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 […]

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 […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

[…] allowed his old friend from MI6 to escape to Soviet Russia. On the face of it these were two of the most monumental blunders perpetrated by British Intelligence since the War. Presumably the reality must have been different from the way in which the public perceived these events or he would surely have been […]

Cold War stories 2

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

[…] Europe. Ingeborg Philipsen spoke of the Danish Society for Freedom and Culture, established in January 1953 by the former resistance fighter Arne Sejr. Sejr operated a private intelligence group called The Firm, formed in 1948 to conduct psychological warfare in Denmark in connection with the Danish Intelligence Service and the CIA. But Sejr’s interest […]

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 […]

The Libyans and the death of WPC Yvonne Fletcher

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] US; but all carried out by Republican governments. Is it possible that on both sides of the Atlantic the professional diplomats and the rational core of the intelligence community are slowly throwing off some of the vile nonsense perpetrated in the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher years? The release of various official US documents which could easily have […]

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 – […]

The Clash of the Icons

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] to reproduce conversations verbatim, a talent that made him a highly prized asset of the CIA station chief, John Hart, in Saigon. Hart and the CIA’s foreign intelligence staff wanted to know what influential Vietnamese citizens and officials were privately thinking, and plotting; so, through his CIA contacts, Ellsberg was introduced into Saigon’s most […]

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

Reading Italy

Lobster Issue 6 (1984)

[…] from BCM/Refract, London WC1N 3XX, price £4.50. Christie has amassed a great deal of information about the European fascist and neo-fascist movements and their links to the intelligence services of various NATO countries. Delle Chiaie is a thread running through the book but by no means its sole subject. The narrative is well held […]

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