Public Servant, Secret Agent: The Elusive Life and Violent Death of Airey Neave

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

[…] In the House of Commons on 14 December 1977 Stephen Hastings MP, a former MI6 officer, using Parliamentary privilege, ran the disinformation attributed to the former Czech intelligence officer Joseph Frolik that a group of British trade unions leaders were ‘agents’ of Soviet intelligence. Frolik was being run by the CIA. (p. 321) These […]

The Soviet ‘threat’: “Russia Puts The Brake On Military Spending”

Lobster Issue 4 (1984) £££

[…] over the estimates of Soviet military capability tends to get overlooked in favour of the more exciting aspects of US foreign policy and the work of US intelligence agencies. This is a pity, because those estimates form the basis for the official US government definition of ‘reality’. A low estimate of Soviet spending/capabilities makes […]

Freedom of Information — new access legislation

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] you where it is. Absolute exemptions are not subject to any public interest test, and include information supplied by, or concerning: the Security Service, MI5; the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6; GCHQ; the Special Forces, e.g. the SAS; tribunals concerning intelligence and interception of communications including the Investigatory Powers Tribunal; and the National Criminal Intelligence […]

Trick or Treason: the October Surprise Mystery

Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££

Robert Parry Sheridan Square Press, New York, 1993 ISBN 1-879823-08-X This is an account both of the October Surprise story and of the author’s attempts over two years to stand it up. This works at several levels. The first is an intelligible recounting of the main features of the developing October Surprise allegations. He reviews … Read more

The History of Espionage

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

The clandestine world of surveillance, spying and intelligence from ancient times to the post 9/11 world Ernest Volkman London: Carlton, 2007, h/b, £20   This is a lavishly and creatively illustrated, large format, (i.e. slightly bigger than A4) glossy paper, coffee-table book on the history of espionage. A former journalist with Newsday, and author […]

Historical Notes: Channel 4 SOE mystery. Venona Decrypts

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££

[…] Dansey have given such a bizarre and terrible mission to Dericourt? Timewatch argued that Dansey hated SOE, regarding it as a nuisance which disrupted the gathering of intelligence from Occupied Europe. If one of SOE’s most important operations could be sabotaged, then the organisation could be taken over by MI6, and attention could be […]

The Terrorism Industry (Book review)

Lobster Issue 21 (1991) £££

[…] O’Sullivan, Pantheon Books, New York, 1989, $15.95. Since the revelation of the activities of Forum World Features in the mid 1970s, it has become apparent that Western intelligence services have used ‘research institutes’ and ‘study centres’ with impressive and neutral-sounding titles to put over their world view and create public antipathy towards the enemy […]

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] the history of the Agency, merely a history. Huge areas of the Agency’s activities have been ignored, as Jeffrey Richelson, one of the best informed historians of intelligence points out.(7) Richelson’s complaint is that the author has concentrated too much on the Agency’s covert operations. This is clearly true if we are to take […]

Trouble makers

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] gave an example of why the British state is willing to eat almost any amount of shit handed to them by the US. ‘The UK has no intelligence assets in central Asia. We are dependent on information given to us by the United States’ CIA and NSA.’ The British overseas lobby in Whitehall – […]

MISC.: Wapping. Gordiefsky. October Surprise. Stone’s JFK. Martin Luther King

Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££

[…] pro quo for the pension he is now receiving, is to bolster the key myth of MI6, that while we may be the junior partner in the intelligence relationship with the U.S., we’re the best, the most subtle and the most reliable — the people to handle those uncouth Yanks, to hold their hands […]

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