The gentleman in velvet

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

James Jesus Angleton The CIA and the craft of counter intelligence Michael Holzman Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008, p/b, $28.95 Of all the figures in the Anglo-American spy world that we have been made aware of in the last 40 years, James Jesus Angleton was the most glamorous: the chain-smoking, the orchid-growing, the […]

PERMINDEX: The International Trade in Disinformation

Lobster Issue 2 (1983) £££

[…] evidence, though I do intend pursuing it further. Obviously such a shadowy company is open to all kinds of theories. It could have been used for economic intelligence, as suggested by Shaw. Equally, it could have been used to finance politicians. But where is the evidence for any of that? If there is such […]

Truth Twisting: notes on disinformation

Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££

[…] text. In 1984 Crozier wrote to the Spectator attacking IPS director Richard Barnet (a former Kennedy aide) and accusing the IPS of being ‘a front for Cuban intelligence, itself controlled by the KGB’. Barnet sued, the litigation reaching a climax in 1986 when Crozier lost a key court battle to prevent the Spectator retracting. […]

Morningside Mata Haris: How MI6 deceived Scotland’s great and good

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

Douglas Macleod Edinburgh: Birlinn; £9.99, p/b   Twenty years ago, before the current torrent of information about ‘the secret world of intelligence’, we were scratching about looking for clues to our secret history. One was given in the John Loftus book The Belarus Secret (Penguin 1983) which contained a single reference to the Scottish […]

Publications and Book Reviews

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

[…] about dealing with the unrest among the natives by the classic Imperial methods which had worked so well in Malaya against the Communist guerillas – a co-ordinated intelligence drive, a big propaganda campaign, mass round-ups of suspects, attacks on guerillas’ arms-supplies and cross-border sanctuaries – and then, if all else failed, negotiations from strength. […]

What Price National Security?

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] place under a Labour government again (Cf the ABC case in 1977-8), and that the Labour Party doesn’t know how to deal with national security and the intelligence services. Dorril said authors are under a lot of pressure to cooperate with the D-notice Committee; if they refuse to cooperate, their books are sometimes passed […]

JFK: Oswald? Which one?

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Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££

[…] thesis – there was a switch – and has tried to trace the life of the ‘hidden’ Oswald. He appears to have established the existence of an intelligence operation which began with two boys, of different heights, but who looked similar and who lived parallel lives. One, Harvey, was Russian-speaking, probably a refugee from […]

Training other people’s police forces

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

[…] area by country of origin and courses attended. A parallel area of training that we know even less about is the training of foreign Special Branch and intelligence agents. Security training is arranged through the Metropolitan Special Branch and MI5. Courses are also run by the Defence Intelligence Staff at Ashford, Kent. SAVAK agents […]

Historical Notes: MI5 and the Wilson Plot. USA and Chile. Hess

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] full support’ but warned against premature action liable to backfire. Meanwhile the CIA agents and their friends in Chile were to deploy ‘propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure’ to secure the downfall of the Allende regime.(4) Of course Allende’s left-wing government, the first […]

The view from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££

[…] Who of the British Secret State. Though I cannot remember why Dorril thought this and though there is nothing specific in Ashdown’s known career which says ‘ intelligence’, the career move from Special Boat Squadron to Foreign Office is pretty obvious.(1) The alleged SIS affiliation seems to have stuck, however. The doyen of British […]

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