The History of Espionage

Book cover
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 […]

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Book cover
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 […]

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 […]

George Korkala’s address book

Lobster Issue 7 (1985)

[…] Terpil in Beirut) from his cell before FBI agents spirited him back to New York. She says the book contains the names of top CIA and other intelligence officers in the Middle East and Europe. Obviously most of those named lead completely legitimate lives and were involved with Korkala in apparently legal business deals […]

Miscellaneous: Gemstone. Workers’ Revolutionary Party, MI5 and Libya

Lobster Issue 20 (1990)

[…] be found guilty of. If it turns out that they are cleared of all charges, then the campaign against them will have to be reinvestigated as an intelligence operation. (It is worth noting here that Steve Dorril suspects it is probably an operation run against the IMO rather than the NUM.) If this campaign […]

Some Notes on Occult Irrationalism and the Kennedy Assassination

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] Phenomenon of World History Since the Decline of the Vatican’, and its back issue list contained references to such articles as ‘Secret Societies as tools of British Intelligence’ (November 1984), ‘Rockefeller/British Conflict Over Germany’ (January-February 1985), and ‘The Jews and the Crown’ (March 1985). In addition, the May 1985 issue boasted of ‘Richard Landkamer’s […]

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 – […]

Historical Notes (De Courcy, Pilcher and Hess; The 1949 sterling crisis)

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001)

[…] ran a publication called Review of World Affairs, a kind of running commentary on the international scene. The USSR suspected that this was an arms length British intelligence operation whose purpose was to sow distrust between members of the wartime Grand Alliance so that when the war finished Britain would be positioned for an […]

The Kincora Scandal

Book review
Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996)

[…] lot of (mostly unsourced) information about William McGrath and his strange organisation Tara. At various points Moore asserts that McGrath and Tara were being run by British intelligence – MI5, apparently – though it is never entirely clear, because Moore offers no evidence. I had a chat with Harry Irwin who compiled the Kincora […]

Deadly Illusions

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Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] these are very much the KGB secrets the Russian government and KGB does want us to read. And no wonder. This is a story of how Soviet intelligence ran rings round the Brits. If there are any secrets the British government is trying to keep buried here, I missed them. But I’m probably suffering […]

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