropriated by . . . British intelligence operatives’. The first part of this is undoubtedly true. Orwell, however, was not ‘appropriated’ by British intelligence services. He willingly cooperated with them, particularly in passing […]

Historical Notes on Tom Nairn and the British State

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] to achieve a rapid seizure of power in the name of the ‘National Will’, in senior ranks of the armed forces and sections of the security and intelligence services, on the Right of the Conservative Party, in business and financial circles and among sections of the media. The object seems to have been the […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] million blank ballot papers.2 This led almost inevitably to a rash of public 1 This may be a new name for the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit. About which see . The text of a request to the Met to explain the relationship between the two organisations is at 2 scepticism (given […]

Using the UK FOIA

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] This is because disclosure of the withheld information would breach the principle that the UK government does not release the names of officials from its own external intelligence agency, and by extension, those of allied intelligence services. Consequently, the 1 FCO has argued that it would seriously compromise such cooperation and thus prejudice the […]

A Tale of Two Factions: The US Power Structure Since World War II by Joseph P. Raso

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] the trilateralist framework to establish a more united front against Third World radicalism and greater détente with the Soviets. The ‘Prussians’, in contrast, consisting of ‘military officers, intelligence operatives, Cold War intellectuals, arms producers, and some domestic capitalists’, opposed détente and pursued a more militarist approach to Third World radicalism.11 Other contributions to this […]

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