Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

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Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)

[…] drug and other criminal activities the Nicaraguan bishops had complained back in 1978. Equally disastrous was the initial decision to leave oversight of the Contras to Argentine intelligence officers, for whom the drug-financing of operations was a way of life. On March 16, 1998, in response to Webb’s allegations, the CIA Inspector-General admitted that […]

A Game of Moles: the Deceptions of an MI6 Officer

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] contender for the prize for most inaccurate jacket ever written. It begins by stating that this is the first MI6 memoir (it isn’t), calls MI6 officer Bristow an ‘agent’, (the one thing which drives intelligence officers nuts), and then makes claims not to be found in the text. Of interest only to serious MI6 buffs.

US General Accounting Office Reports

Lobster Issue 29 (1995)

[…] be required. Mission-critical systems: defense attempting to address major software challenges (27 pp.) GAO/IMTEC-93-13, December 1992. Billions of dollars in defense weapons and command, control, communications and intelligence systems depend on high-performance, correctly functioning real-time computer systems capable of withstanding severe stresses without failing. This report identifies the many software problems affecting weapons and […]

Empire and Superempire

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Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

[…] In the case of why the Americans attacked Iraq, for example, our knowledge of the actual decision-making process is growing by the week as the military and intelligence bureaucracies leak in the great game of avoiding the blame for the disaster; and the knowledge that the actual evidence is increasingly available diminishes Porter’s discussion […]

The CIA and the Marshall Planks

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Lobster Issue 23 (1992)

[…] for example, he talks of the CIA in its ‘great, early days ….. manned by the flower of American youth…. something almost entirely new in history, a secret intelligence service that was dedicated to doing good in the world by stealth.’ Ah, the self-confidence (and self-delusion) in ‘doing good in the world by stealth’. RR

Inside the UDA

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Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004)

[…] point. Unfortunately, where Crawford points to collusion in a detailed way, he points to what we already know, for example, about Brian Nelson’s role as a UDA intelligence officer but also, in arms procurement from South Africa for what became the Combined Loyalist Military Command. There is much that is useful in Crawford’s book, […]

Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement

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Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996)

Scott Newton, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, £30 This is the book Newton was working on which produced the spin-off pieces published in Lobster: ‘The economic background to appeasement and the search for Anglo-German detente before and during WW2’ in Lobster 20, and ‘The Who’s Who of Appeasement’ in Lobster 22. As those essays showed, Newton … Read more

John Maynard Keynes and the Anglo-American Special Relationship: a Reinterpretation

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)

[…] have been characterised by a special Anglo-American relationship, running in parallel with the strategic one based on collaboration in NATO and the UN, as well as in intelligence sharing and nuclear weapons policy. The ideological rationale for all this has been the defence of liberal capitalism (equated with freedom of speech and national self-determination) […]

When David met Stella

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

Dr David Turner went to former MI5 Director-General Stella Rimington’s book-signing at Hatchard’s, Piccadilly, on 18 September 2001, where the following exchange took place.   Turner (presenting book for signing after queuing briefly behind several people, including a woman wearing an Anarchist badge) ‘Hello. Do you mind a lengthy inscription?’ Rimington (smiling, flanked by several […]

M. Fennema: “International networks of banks and industry”

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

Books International networks of banks and industry M. Fennema (Martinus Nijhoff, PO Box 2501, CN The Hague, Netherlands: Distribution in Europe by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, PO Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Distribution for US and Canada by Kluwer Boston Inc. 190 Old Derby St., Higham, MA 02043, USA).1982 Very little academic work … Read more

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