Churchill and Secret Service

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Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

[…] one of the architects of the British Secret State. He played, we are informed, ‘a far more important and active part in the creation of Britain’s modern intelligence community than is generally recognized’; and, moreover, his ‘lifetime shadow war’ in defence of British interests, culminated with Operation Boot, the overthrow of Mussadiq in Iran.(1) […]

The corporate ex-spook business

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

[…] why some in the private security business may know something about it, is because its absence is where they make their money. As the industry counts ‘business intelligence’ as an area of expertise, there was something highly ironic about the industry personnel demonstrating their ignorance of CSR, and its importance to their clients, in […]

The ‘Wilson plots’ and related parapolitics (Book review)

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

[…] and he accepts Wilson’s (fictitious) version of his contacts with them. Altogether a most incompetent and evasive piece of work. The House of Lords debate on the Intelligence Services Bill, 9 December, 1993 Lord (Roy) Jenkins of Hillhead: ‘I experienced in the Security Service what I can best describe as an inherent lack of […]

A Very British Jihad

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Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££

[…] political dimension. Did the Conservative government approve of this? Did they know of this? Larkin presumes so but cannot demonstrate it. Larkin lacks a senior British Army, intelligence officer or civil servant, let alone a cabinet minister, willing to admit this was the policy. (1) For example, he writes p.42: ‘this elite group had […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Shorts: James Rusbridger. Illuminati. Gordievsky. Cavendish

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

[…] been disposed of, I believe, by the Katz and Norton-Tayor article. I never met Rusbridger but enjoyed his letters and shared his lack of regard for the intelligence and security services. His disparaging critics on the right, however, were almost certainly correct in claiming that he had few sources within the spook community. His […]

The aliens on the grassy knoll

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] seems as surprising as it did in 1976. Just as the ‘mind control’ story is part of parapolitics because of the activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies in the field (and their Soviet equivalents, no doubt), so some of the UFO literature of recent years has begun to resemble the literature of […]

Magazines, journals etc.

Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££

[…] works closely with a network of publications in other countries that frequently carry Soviet disinformation themes, particularly directed against the CIA. These are: Lobster in Great Britain; Intelligence Newsletter, formerly Intelligence/Parapolitics, in France; and Covert Action Information Bulletin in the United States.’ — p. 34 of Romerstein’s Soviet Agents of Influence, Centre for Intelligence […]

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