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 […]

Sources

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

[…] of new material on the assassination of the sixties and related events. It contains pieces on William Pepper’s excellent book Orders to Kill (reviewed above); Garrison; military intelligence in Dallas; Cuban intelligence and JFK – the Cubans’ viewpoint; a report on the Coalition’s annual conference; updates on material generated by FOIA requests and by […]

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 […]

US involvement in the Fiji coup d’etat

Lobster Issue 14 (1987) £££

[…] former prime minister.(Sydney Morning Herald, May 19 1987) “Ratu Mara was in it from the beginning,” said one source. The Times on Sunday said that while initial intelligence advice was that it was a narrowly based military coup, within a few days evidence was available to the Australian Government that the coup “was backed […]

Iraq misc.

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££

[…] interesting – if unsurprising – that the final edits are done by Blair’s two closest advisors. But by the time Hutton heard this, the memo from Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chair John Scarlett had been released which referred to the JIC’s ‘customers’.(5) Once that concept has been taken on board the game is 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 […]

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 […]

The Great Betrayal

Lobster Issue 8 (1985) £££

Books The Great Betrayal Nicholas Bethel (London 1984) This is either a ‘snow job’, designed to discourage further research in this area (British intelligence attempts to destabilise Soviet and communist influenced regimes), or is just a poor effort on Bethel’s part. One can’t deny that it is useful – after all, it is the […]

The Ulster Citizen Army smear

Lobster Issue 14 (1987) £££

[…] On this there is no agreement. Some journalists who were in Northern Ireland at the time remain convinced that it was nothing more than a British Army/ intelligence operation, a ‘funny’. Some suspect it to have been a psy ops job, possibly even run by Wallace himself. Although this view is intelligible given what […]

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