The Hotel Tacloban by Douglas Valentine

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] stylistic point of view it is highly appropriate to focus on MacArthur also because of the coincidence of their first names. William Colby (1920-1996) Director of Central Intelligence, i.e. head of the CIA (1973-1976) Prior to that he had served as chief of the Far East Division and Chief of Station in Vietnam, with […]

Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law: Aden and the end of Empire by Aaron Edwards

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] fire, they ‘cowered’ – as opposed to sheltering, which was what white men did. They ‘lounged’ a lot. Instead of shouting, they ‘hollered’. While Britain used ‘covert intelligence’, they ‘spied’ treacherously. Their attacks were ‘heartless’ and ‘cowardly’. They were addicted to ‘fighting, killing and treachery’, usually for lucre, or under the influence of ‘gat’ […]

In The Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] Britain and Saudi Arabia which led to allegations of massive corruption. The investigation was closed down by the Blair government when the Saudis threatened to end their intelligence relationship with Britain if it was pursued.4 He gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative Party and made a donation of £20 million to […]

The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, a Daughter’s Quest and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil by Charlotte Dennett

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: […] £21.99, $27.95 (US) Robin Ramsay The author’s father died in a plane crash – flight 3804 – in 1947 in Ethiopia. He was working for the Central Intelligence Group – which was about to be renamed the CIA – and was America’s leading undercover officer in the Middle East. The author, a journalist, describes […]

Nixon’s Nuclear Specter by William Burr and Jeffrey P. Kimball

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] had any impact on their recipients in terms of altering their behaviour – not even the alarms triggered by the Able Archer exercise, which a lone Russian intelligence officer decided to ignore.1 Often these nuclear threats and alerts have been described as essential to US credibility. That magic word was also used in 2008, […]

Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] was red meat for her base. As we know, the death penalty was not re-introduced. In fact, Thatcher had been briefed for some time by UK military intelligence that she could not realistically fight the IRA head–on (as Neave would have wished) and the likelihood was that high levels of violence would continue unless […]

Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] proposed rule changes. I am sure this exercise will have involved at some point party staff too, herding their constituency delegates in the right direction and sharing intelligence on the recalcitrant. Largely because of the lukewarm response from the trade unions, McSweeney didn’t get everything that he asked for, but the changes that were […]

Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] later I received a reply (on 1 See . plain A4 paper, signed with a wiggly line with no name beneath it) informing me that the Secret Intelligence Service has not disposed of human remains in the last 15 years. Encouraged, I wrote again, this time asking for the release of the Service’s internal […]

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