Spies at Work

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££

[…] a quick skim across Massiter, Bettaney, Charles Elwell – and thence into British Briefing, David Hart etc. (And Colin Wallace was not ‘a former officer in Army Intelligence’; and has not, to my knowledge, suggested that the League had office space in MI5 headquarters . But since this, like most of the assertions in […]

Defending the Warren Commission:the line from Langley

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] Oswald would not have been any sensible person’s choice for a co-conspirator. He was a ‘loner’, mixed-up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. As to charges that the Commission’s report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that […]

Beware the proven lawyer!

Book cover
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Vincent Bugliosi New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2007 xlvi + 1612 pps. + CD-ROM End Notes and Source Notes (958 + 170 pps.). Illustrations, bibliography, index, $49.95.   ‘Reclaiming History is important not just because it’s correct, though it is. It’s significant not just … Read more

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, […]

The view from the bridge. Hidden Agendas. Jack Hill. Ghandi. Sinn Fein. Oswald

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] party magazine of the Hindu nationalist party now in government in India, BJP Today, has suggested that the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was the work of British intelligence agents. The article, written by R. Chandrachundan, a close friend of Ghandi’s son, reports the presence of two men from the British consulate with cameras on […]

Don’t Mention The War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££

[…] Chris Ryder are treated as straightforward sources despite public knowledge about their disinformation roles. Alan Protheroe of the BBC is not described as a former Army TA intelligence officer. Still, these are minor criticisms of the best analysis I have read of the politics of news production in this country – and the best […]

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 […]

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

People

Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££

[…] by Richard Hall mentioned that she wrote for the newsletters Africa Analysis, Africa Confidential and the Economist’s Foreign Report. The last two are frequently talked of as intelligence operations — Brian Crozier and Robert Moss, for example, have edited the latter — but is there any evidence about the former? Seth Kantor died in […]

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 […]

Accessibility Toolbar