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, […]

Spy Wars

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] and deadly games Tennent H. Begley London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, h/b, £18.99   Begley was one of James Angleton’s allies in CIA counter intelligence and this book is the Angletonian view of the Nosenko case, one of the touchstones or causes célèbres of the CIA in the post-war era. Briefly, […]

Vatican Connections

Lobster Issue 1 (1983)

[…] and comments – in IHT 31st March 1983. 18. William Pfaff in IHT (14th April 1983) gives an account of what is said to be a Soviet intelligence document alleging that Brzezinski and Cardinal Koch (both of Polish origins), with the assistance of the West German Cardinals, organised the election of Wojtyla, the current […]

Secrets from Germany

Lobster Issue 15 (1988)

[…] surprisingly, Geheim devotes a fair amount of space to the CIA: five articles in this issue. Barbara Muller continues the listing (begun in issue No1/87) of American intelligence bases in Germany. She lists over 100 locations in Central and Northern Germany used by either the CIA or US Military Intelligence. Michael Opperskalski presents a […]

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 […]

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 […]

MI5: New Threats for Old? Turning up the Heat: MI5 after the Cold War

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994)

[…] (p. 6) It defies belief to think that anti-fascists would deliberately admit to covertly monitoring fascist meetings from within the same premises: such would alert Nazi “counter- intelligence”. This points, therefore, to the state having at least one, or maybe more, operatives inside the local BNP, and them being very confident indeed. ‘(Emphasis added) […]

Operation Black Dog

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] CW armoury. The bomb was dropped on elements of the Republican Guard in Southern Iraq, I was informed. Heavy casualties resulted. The operation, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, was a counter-strike, following an Iraqi Scud that fell on Israel. The missile had contained Sarin. Fuming, the Israelis had prepared to detonate a nuclear […]

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 […]

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