The Perfect English Spy

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] – with G. K. Young prominent – needed reigning in. They were too expensive and too embarrassing when things went wrong. White wanted SIS to be an intelligence service – yes, with clandestine sources – but also one which, he could assure his colleagues in Whitehall, would not embarrass them. No more coup plotting […]

Way out West: a conspiracy theory

Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££

[…] be said, not a shred of evidence that Hollis ever passed a single piece of information to the Soviets, nor that he had any contacts with Soviet intelligence officers or agents. But this doesn’t hinder the conspiracy theorists who will seize on any scrap of evidence to bolster the Hollis theory. As history shows, […]

Mind control and microwave update

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] this field, they commented on ‘The increasing number of persons contacting us for assistance in ending what they believe to be electronic harassment by elements of U.S. Intelligence’. The July issue of their magazine Unclassified (discussed above) has a couple of pages on ‘microwave harassment’. That ANSC is giving credence to the microwave/mind control […]

Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare 1945-60

Book review
Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

[…] the perceptions of the American tax-payer and the subject populations of the informal American empire. (Alternatively, this shows how loyal American academics helped the military and the intelligence services win the war with communism.) My problem with it is that I know nothing at all about ‘modern communication theory’ or its practitioners; and learning, […]

A review of the (bad) reviews of Smear! Wilson and the Secret State

Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££

[…] (emphasis added) when even we had them over a year before, and No. 10 Downing Street, two years before. He attributed to us a ‘conviction’ (‘that disloyal intelligence officers were behind every humiliation that Wilson suffered’) which we don’t have, and announced, as if it were a revelation, that the rumours about Marcia and […]

The KGB Lawsuits

Book cover
Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

[…] Ethnos. In all three cases Crozier and a large team of researchers, with financial support from Goldsmith and additional aid from a large cast of (chiefly US) intelligence officers, tried to find proof of KGB influence that would satisfy a court. This is far too long to describe and I would merely summarise it […]

The view from the bridge. JFK. Waco. Oklahoma. Timor. Moral Rearmament Movement

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] (See the anodyne obit in Guardian 25 October). Expendables Two recent examples of the way HMG treats its employees when they become embarrassing. Peter Bleach, a former intelligence officer turned arms dealer, is in prison in India after an arms deal he was involved with went sour. The Indian court agreed to examine notes […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

[…] Net. He appears to believe that he can negotiate with MI6 in some fashion. But as Phillip Knightley says in the Belfast Telegraph piece, they’re the Secret Intelligence Service and they will pursue him to the ends of the earth: pour encourager les autres, if for no other reason. In a posting at Cryptome […]

Value Wars: The Global Market versus the Life Economy

Book cover
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

John McMurtry London: Pluto Press, 2002, pb £15.99   I shouldn’t be reviewing this. I haven’t digested it properly and it is going to take some time to do so. But I don’t want to leave this for six months without promoting it. I used to try and preserve books in good condition, didn’t write … Read more

The Citizen Smith case or the spy who came in from Oporto

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] he subsequently received. I suspect the evidence was exaggerated at a higher level in MI5 in order to ensure that Mr. Smith received a heavy sentence. The intelligence services depend on disproportionate sentences for breaches of the Official Secrets Acts to cultivate the mystique of the importance of their work. I believe Mr. Smith […]

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