Still hazy after all these years

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

[…] hinted that something might turn up from an unexpected quarter. Turner suspects that Farewell America was that something; that although the book was put together by French intelligence people, it was the contact with Kostikov which led to it. The pseudonymous writer of the book was Thomas Buchanan, author of the 1964 Who Killed […]

Euro-bound? Or: the same river twice

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££

[…] In the Sunday Times of 5 December 1999 Stephen Grey reported: Tony Blair is under pressure from European leaders to support the creation of a ‘federalised’ EU intelligence service to help manage world crises. The move, proposed by Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, and President Jacques Chirac of France, is seen as the first […]

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 […]

The Rhodes-Milner Group

Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££

[…] issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR, not to mention in the Committee for Economic Development, the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.” G. William Domhoff, “Who made American Foreign Policy 1945-1963?” in David Horowitz ed. Corporations and the Cold War, (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1969) p34n […]

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.

The crisis

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

In Parish Notices in the last issue I wrote ‘there isn’t much in this issue about the economic situation because there really isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said, for example by Larry Elliot in The Guardian every week.’ Well, I changed my mind about that and here are the bits I found … Read more

The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

Benny Morris London: I. B Tauris, 2002, £24.50, h/b   In report after report on the major media we hear about or see pictures of ‘refugee camps’ in Israel – and no-one ever explains from where the refugees came. Perhaps editors think we know already. Benny Morris is an Israeli historian who became well known … Read more

The 1986 National Front Split, Part 1

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] the ‘dirty tricks’ attributed to the ‘political soldiers’. He denies all the charges and his explanation for the hostility is that as head of the ‘Security and Intelligence Department’ (of which Barrett was briefly a member), he played a prominent part in the disciplinary tribunals of those suspended or expelled, with concomitant legal action […]

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

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

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