Spooks and the House of Commons

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

An interesting piece by Mark Hollingsworth appeared in Punch of 23 May-5 June 2001, ‘Spooks in the House’, on intelligence and security personnel who become MPs. Some of the material was familiar but less well known were Raymond Fletcher, and Le Cercle. Fletcher was a Labour MP who was witch-hunted by MI5 as a […]

Is Libya still the prime suspect for the murder of WPC Fletcher?

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996)

[…] sensational episode. Fairly quickly after this appalling crime, expressions of disquiet with official explanations were voiced. If guns had been taken into the Libyan embassy, surely the intelligence agencies would have known? If there had been a Libyan embassy plan to fire at the anti-Gaddafi demonstrators on that fateful day on 17 April 1984, […]

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 […]

I am being slagged off, therefore I am

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] after this curious telephone call, I was sent a photocopy of the review of Smear! by Robert Cecil from the Winter ’92 issue of the Journal of Intelligence and National Security. To quote the biographical material on his book about Guy Burgess, A Divided Life (Bodley Head, London, 1988), Mr Cecil is a former […]

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 […]

Great Northern? Was the author of Swallows and Amazons a Soviet secret agent?

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995)

[…] claim in The Times by the Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, that Arthur Ransome has been identified in KGB documents as ‘the most important secret source of intelligence on British foreign policy’ for the Cheka, the terror organisation of Bolshevik Russia, has infuriated lovers of Ransome’s work. Unlike Michael Foot, similarly traduced, Ramsome is […]

Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers

Book cover
Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] services is expressed by the fact that they – the politicians – refused to even listen to what Machon and Shayler had to say. As did the Intelligence and Security Committee. Oversight? Overlook, more like it. As always happens, the system then tries to shoot the messenger bearing the bad news. When it comes […]

Pissing in or pissing out? The ‘big tent’ of Green Alliance

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

[…] ever profits, £9bn and £9.8bn respectively. (2) This was followed by curious press reports that both Shell and BP had hired ex-MI6 staff and a former German intelligence agent to infiltrate Greenpeace (3) and that Tesco had asked MI5 to investigate the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In an obscure spat about […]

Stakeknife and Mad Dog

Book cover
Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004)

[…] untrue ….the FRU was prevented by RUC Special Branch from infiltrating loyalist murder gangs.’ (p. 32) (1) The exception to this was ex-Army Brian Nelson, the ‘ intelligence officer’ of the UDA, who directed the UDA’s killing of republicans for the FRU. Ingram suspects that Nelson never left the British Army (as does Paul […]

The Last Investigation, and, Deep Politics

Lobster Issue 27 (1994)

[…] CIA in mind), as “a system or practice of politics in which accountability is consciously diminished.” This term referred chiefly, but not exclusively, to the world of intelligence agencies and similar organizations, where secrecy and covert operations were adopted as a matter of deliberate policy. ‘I still see value in this definition and mode […]

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