Ten Thirty Three: The Inside Story of Britain’s Secret Killing Machine in Northern Ireland

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Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] their recognition that military victory was impossible? There can be little doubt that one factor was the improved performance of the security forces, in particular of the intelligence and surveillance arms. So effective had they become that the journalist, Jack Holland, could write, with only slight exaggeration, that in the 1990s the safest thing […]

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 […]

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 […]

Disinformation: From Euros to UFOs

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] anti-Gaddafi piece by Con Coughlin, claiming that Libya now has some North Korean ballistic missiles. The only stated source for the allegations contained therein was a ‘Western intelligence official’. On 28 May 2000 the Sunday Times article ‘IRA investors make 300% profit out of Gaddafi cash donations’, sourced back to ‘MI5 documents seen by […]

UFOs and disinformation

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

In Lobster 40 I wrote about a long-term operation by elements within the US military and intelligence services to disinform those interested in UFOs. More information on this has subsequently come to light. The MAJESTIC mystery solved? The real author of this section is Martin Cannon: I have just rewritten his e-mail to me. […]

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 […]

The British Watergate

Lobster Issue 13 (1987)

[…] 30th Something very strange happened in British politics almost a decade ago. A Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and the journalist with the closest links to the British intelligence services, Chapman Pincher, both said that elements of MI5 had been trying to bring down the Labour Government during 1974-76 – and nothing happened. There was […]

Historical Notes

Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

[…] to know that they can now visit a website with some interesting further information about this maverick figure. The site can be found at < http:// www.pharo.com/ intelligence >, and is run by the team which produced Double Standards, last year’s interesting study of the Hess affair. Some of the material will be familiar […]

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 […]

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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