Big Boys Rules

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Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] of the weight of the British state descending upon Channel 4 TV and the production company Box in retaliation for the Box/Channel 4 programme alleging military and intelligence collaboration between the British state and the Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. (See The Independent 29 July 1992 for an account, including reports of break-ins and […]

Trust no one: the secret world of Sidney Reilly

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)

[…] – provided he could earn a living or clinch a deal in exchange. By 1904-1905, in the Far East, he was simultaneously wheeling and dealing with the intelligence services of Russia, Japan, Britain, France and the USA. In due course his abilities and official connections in various countries made him a natural for the […]

The Gospel according to Saint Jim

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] did indeed use the alias Bertrand, second, that he knew Oswald, and third, that he was a significant CIA asset. (7) Clay Shaw, CMC and Permindex Shaw’s intelligence connections appear to go back to World War Two. In any event a CIA document declassified in 1977 confirmed that Shaw had worked with the Agency […]

Also Noticed

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Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995 Cees Wiebes Munster, Germany: Lit Verlag, Studies in Intelligence History, 2003 ISBN 3-8258-6347-6 p/b, 34.9 euros, $39.95 from Amazon. The publisher declined to send me a review copy but I read one chapter sent by e-mail from the author. This isn’t my field but it seems […]

RE:

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] in some ‘lesser publication’ later in the day.(1) And it wasn’t MI6. This assumes that, as former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove would have us believe, Secret Intelligence Service service personnel follow the rules. A less trusting Michael Mansfield QC, for Mr Al Fayed, suggested ‘there are things countenanced within the service that do […]

The Red Hand

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Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] James Miller, the mid-1970s version of Brian Nelson. Take a bow MI5, for penetrating the UDA completely, twice getting an agent into the role of UDA ‘ intelligence officer’. Bruce, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen, who had previously worked for over a decade at Queen’s University, Belfast, cautions the reader […]

The Big C: Further notes on ‘conspiracy’

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] timing of this is not fortuitous: ….the Conservative Victories in 1979 and 1983, the defeat of the miners in 1985 (in which the security services played an intelligence gathering role)….. the collapse of cherished beliefs….. led inescapably to the conclusion that there was a right-wing conspiracy which had hoodwinked the entire nation….’ There has […]

French vendetta: from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages deal

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] essential features of such parallel services – clear even before Colonel Oliver North agreed to tell all – can be noted in recent developments in the French intelligence community, fractured by rivalry, innumerable leaks and spectacular failures. It was perhaps to avoid this minefield that Chirac’s Interior Minister, Charles Pasqua, former founder of the […]

Eternal Vigilance? 50 years of the CIA

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Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)

[…] of things is uninteresting. This collection contains three essays of note. The first is Bob de Graff and Cees Wiebes’ study of the CIA and the Dutch Intelligence Service, which is the first of its kind that I can think of; and is, presumably, a template for the relationship between the CIA and the […]

The Intelligence Game: Illusions and Delusions of International Espionage

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Lobster Issue 23 (1992)

[…] He canters briskly and amusingly over the field of spook foul-ups in the post-war period to ‘show the pointlessness of so much of the work of the intelligence services everywhere.’ The result is an entertaining but very sharp analysis of that peculiar mixture of ruthless patriotism and utter incompetence which characterises so much of […]

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