Killing Detente: the Right Attacks the CIA

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

[…] B’ episode of 1976/7, the subject of this book, which saw a group of the CIA’s critics on the right being given access to the Agency’s raw intelligence data, was one of the key moments in the counter-attack against detente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, […]

Tail piece

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] member of the American Psychological Association’s taskforce on psychologists’ involvement in interrogations and she’s recently gone public about some of the confidential discussions with the military and intelligence people involved in the taskforce ……. ’(1) But there are other Arrigos; Jean Maria is one of three sisters. There is a Dr. Sue Arrigo, who […]

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 […]

Things Israeli

Lobster Issue 5 (1984) £££

Extracts from what are claimed to be CIA analyses of Israeli intelligence services found when the US embassy in Iran was taken have been published in Imam, October 1983 through to May 1984. 17 pages in all. To this untrained eye they look genuine; ie dull enough to be genuine. There is nothing that […]

Thinking about the Falklands

Lobster Issue £££

[…] country. Unfortunately this ‘cock-up’ version of the Falklands War conspicuously fails to encompass two items: the existence of oil deposits around the islands, and the so-called ‘ intelligence failure.’ The Falklands-and-oil story can be traced quite easily through the annual index of The Times newspaper which is in every reference library. Start around 1977 […]

War and peace plots

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Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

[…] the German officer class, British diplomats, politicians and spies had problems categorising Canaris. They never quite understood his intellectual hinterland. He was described rather sniffily by Military Intelligence, as ‘a kind of Catholic mystic’. Little was produced (by them) to support this assertion, although the author notes that he did apparently enjoy visiting Spanish […]

Feedback

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

[…] died after making inquiries into a helicopter deal between the Iraqis and Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen. You discuss this as one of several anomalous deaths among intelligence assets in the context of asking why anyone would want to work for the spooks. Naiveté is the obvious answer, but you failed to mention that […]

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 […]

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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