Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, and, The Haunted Wood

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Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] thought their codes unbreakable and chatted way in great detail about their agents. But by 1950 enough of the Soviet material had been decoded for the US intelligence community to begin piecing together the Soviet networks in the US. These intercepts – code named Venona – many of which remain unbroken to this day, […]

Overthrowing Whitlam

Lobster Issue 16 (1988) £££

[…] John Pilger the excuse to put out his version of the overthrowing of the Gough Whitlam government. The most interesting point he made was that the UK intelligence services were involved with the CIA. Extraordinary though this now seems, this had never struck me. The links between the US, UK, New Zealand and Australian […]

Drugging America: a Trojan Horse

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Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] embarrassment to ‘national security’ while trying to prosecute the ‘war on drugs’. It also contains the best account I have read of how the actions of the intelligence agencies in the United States, chiefly the CIA, produce unanticipated consequences. I will try to summarise this. A group of Cuban Bay of Pigs veterans created […]

Letters

Lobster Issue 10 (1986) £££

[…] denial had been broadcast throughout the country, and I can only assume that it was believed. After all, one would think that the former Director of Naval Intelligence and the National Security Agency would know with some precision where he was when this country was undergoing its greatest political crisis of this century. Indeed, […]

Friends of the British Secret State

Lobster Issue 16 (1988) £££

[…] one Soviet employee has ever been busted for involvement with the IRA. On close examination Massie’s story dribbled away into nothing. All he actually had was “Israeli intelligence believes Shabtal Kalmanovitch may know how the network in organised and financed.” Gerard Kemp Another old spook outlet, Gerard Kemp, is still putting his name to […]

Re:

Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

[…] Spooks Richard L. Russell, an academic based at the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, the National Defense University, examines the strengths and weaknesses of American intelligence during the first Gulf War. As you would expect from someone who worked for the CIA (he was a political-military analyst specialising in Middle East and […]

Margaret Thatcher: Vol 1: The Grocer’s Daughter

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Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] (p. 372) – an absurd description for a man who, by his own admission, spent virtually the whole of the post-war period working for British and American intelligence. His role in educating Thatcher on security and intelligence issues with his Shield group of old spooks is omitted and his memoir is not included in […]

Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Media

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Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair London:Verso, 1999, £10   Much has been written about the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the global drugs trade but this is the first book that actually brings it all together in one place. The authors haven’t exposed much that is new, instead they have taken […]

Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy and the First World War

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Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] Repington (‘….career ended due to an indiscretion, 1902…’ according to the Dictionary of National Biography), the military correspondent of the Morning Post. Repington fed smears, gossip and intelligence to Pemberton-Billing. There were still some desultory peace talks with Germany under way. Repington (and those who backed him) wanted these stopped. Many allegations were aimed […]

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