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Lobster Issue

[…] narratives are found wanting and counter-narratives (of varying plausibility) abound: from the suspicious deaths of government weapons experts, cryptographers and shadowy financiers to the covered-up connections between intelligence agencies and terror groups (see Curtis 2010). Criminologists should shrug off the stigma attached to theorizing that diverges from official accounts and carefully excavate the deep […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: South of the border (occasional snippets from) Nick Must Spook joke department ‘UK spies will need artificial intelligence’ reads the headline to a Gordon Corera piece on BBC news online.1 Yes, the gags are pretty much writing themselves now. Deferred prosecution agreements – buying your way out of trouble ‘A deferred prosecution agreement, or […]

The assassination of Martin Luther King: the paper trail to Memphis

Lobster Issue 76 (Winter 2018)

[PDF file]: […] is five years before Dr King was murdered, and while President Kennedy and his brother Robert were still in office. October 15, 1963 On this date, FBI Intelligence Operations chief William C Sullivan disseminated a memo. In it, he announced the completion and imminent circulation of a dossier entitled ‘Communism and the Negro Movement […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] narratives are found wanting and counter-narratives (of varying plausibility) abound: from the suspicious deaths of government weapons experts, cryptographers and shadowy financiers to the covered-up connections between intelligence agencies and terror groups (see Curtis 2010). Criminologists should shrug off the stigma attached to theorizing that diverges from official accounts and carefully excavate the deep […]

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] coup to seize power for himself. He ‘did little to hide his involvement in drug trafficking’ and, according to an interview with Col. Russell Thaden, the NATO intelligence chief, on one occasion he ‘blew his stack upon learning U.S. and British forces had jointly bombed a large drug lab in northern Afghanistan’. He calmed […]

JFK’s assassination: two stories about fingerprints

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] in Washington DC. The missing DIS documents comprised a standard background check performed on Wallace, who was applying for a job with a defence contractor, which two intelligence officers told The News had been present in his file in 1961 but were apparently removed later. The file also contains a letter to the FBI […]

The Russian Laundromat and Blackpool Football Club

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] Men Who Stole the World, 5 he has this towards the end of the prologue: ‘Offshore connects the criminal underworld with the financial elite, the diplomatic and intelligence establishments with multinational corporations. Offshore drives conflict, shapes our perceptions, creates financial instability and delivers staggering rewards to les grands — to the people who matter. […]

British Writers and MI5 Surveillance 1930-1960 by James Smith

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] Orwell: Smothered Under Journalism, London 1998, pp 154-155. The Lovestoneites were, of course, supporters of Nikolai Bukharin and followers of Jay Lovestone, expelled from the American Communist Party in 1928. In the post-war period they were to become US Intelligence assets in the effort to combat Communist influence in the British and European labour movements.

Superstition and farce: the survival of the Inquisition in American political culture

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: […] the Church and Pike Committees had never met. Even Mr Panetta, who is commonly depicted as a new broom at Langley, has been part of the so-called intelligence community for more than thirty years. ‘Witches’ and ‘miracles’ There is a very strong cognitive – I would say religious and dogmatic – construct shared throughout […]

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