A Pretext for War; Ghost Wars

Book cover
Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America’s intelligence agencies James Bamford, New York: Doubleday, 2004, h/back, $26.95 Ghost Wars: The Secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001 Steve Coll New York: Penguin, 2004, h/back, $29.95   These books cover some […]

The Cecil King coup plot

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] of the judiciary from the state executive being almost entirely eroded. The criminalisation of foreigners and of dissent increased, beginning with the Asylum Act of 1993 and Intelligence and Security Act of 1994, after which rival law enforcement agencies began competing with the police.(12) Although MI5 made much of its anti-fascist credentials in the […]

The Dirty War, and, The SAS in Ireland (Book reviews)

Lobster Issue 21 (1991) £££

[…] Mayne, and an investigation of Loyalist sectarian killers, The Shankhill Butchers (1989). His book opens with the attempts in 1970 by Captain James Kelly of Irish Military Intelligence to import weapons for the North (Kelly’s books were reviewed in Lobsters 13 and 15) and continues through the history of the Northern Irish conflict up […]

Fifth Column

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

[…] knows what it is doing about civil disorder. It is fishing. As the facts come out, they often seem to fit into the standard pattern of poor intelligence and some mistreatment of those arrested. We remain convinced that miscarriages of justice are likely in this mismanaged chaos. We have noted the signs of a […]

Who Owns Agca? Plots to Kill the Pope

Lobster Issue 4 (1984) £££

[…] Sterling’s, and it is hers I will concentrate on. As with her last book, The Terror Network, much of her ‘evidence’ is attributed to unidentified police and intelligence officers. This bothered me less than it did with The Terror Network. This book is more modest in its ambitions, more tightly focused, the unattributable assertions […]

Philanthropic imperialism

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

[…] but is incapable of turning the analysis round: what has US foreign policy persistently done in the past? Who says the CIA and the assortment of other intelligence organisations stopped what they were doing just because the NED was put in front of them as a fig leaf? Might these criticisms also apply to […]

Tittle-tattle: New Labour – old Spooks?

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

[…] combination of the lack of a security service with a corrupt police force left the Fijian government with little chance of learning about the activities of foreign intelligence services in Fiji. Which possibly ‘kinda delighted’ the CIA. The situation at the moment is that with the Fijian Council of Chiefs (a traditionalist body) permanently […]

The Organising of Intellectual Consensus: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and Post-War US-European Relations (Part I)

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] would be the key figure in arranging the formation of the CCF, and he is a good example of someone who moved easily between intellectual, political, and intelligence circles.(32) He came to prominence through his single-handed disruption of the German Writers Congress held in East Berlin in October 1947 by complaining about the lack […]

Late breaking news on Clay Shaw’s United Kingdom contacts

Lobster Issue 20 (1990) £££

[…] did not. If I underscore his homosexuality it is to emphasize the compartmentalisation of his life, a trait that would be valuable for anyone with connection to intelligence operations. In 1977 a CIA memo surfaced dated 28th September 1967 and headed ‘Garrison Investigation: Queries from Justice Department’. This said that between 1949 and 1956 […]

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